Walter de Maria's Seen/Unseen Known/Unknown
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Hrm...I'm only vaguely familiar with artlantis, and even that only from the outside. I'm not sure how artlantis works with materials and such. Based on pure guesswork, I'd assume it falls somewhere between Podium and the more high end renderers out there in terms of what you can do with it. And I'm sure it's a biased renderer.
If Artlantis deals with rendering lingo to any significant extent (ambient occlusion, render passes, specularity, reflection maps, irradiance cache, etc.), then your next logical step would probably be something more like Vray for SU. Bonuses to Vray are that it can do a great range of things and can produce wonderful renderings (you've no doubt seen countless examples). The downside is that the learning curve is high (I'm basing this on Vray for 3ds Max but I'm sure the content is generally the same). I've been in arch-viz for 4 years or so and have a tough time with the rendering lingo so material creation, environmental parameters, and render settings are difficult for me. I've had Vray for 3ds max for about 8 months or so probably. I don't get a chance to try and learn it much, but in the time I have had, I still don't feel comfortable with it.
If Artlantis doesn't use rendering lingo or if you're familiar with photography, then yes, Maxwell may be the way to go. It's unbiased so renderings will take longer but setup (in my opinion) is much easier). Learning curve is definitely easier as well. Maxwell uses real world parameters for everything (camera settings, material properties, environment parameters, etc.). So rather than having to find out what irradiance caching is from a limited amount of vray tutorials, you can easily look up a word you're unfamiliar with on google (like turbidity) and find out what the parameter is referring to...or just look it up in the maxwell manual which is put together very well in comparison to vray's. Maxwell also has a Studio, a separate program you can export your scene to. This is a HUGE advantage particularly for us SketchUp users. If you want to put a high poly car or trees into your scene there's simply no way to do it with Vray for SU or any other renderer that doesn't have a stand alone Studio program. By the way, the plugin for Sketchup is awesome and with any luck, before too long it will include FIRE - maxwell's interactive rendering engine which can already be used within studio and other software plugins.
A couple other recommendations I'd make. Give Kerkythea a shot if it's still around and/or if you want to try a free option. It has a number of similarities to Maxwell and the learning curve is quite easy. Like maxwell, I was doing pretty good renderings the first day I used it. I only moved on because I found Maxwell shortly afterwards. You might also try Twighlight, which as I understand it is sort of the upgraded pay version of Kerky. I've never used it but it seems to have a lot of similarities to Maxwell (unbiased, has a studio, interactive rendering, etc.) and I'm pretty sure it's less expensive.
-Brodie
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Thankyou Brodie that is possibly the most concise reply i have ever received on the internet. You also partially answered my next question. I am aware of sketchups handling of high polys, so i populate my models with objects i have created in .aof format (artlantis proprietary).The same applies for textures. It seems a couple of years work might have to be forfeited in my libraries. The good news is the maxwell community combined with the thriving sketchup community. Maxwell has the textures covered i believe ? My objects will have to be re-addressed.Perhaps Dosch can help ? In Maxwell studio how do you import this extra geometry and are they a group ? Once again many thanks.
Chedda
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Wow, the link you im'd me is very impressive. I can tell you've got a very good eye. It seems to me that your indeed being limited by your software.
I wouldn't count your material library as a total waste. The 2d images that make up your materials will, of course, still be invaluable. Also your experience with material creation in general will certainly transfer over. Maxwell does have a wealth of materials online at their website most of them are very very good. Materials created in v1 (which still make up a large majority) can still be used in v2. Maxwell also has a separate material editor program which is great. It has probably a dozen preview scenes and you can make your own (I probably have 20ish in my drop down). It also has a wizard option which is invaluable. You can choose things like plastic, satin, SSS, clip map, metal, etc. which is pretty much always how I begin when creating from scratch. The one I use most is Textured which asks you to plug in a diffuse map, specular map, bump map a couple others if you have them and gives you a great starting point 90% of materials. From there it's mostly just adjusting bump value and specularity. The material also has the ability to use FIRE which gives interactive feedback as you adjust values - a HUGE benefit when you're just learning the process.
The community is great. You may know half life and richard from these forums and they're both maxwellian pros who are on there quite often. JD took over creating the plugin awhile back and totally revolutionized it. It's really unbelievable the difference he's made and what he can do. As I mentioned before, I'm pretty confident that soon he's going to work FIRE into the SU plugin which is no small feat for us who are used to SU's limitations. For now, FIRE works awesome in studio and I use studio quite a bit (although much less now that JD has so improved the plugin). He also responds to most of the stuff in the Maxwell for SketchUp forum within minutes of a post which is invaluable when a question comes up and you have a deadline.
As for objects, i'm not familiar with .aof but I'm betting they make it pretty tough to convert out of that to a more standard format? If so then, ya, rebuilding your 3d library will take some time. I've bought a number of things from dosch. A high poly car pack, a low poly car pack, some trees, and some hdri's. I had a few issues but the costumer service is amazing. In one instance Sebastian Dosch, the guy who runs the place, emailed me back to let me know that he agreed with my conclusion that an HDRI pack wasn't at the quality that it should be (it had some visible seams and blurry spots and such). He removed the HDRI pack from the website and offered to substitute it for another product. You can pretty much fit 1 high poly car or quite a few low polys in SU. The trees were another matter though. You can import them but the textures didn't import and the leaves didn't come in as components so you'd have to map everything individually. Besides Dosch, I get most of my misc. stuff for free from various websites. My top two right now are http://archive3d.net/ which has tons of stuff much of it quite good, although the search feature could be better, and http://www.3dmodelfree.com/ which has a lot of really great quality models but they're mostly in .max format as I recall.
All that brings us to how to get those high poly objects into your scene. You have a couple options.
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In Maxwell Studio you can import some pretty common formats (obj, 3ds, fbx, etc.). What I used to do with my trees, for example, is buy them in, say, 3ds format import one into Maxwell, set up all the materials and save it. Then your workflow goes something like this. Create scene in SU, export to Studio, import and place high poly trees/cars from the maxwell studio files you created. Placement takes some getting used to as the tools are robust (no snaps and such), but once you get familiar with it, it's not a big deal to place trees and cars.
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Purchase another modeler to use as a go between. I'm fortunate enough to work for a big company with deep pockets so I've started using 3ds Max for this purpose. The advantage is that the tools will be better to place high poly objects, and as you learn the software it can fill in other gaps that SU has. For example, I've used 3ds max for it's hair/fur plugin and particularly for it's texturing abilities.
For now, I'd recommend downloading the demo if you haven't already. Let me know if you have any more questions.
-Brodie
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Lovely images! Try the Thea Render demo if you are looking to upgrade its fantastic. So easy to use!
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Thanks for the great advice Brodie, since your available a couple more questions ! I am used to having libraries of objects that i have created.So i can create individual maxwell files and bring them into Studio after my sketchup imported model ? This file will be locked and have an anchor point or will it be lost in all the geometry ?
I understand your point with 3d studio max, but learning two new softwares looks daunting and expensive ! I work on a mac so i guess i would have to use parallels or bootcamp which i would like to avoid. Sketchup is my first love in 3D, i believe high poly modeling will be added at some point after all the shadow bug got fixed !I have a nasty suspicion that windows is the most efficient OS for 3D work.
Olishea i will look again at Thea, it uses the GPU for rendering ? Again a windows environment i think ?
This is also the time for a hardware upgrade, i use an imac i7 at work which is ok. However my power mac G5 2.0 desperately needs upgrading in my home studio which i want to use for private work. I upgrade about every 5-6 years so i want this to be a big one ! I am torn between a 12 core mac pro and something like a boxx workstation.
Chedda
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That's exactly how it works with the geometry. For instance, see the image below. I have a separate folder which contains these dosch trees in other formats but this is my "Maxwell Ready" tree library. So you see an .mxs file which contains the 3d tree with appropriate materials applied. Then I did a quick render to make a thumbnail for myself. And you'll also notice a textures folder which contains all the image maps for the leaves and bark.
Workflow-wise, as you say, you export from SU to MW Studio then within Studio you import one of the tree .mxs files and it comes in at 0,0. You can then move it around, copy it, clone it, rescale it, rotate it, etc. I have a similar folder for my cars although since then I've also starting creating the same thing but with 3ds Max files so I can position and tweak things in 3ds Max rather than Maxwell.
As an aside, since you mentioned GPU rendering, I should point out that Maxwell's interactive render engine is NOT GPU based. So far as I can tell that's a huge advantage, at least at this stage. It seems to be as fast as any of the interactive engines I've seen out there, but you don't have to invest a huge amount into a GPU. Instead you can focus on your CPU which will speed up, not only the interactive engine but your final renders as well.
I'm not a mac guy so I'm not sure I could expertly recommend one OS vs. the other. However, I would suggest that from what I've seen if windows isn't more 'efficient,' these days it at least seems to have more options. For Arch-Viz, it seems that at least 80% of the very good renderings out there are created with 3ds Max and V-Ray. And for production work, AutoCAD can be very important. The common thread I see running through those are that they are about the most versatile programs of their kind. The downside to versatility is that the learning curve is steep and you end up with a lot of tools you'll never use. The advantage is that they can do almost anything. For example, a large part of my motivation behind trying to learn 3ds max and vray is that with a SketchUp/Maxwell combo you don't have much of an option if a client/employer wants an animation. SU sucks at animation and Maxwell can do it, but unbiased renderers aren't ideal for animations since they have longer render times and noise issues to worry about.
Trying to relate that back to mac vs. windows for rendering work now. Currently there seems to be no inherent hardware advantage from using a mac. Unlike the old days, when macs may have been necessarily better for visual work, now they're all built from the same major components. Until fairly recently you couldn't get an autocad for the mac. Now they have it, but that seems to be a tenuous relationship and who knows if it will always be supported. And as things switch over to revit, I don't know that it is or will be mac supported. With a windows pc, you can build your own which means ultimate versatility. You can build your main computer with all the specs you might want and if you want to connect pc's for it for a render farm, you can build those with very different components to suit their purpose. If you want to upgrade, you can just change out processors or add ram as needed. Obviously with a mac you have some options in the beginning but from there, upgrading means buying a whole new computer and if you want to create a render farm down the road, I'm not sure what options you'd have.
Those are some of the cases that come to mind. Obviously the trick is deciding how much flexibility you may need and weighing your options. The answer isn't always to just jump into the most flexible software/os you can get but you definitely want to leave yourself room to grow (something you're suffering from now as a result of trying to break free from artlantis). The day I feel I can create a model as quickly and of equal quality in 3ds max as I can in SU, is the day I'll switch. Likewise, if I felt I could do in Vray what I can in Maxwell, but in less time, I'd switch there as well. The good news is I'm set up such that I can continue to use what I'm familiar with and explore these other tools, using them as a supplement for now. It's a smooth transition. And truly, what I see isn't a full switch but rather using each tool for what it's good at. SU for architectural models, 3ds max for high poly, texturing, furniture, etc, Vray for animation, Maxwell for stills. Of those SU is the most limiting and the only one I could see going away altogether, but it's just so darn quick and easy that it'll be there for some time yet.
That talked about a LOT more than your question but there are a lot of issues wrapped up in that.
BTW, looking at olishea's post got me thinking. I may have mixed up Twilight with Thea. I'm thinking of an unbiased renderer with an interactive render. I recall seeing a video by solo of a jeep or something. Maybe someone can help me now, now I'm thinking it's Thea actually. Twilight seems to just be a biased renderer. Maybe someone can help me out with remembering.
As for your hardware discussion it looks like your mac would have 12 cores at 2.66ghz using a couple new xeons. If you put 16 gigs of ram in there (based on the $750 price tag, I'd guess that it's made of solid gold which is nice
) and you're looking at $5,700. That'll get you one hard drive with so no raid, and hopefully you like the monitor you've got now because I didn't include it. If you want to upgrade to the 2.99ghz processor or get a monitor (or 2), each upgrade will set you back another $1,000 or so. It also has an ATI video card which scares me a bit since ATI has a bad reputation with SU...but I haven't heard mass complaints from mac users so I guess you're safe?A similar machine from BOXX (albeit with 3 hard drives, 24 gb of ram, and an nvidia graphics card, but the same processors...so an overall higher end machine) will set you back $4,600.
In my opinion, BOTH of those systems are overpriced, although the BOXX is obviously less overpriced. If you really get interested I could price out a machine on newegg.com for you but I'd be willing to bet that you could build a machine with either the same specs for a chunk less or you could build a better machine for the same amount of money. I wouldn't be surprised if you could build a machine with dual intel X5680's 3.33ghz (they seem to be the best processor on the market right now for a workstation - i have the i7-980x which is the equivalent processor but you can do dual i7's) for somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000-$6000.
-Brodie
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I would just add that if you are really going to be primarily working on Sketchup (and Layout) then the Mac is the better choice -- there are some really nice options for both with the Mac that do not exist for the PC versions and don't seem likely to be ported because they come direct from the Mac OS itself.
It's enough of a difference to make me consider getting a Mac Mini for my Sketchup machine and doing Linux/Windows machines for the render nodes for Maxwell... if all you use the machine for is rendering then Linux allows you to spend the money for more processing power instead of an OS license.
Best,
Jason. -
Interesting Jason, what sort of options?
-Brodie
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A few stand-outs are the ability to customize the toolbar, import PDF files (Sketchup), Greyscale and CYMK support, Drop shadows on fonts(Layout), custom kerning of text(Layout)... there's more too but conversely there is hardly anything that the PC has as an advantage.
Two other things really stand out -- a full install of Ruby comes standard on the Mac which you have to manually install on PC and OpenGL support is much more current on a Mac... both are very useful for Sketchup users.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
A few stand-outs are the ability to customize the toolbar, import PDF files (Sketchup), Greyscale and CYMK support, Drop shadows on fonts(Layout), custom kerning of text(Layout)... there's more too but conversely there is hardly anything that the PC has as an advantage.
Two other things really stand out -- a full install of Ruby comes standard on the Mac which you have to manually install on PC and OpenGL support is much more current on a Mac... both are very useful for Sketchup users.
Best,
Jason.Holding out for SketchUp on Chrome OS. Sketching in the cloud baby!
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@jason_maranto said:
A few stand-outs are the ability to customize the toolbar, import PDF files (Sketchup), Greyscale and CYMK support, Drop shadows on fonts(Layout), custom kerning of text(Layout)... there's more too but conversely there is hardly anything that the PC has as an advantage.
Two other things really stand out -- a full install of Ruby comes standard on the Mac which you have to manually install on PC and OpenGL support is much more current on a Mac... both are very useful for Sketchup users.
Best,
Jason.Interesting. I do envy your custom toolbars, although it doesn't bother me much as I try to use as many keyboard shortcuts as possible. Importing pdf's would be nice. It doesn't come up much but it'd save me a trip through photoshop. I don't use Layout but I could see how those would be handy as well.
I don't recall having to install Ruby separate so if that's true it must be pretty seamless. As for OpenGL, I think both versions use v1.5, do they not?
-Brodie
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With the install of Sketchup for windows they include a simplified core version for Sketchup to use, but Ruby is much larger and that complexity can come in handy for automation purposes if you re in a production environment -- from that POV Ruby can be used in the same way Adobe uses ExtendScript/JavaScript.
OpenGL is very limited by Windows policy on the matter (I suspect it has to do with them pushing DirectX) but since the Sketchup dev team has shown a willingness to utilize the better features of a Mac in those builds I would not assume that they have limited access to needed OpenGL features of later versions... Lets not forget there is a cold war going on between Google and Microsoft.
Best,
Jason. -
@jason_maranto said:
With the install of Sketchup for windows they include a simplified core version for Sketchup to use, but Ruby is much larger and that complexity can come in handy for automation purposes if you re in a production environment -- from that POV Ruby can be used in the same way Adobe uses ExtendScript/JavaScript.
OpenGL is very limited by Windows policy on the matter (I suspect it has to do with them pushing DirectX) but since the Sketchup dev team has shown a willingness to utilize the better features of a Mac in those builds I would not assume that they have limited access to needed OpenGL features of later versions... Lets not forget there is a cold war going on between Google and Microsoft.
Best,
Jason.Can you flesh out the ruby thing a bit more. What does that actually look like? Are you saying that using this...more complex version of ruby, existing plugins can run faster? Or that you can write better plugins? Or something totally different that I'm just not grasping.
-Brodie
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Ruby doesn't run better per se -- or at least I cannot see how it would.
However there are parts of Ruby that you can have access to that do not exist in the core version distributed with Windows Sketchup installs -- If they want to use any of that extended functionality plugin authors have to add those parts into their plugin for Windows users. It's not a huge issue but it is certainly a limitation (not something you are likely to worry about unless you get into Ruby coding -- which I will if Layout gets a API).
Here's a quote from: http://code.google.com/apis/sketchup/docs/faq.html
@unknownuser said:
What are the differences between the Mac and PC when it comes to the Ruby API?
The biggest difference between the two platforms are the WebDialogs. On the PC, the embedded browser is Internet Explorer, and on the Mac it's Safari. See the WebDialog documentation for details about all of the differences. if you're not using the WebDialogs for anything, then you don't have to worry about it.Another difference is the fact that the Mac supports "MDI" (Multiple Document Interface), meaning there can be more than one SketchUp model open at a time under the same SketchUp process. This can cause Ruby scripting challenges if your code is doing something with an entity only to have the user change the active model out from under you. There's no easy answer for how to handle all of the potential problems with this... it's probably enough for you to be aware of it and be sure to test what happens when a Mac user changes the active window while your script is active.
Finally, there is a difference in the way that the Mac boots up SketchUp that you should be cautious about: there is no Sketchup.active_model when the Ruby scripts are first loaded. So if your script is making changes to the active_model at load time, it will not work on the Mac. The answer? Ensure code that references the active model is part of a UI event handler, responding to the user selecting a tool or a menu item. You can also use an AppObserver to get a callback whenever a new model is opened, at which point it's safe to talk to the active_model.
Best,
Jason. -
Gotcha. Well all in all, I'd have to say, personally, that even for those of us who use SU a LOT, it should play very little role in choosing hardware, and probably no role at all in choosing an OS. In pretty much ever case I've run across there are more demanding issues that dictate that sort of decision that SU.
-Brodie
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Certainly a bigger issue for Layout -- which I do use and like quite alot... but the question came from a Mac user who was wondering if there was an advantage to switching to PC and the answer is there is none unless you are doing it for non-Sketchup related reasons.
Best,
Jason. -
On this we agree
[and so pc and mac user CAN live in harmony]
-Brodie
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That's interesting guys, i think in my case it might make a big difference. I often have multiple files in sketchup open at the same time. For example i often copy out a detail of a model into a new window,cmd C,cmd N (paste in place works fine). Or i can move geometry between open projects. Obviously this slows everything a little especially if you have 10 wrought iron gates from the warehouse open ! I won't get into a mac pc fight right now.There are bonuses on each side for instance i have read 3D studio max works great (more stable) under bootcamp. For now i want to stay in one environment. I believe maxwell is established on the mac while Thea has great prospects. Autodesk have made a lot of movement in the mac os perhaps the holy grail is 3D studio max natively. Building PC's is a no no for me i could never match the inside of a mac pro ! Thanks again Brodie your responses are very usefull.
(ps never buy apple ram or hd's)
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@chedda said:
Olishea i will look again at Thea, it uses the GPU for rendering ? Again a windows environment i think ?
At the moment, Thea Render does not use GPU with with it's interactive renderer (IR). One have a option to use biased or unbiased modes with the IR. GPU support for rendering is on the road in some early point of 1.x versions. You may want to watch a resent Thea Showreel at youtube. There is a promotional offering while Thea Render is in beta phase. Thea comes with 32&64-bit Windows, Linux and Mac builds (Mac 64-bit build should be ready with 1.1 release).
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I can understand wanting to buy a put together pc/mac from a warranty/support standpoint. But otherwise, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss putting a pc together. There's really no art to it. You want to watch some youtube videos first just to see it done and make sure up front that everything will fit together but really it's mostly just plugging stuff in.
Keep us posted on your decisions. Look forward to following your progress.
-brodie
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