Fry render v1 released

[solo]

Maxwell has a fast setup and well slow render, how is the setup with fry?
The material and lighting setup?

(maybe I should get the demo)

[kwistenbiebel]

Personally I would go for Fry.
As a user you get to be closer to the developers than you are when buying Maxwell.
You can actually get things done and they really listen do your needs (as long as you remain polite ).

When comparing quality, that is difficult to answer.
I think they are similar and I can't really decide which is better.
I personally love the workflow more in Fry, definitely when seeing the latest improvements they did on the SU plugin.

[Stinkie]

Keep in mind that Maxwell's Studio provides you with a good way to add, say, high poly 3D trees to your scene.

I gotta try Fry, though.

[kwistenbiebel]

Fry is fast at setup, slow at rendering( unbiased...you know).
Some people say it renders faster than Maxwell, but I haven't done a comparative test.

When you already have Maxwell I would stick to it, but when you have to make a new purchase I would consider Fry..
I don't know if the demo of version 1 is already up for download but yes, trying the demo is definitely the best way to make your choice.

[kwistenbiebel]

@unknownuser said:

Keep in mind that Maxwell's Studio provides you with a good way to add, say, high poly 3D trees to your scene.

Fry does proxy/instancing from within Sketchup, which works similar to the 'dummy' approach of Skindigo.
It allows you to place low poly 'dummy' trees in your scene, which will be automatically replaced by the high poly 3D trees when rendering...

[remus]

Is there a studio in for fry as well? i got the impression form your first post that there as...

[kwistenbiebel]

A handy feature from within the material editor is the ability to alter the bitmap textures you assigned to the materials.
It has a lot of possibilities to change the appearance of the textures. (No need to get back to Photoshop to change things).

Very easy to make a bump map for instance out of the colored texture by desaturating, increasing contrast, clip whites or blacks etc...
It also lets you add procedural noise, color gradients etc...

[kwistenbiebel]

To clarify the workflow from within Sketchup I will post some screen caps.

This is the Fry toolbar within Sketchup:

When clicking the icons of that toolbar, following windows will pop up according to which icon you click:

[kwistenbiebel]

The material editor:

How it works:
While having selected the Sketchup material (in the SU material browser), push the 'bucket' icon on the Fry toolbar.
The 'Fry material editing' window will pop and will make you setup the properties of the material:

[kwistenbiebel]

Not in the sense of the Studio in Maxwell.
But it has its own GUI (a 'mini' Studio if you like) that is launched when you push 'render' in Sketchup.
It lets you adjust some things if needed (e.g view point, camera settings, material tweaks),but all the mat editing and render settings are actually already done within SU...

An extended manual will be uploaded this week (according to the developers) on the Fry website.

[remus]

Cheers for the little walkthrough kwist, im tempted to give it a go now, if only i could find some time!

[kwistenbiebel]

I just tested the new animation feature and I must admit it is a bit buggy on larger sketchup files.
It seems to have trouble to save a dump file in the temp folder (crashes SU). Hopefully it will be sorted out soon.

Rendering animation seems to be quite fast though.
Here's a small tryout which rendered 1 minute per frame, which is actually very speedy.
Just a displaced box on a surface:

[flash=480,360:2autdnzb]http://www.youtube.com/v/J1MfQNjGSOw&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18[/flash:2autdnzb]

[Fletch]

Thanks for sharing this great review, Kwist, good work!

[ilay7k]

strange, why not to try demo?
http://fryrender.com

anyway indigo/kerky2008/and little bit luxrender and maxwell are best
holywar joke

[solo]

Chris, I installed Fry and unzipped the SU6 plugings and installed them into the correct folders. I am usng U6 pro and yet I do not see any icons or reference to them in plugins drop down menu.
I do have the .fry export facility which opens the Fry consol.

[kwistenbiebel]

That's strange. Are you sure you have version 1 ?

[solo]

The latest one off the website (demo)

[ilay7k]

Try to activate toolbar from plug-ins menu, fry-menu >> show/hide fry toolbar

[solo]

I do not have the fry-menu option in the plugins drop down menu.

[ilay7k]

strange, i have



Asian bridge by Sean Headrick

you install via this?...

@unknownuser said:

1. fry_su will only work on the PRO version of SketchUp
2. Given the contents of the proper zip (su_5/fry_su.zip or su_6/fry_su.zip, depending on which version you're using):
   - copy fry_su.dll file to <SketchUp folder>\Exporters
   - copy fry_su_loader_SU#.rbs and Win32API.so files to <SketchUp folder>\plugins
3. Start SketchUp, if everything is ok, you should see a FRYRENDER entry under Plugins menu section