Twilight Render Sunset
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Some sad news on the Twilight Render forum.
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That is sad. Chris and Fletch are so passionate about rendering and built a very nice integrated solution for SketchUp users at a very affordable price.
I wish them the very best for what's next.
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That's unfortunate. Twilight was my second start with rendering after Kerkythea. It was an affordable option. Rendering software today is very competitive.
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Sad to know that, Also I was one of the first who migrated from Kerkythea (KT) to Twilight Render (TR) and it was/is a very decent render engine I would say.
It is a really competitive atmosphere, especially with the wax of AI-powered rendering engines.
I think it would be nice if they changed their functionality/plan instead of stopping it.
There are plenty of people who are using Sketchup even though it lacks so many advanced modeling features. It fits their needs. They also have problems with quality and precise rendering. If you want quality renders you have to populate your model with high-poly meshes that make the model heavy.
As far as I know, AI provides users with quality renders but is not yet precise enough.
So maybe they could find a gap and alter the TR function. i.e, it might provide some TR-"proxy" objects, that render beautifully. Like Enscape 3D has an asset library... The "initial" render out of TR then could go through an AI image generation tool to result in high-quality renders. This way we have solved two problems: SketchUp heavy models,and AI lack precision.
This way the original model stays light, but the final render would be fine.
This is my first insight. -
That's some sad news to start the new year...
This one hits home very hard because I'm also trying to enter the rendering market with my product. An ecosystem with a couple of big players is never a good state. I wonder why it was decided to sunset it altogether.
I wish the developers all the best in their future endeavors.
Cheers,
Thomas -
There is always room for new ideas I believe. The tools may change or the methods...
Also there could be market research... to find the share of existing rendering engines.
@Tomas, I sent you a DM -
These are really bad news.
I switched more and more to twinmotion for bigger projects but twilightrender is still a strong tool to render quick and easy precise pictures, without leaving the sketchupworld.
I don't know any alternative to that app.
SkechupDiffusion isn't precise enough.
Maybe some day render and ai merge to the perfect, quick and easy result inside sketchup.
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After the Indigo renderer fell asleep now this...
What a pity!
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I have tried to suggest the Twilight Render and RayScaper team up.
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@ntxdave said:
I have tried to suggest the Twilight Render and RayScaper team up.
Great idea,I support this idea
I hope so... -
I contacted Chris & Fletch to see if they want to explore opportunities. Of course, it's speculative, and I am sure they have good reasons (which I'm not privy to) to sunset TR after 14 years.
Cheers,
Thomas -
@faust07 said:
After the Indigo renderer fell asleep now this...
What a pity!What's happening with Indigo? Could you elaborate a bit? I thought with the Indigo RT release they have a very attractive option now to compete in the lower budget market.
Regards,
Thomas -
Let me guess. Archviz industry is about giving an idea of the space:
In the initial phase: to discuss more and develop the idea
In progress phase: to add details.
In the delivery phase: to represent the idea in its most magnificent situation.
So it is not about being precise, it is all about being fast and appealing.
That is why real-time render engines are involved very fast and also AI is included in the industry.
So this is not something wrong with the engines, it is all about a "better" match to the industry.
This is my guess. -
I think it is about the state of play ATM. There are many renderers that have come on the market of late D5 and Twinmotion, they are agressivly improving. They have free odjects (Hundreds of thousands of them) and can animate, have real time and Raster or path tracing. The inerfaces are very simple. they have lots of other stuff like physics and lots of other little tricks. And they cost nothing, nothing. I would guess, and thats all it is, sadly this will cause the eventual dimise of low cost renderers, they simply cant compete, and it will not be getting any better in the future. Sadly that is the elephant in the room
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@pixelcruncher said:
I contacted Chris & Fletch to see if they want to explore opportunities. Of course, it's speculative, and I am sure they have good reasons (which I'm not privy to) to sunset TR after 14 years.
Cheers,
ThomasGlad to hear this. I hope between the two companies you can come up with something. I hope they respond to you.
You might find this thread on the Twilight Render Forum interesting.
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@l i am said:
I think it is about the state of play ATM. There are many renderers that have come on the market of late D5 and Twinmotion, they are agressivly improving. They have free odjects (Hundreds of thousands of them) and can animate, have real time and Raster or path tracing. The inerfaces are very simple. they have lots of other stuff like physics and lots of other little tricks. And they cost nothing, nothing. I would guess, and thats all it is, sadly this will cause the eventual dimise of low cost renderers, they simply cant compete, and it will not be getting any better in the future. Sadly that is the elephant in the room
No doubt, there are more recent, very high-quality engines like D5 and Twinmotion - and it takes a lot of work to get feature parity with those. Mainly because they are so heavily funded, Epic was giving it away for free for a very long time just to buy the market.
They are free, if you aren't doing any commercial work. They don't come cheap once you need them for commercial work. D5 starts at $360/year, Twinmotion at $749/year. I hope there are still users who want to use this commercially but want to pay less. Maybe the people who don't make renders as their full time gig but occasionally need to create a render but can't justify the high yearly subscription costs?
Another thing is the integration. I think Twilight Render feels more like an extension of SU than both Twinmotion and D5 Render do. It might be subjective, but I think some people prefer that tighter integration, i.e. like that the render engine is part of SketchUp.
Of course, I am very biased here, and the success of Rayscaper requires a demand for cheaper options in the render space. It's very hard to go head to head with the big guns (VRAY, D5, Twinmotion, Enscape, etc) as a bootstrapped company but I think having a diverse landscape of options out there is what makes this so interesting. For me personally, there's also the personal satisfaction, creating a render engine is just a lot of fun.
Regards,
Thomas -
@pixelcruncher said:
Another thing is the integration. I think Twilight Render feels more like an extension of SU than both Twinmotion and D5 Render do. It might be subjective, but I think some people prefer that tighter integration, i.e. like that the render engine is part of SketchUp.
Of course, I am very biased here, and the success of Rayscaper requires a demand for cheaper options in the render space. It's very hard to go head to head with the big guns (VRAY, D5, Twinmotion, Enscape, etc) as a bootstrapped company but I think having a diverse landscape of options out there is what makes this so interesting. For me personally, there's also the personal satisfaction, creating a render engine is just a lot of fun.
Regards,
ThomasWhile I agree with the other points in your post, I think the ones I am quoting above are right on. I have used TR for several years and really like it for what I have done. Rayscaper also looks very interesting (cannot use it right niw because I have SU 2020). Since TR has announced a “sunset” (although they have recently asked about render engine suggestions) IMHO it would be kind of neat if the two of you could come up with something (yes, I know you have reached out to them and I have made the same suggestion to them).
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@pixelcruncher said:
@l i am said:
I think it is about the state of play ATM. There are many renderers that have come on the market of late D5 and Twinmotion, they are agressivly improving. They have free odjects (Hundreds of thousands of them) and can animate, have real time and Raster or path tracing. The inerfaces are very simple. they have lots of other stuff like physics and lots of other little tricks. And they cost nothing, nothing. I would guess, and thats all it is, sadly this will cause the eventual dimise of low cost renderers, they simply cant compete, and it will not be getting any better in the future. Sadly that is the elephant in the room
No doubt, there are more recent, very high-quality engines like D5 and Twinmotion - and it takes a lot of work to get feature parity with those. Mainly because they are so heavily funded, Epic was giving it away for free for a very long time just to buy the market.
They are free, if you aren't doing any commercial work. They don't come cheap once you need them for commercial work. D5 starts at $360/year, Twinmotion at $749/year. I hope there are still users who want to use this commercially but want to pay less. Maybe the people who don't make renders as their full time gig but occasionally need to create a render but can't justify the high yearly subscription costs?
Another thing is the integration. I think Twilight Render feels more like an extension of SU than both Twinmotion and D5 Render do. It might be subjective, but I think some people prefer that tighter integration, i.e. like that the render engine is part of SketchUp.
Of course, I am very biased here, and the success of Rayscaper requires a demand for cheaper options in the render space. It's very hard to go head to head with the big guns (VRAY, D5, Twinmotion, Enscape, etc) as a bootstrapped company but I think having a diverse landscape of options out there is what makes this so interesting. For me personally, there's also the personal satisfaction, creating a render engine is just a lot of fun.
Regards,
ThomasFair enough, make sense. I wish you the very best Thomas
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As one of the few Indigo (RT) users and fan of moving images here in the forum, I have to mourn the quiet end of Indigo. There has been no movement since November 2023.
Due to the very good integration into MSPhysics for animations and simulations (author AntonS), it was and is irreplaceable for me.
Luckily, this combination still works great. The question is, for how much longer?
At some point, new hardware and new versions of operating systems are always required (computers don't last forever either). Then it's over.
An alternative could actually be Rayscaper if it can be integrated into current animation programs (e.g. Animator from Fredo6).
Otherwise, I'll have to get used to the idea of finally learning and using Blender with its endless possibilities...
Of course, SketchUp with its unique NPR styles remains the first choice for city planning and architectural concepts. -
Sad to get the news on TR. I know time and progress wait for no-one but this is like losing a family member.
I hope those guys stay well.
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