Advice on taking this one step further.
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I've used Kerky for a short time and have been using Maxwell for a couple years now. From my experience the learning curve was pretty similar. In general unbiased engines tend to have an easier learning curve than biased renderers. I really like Maxwell, but I have nothing bad to say about Kerky and Thea seems to be great as well.
-Brodie
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If you are planning to render extremely large images, I would suggest to go 64 bit and invest into some more RAM (RAM is pretty cheap actually).
As far as I remember, Kerky does not have a 64 bit version (only as an internal Beta) although can handle billions of polygons but Thea does. And Thea can do region rendering (i.e. you can split your final image into smaller portions and finally put those together) which means that the size will only depend on your patience.
Also the SU-to-Thea exporter plugin will soon (before the February 21 release date) be able to do object export (i.e. export based not only material but groups/components) so you can build your models at any complexity level (even in separate files) in SU and then merge the whole thing in Thea.I do not know Maxwell (nor many of the other dozens of engines) so cannot advise on that (those).
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There is a discussion on new features coming up in Thea over on the Thea forum. It looks like a future upgrade will incorporate Motiva Colimo. An application that allows for the alteration of colors, textures and lighting in post pro from a single scene using raytraced reflections, refractions, so not just graphical like photoshop. This also sounds like it would give a backward compatabilty with SketchUp
http://www.motivacg.com/colimo_en.php
This sounds amazing, and makes Thea even more inviting.
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@pieterv said:
Artlantis is definitly worth a try then. I don't understand very well why you guys make the difference between Kerky en Thea. I thought it was one program "Kerkythea". Isn't it?
Kerkythea is a free render. Thea Render is a commercial renderer from the same developer. They have different engines, material systems, UI... basically only what's similar is that they share same philosophical approach - biased and unbiased engine in one studio. Thea Render can import Kerkythea scenes, not other way around.
Anyhow, in this case, Thea Render will be much more useful, it does have a 64-Bit studio and region rendering (these are not available it kerkythea), so only limiting factor is available RAM. And even RAM is not a great factor, as you always can render scene in parts using region render.
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Hey Guys,
Thanks a lot for the replies. I'm going to give them a try but I'll probably go for Thea in the end. Region rendering sounds very promising. Also, the Motiva Colima application looks very cool and promising. Something more "What you see is what you get." Could be very handy.
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Motiva Colimo is pretty unique. Certainly worth to look on and if you need to jump on "larger" modeller in some point, 3DS Max to Thea Render exporter is made by Motiva.
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@gaieus said:
If you are planning to render extremely large images, I would suggest to go 64 bit and invest into some more RAM (RAM is pretty cheap actually).
As far as I remember, Kerky does not have a 64 bit version (only as an internal Beta) although can handle billions of polygons but Thea does. And Thea can do region rendering (i.e. you can split your final image into smaller portions and finally put those together) which means that the size will only depend on your patience.
Also the SU-to-Thea exporter plugin will soon (before the February 21 release date) be able to do object export (i.e. export based not only material but groups/components) so you can build your models at any complexity level (even in separate files) in SU and then merge the whole thing in Thea.I do not know Maxwell (nor many of the other dozens of engines) so cannot advise on that (those).
Maxwell works pretty much the same way. You can do region renders. Export various parts and merge them in Maxwell Studio, etc. Maxwell has a Right-Click menu that allows you to Export by Selection which seems to be sort of like what I think you're suggesting Thea is getting into.
-Brodie
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Ah, OK, thanks. So I do not know much about Maxwell.
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Keep in mind that with Motiva Colimo, that unless it's changed since the last time I looked at it, it requires more renders to be done, which if you're using an unbiased renderer can be prohibitive.
You have to know up front which objects you may want to change later on. Then what it does is renders out your normal scene as well as a separate pass for each object you select where that object is a black diffuse material. So if you decide you want to be able to change a light and 2 objects, you'll end up having to do 4 renders all. In my experience, it's hard to justify that time when you can typically get very similar results via photoshop in a small fraction of the time. (It's a cool program and may have it's uses, particularly for biased renderers or in special cases where clients are deciding colors, I just doubt its applicability for general use with unbiased renderers)
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
Keep in mind that with Motiva Colimo, that unless it's changed since the last time I looked at it, it requires more renders to be done, which if you're using an unbiased renderer can be prohibitive.
...
-Brodie
This is the main change, you only need to render once if you use Thea Render, the limit of changeable objects is fixed by the amount of memory on your GPU but it has almost no time penalty over a regular render.
Anyway there will be released a working demo at the same time as the comercial version.
Regards, Víctor.
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Interesting. Does it only work that way with Thea? How does it do that with only 1 render?
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
Interesting. Does it only work that way with Thea? How does it do that with only 1 render?
-Brodie
Colimo has been integrated into Thea as a studio plugin, so when you set up your render you select (check box) the materials you want changeable then render and after render you save as a colimo file and it opens up another window (Colimo) and you can change colors, textures, UV's etc and save all changes as needed.
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Hrm, very cool. Does it add render time? Is it running a separate render pass for each object behind the scene as you'd need to do normally?
-Brodie
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No increased render times.
edit from my tests so far I have not seen any at least, then again I'd have to render out unbiased first then render again to know, so it's hard to guage.
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Colimo pass does add render time and memory use in relation to how many repaintable material you have. For example "Thea Advanced Material Simulation IBL" -scene has five materials. If all materials are made repaintable then render time approximately will be 2-3 times longer. Rendering all those options separately would take much much longer even if you would use 2 different options for each repaintable materials. One needs to remember with repaint you will have option to create infinite variations http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6103
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Very cool. It's very interesting how you can change the actual material beyond just the color. Do you guys find that you use this very often? Although it seems like a very powerful tool for certain circumstances I can't imagine using it for most renderings.
-Brodie
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@unknownuser said:
Very cool. It's very interesting how you can change the actual material beyond just the color. Do you guys find that you use this very often? Although it seems like a very powerful tool for certain circumstances I can't imagine using it for most renderings.
-Brodie
I have used it twice already, for a furniture catalogue, I needed to show the different variations of materials/finishes of a particular set and instead of doing four renders I just did the one and changed mats afterwards, came in handy and definitely something I will use in future as the need arises.
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