Lower cost rendering programs
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Whenever this subject comes up all of the available programs are thrown into the discussion without adequate regard to cost or setup time.
V-Ray is $700 but LightUp is $150.
I wonder if anyone out there has the necessary experience to pen a short review of the lower cost options - Twilight, LightUp, ShaderLight, etc. My question would be - to what extent do they actually offer a one button solution?
I model and render in modo and I'm going to add V-Ray to my list of acquired software as soon as I can justify the cost. But both of these programs require some setup. I'm curious about which of the 3 low cost options actually produce a passable render with little or no setup for those situations when you're under time pressure. This morning I produced a couple of quick renders for a client just to show her development on her project. They didn't need to be great, their purpose was only to show ongoing progress. I did them in V-Ray but the time I invested is kind of lost. A cheaper, one button solution would have been more appropriate.
TIA in advance for any replies.
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Twilight...
- utilises SU materials ( along with custom )
- exports to XML ( Kerkythea and Thea compatibilty)
- LAA enabled
- excellent support
- huge material library online
- various render modes
- extremely low price ($99)
To mention but a few. I can't recommend it enough to be honest. It started my love affair with rendering and i still gravitate to it.
Not to sound disrespectful to the other options but Twilight is still the pickup n' play engine that has got lot to offer under the hood. Plus the guys behind it are THE most helpful people around.
The fact it's built on the Kerkythea engine reinforces it's pedigree.
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I agree. To mention bigger brother Thea.
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Okay, I'm convinced.
On your recommendation I downloaded Twilight and I can definitely get passable renders out of it with essentially a one button click.
Very impressed with both the quality of the render and the price and the speed (considering I did nothing - set no lights, altered no materials).
Of course this kind of software could put me out of business. -
@unknownuser said:
Not to sound disrespectful to the other options but Twilight is still the pickup n' play engine that has got lot to offer under the hood.
except if you are a mac user...
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you can also use Blender internal render : 0 $
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The biggest investment you will make is your time. Spend as much as you can. In most cases, you get what you pay for.
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The very problem with these questions is that there is (probably) no person who uses all of these renderers to be able to correctly answer your question.
Like Edson says; Twilight - although a very user friendly application - does not have a Mac version (yet) so he is still in love with Podium - a similarly "simple" rendering solution so there are many other considerations as well.
There are other renderers, too, but without the proper experience in all of them, no-one can really compare them so everyone will only suggest theirpreferences. If I were you and really wanted to compare, I would try then.
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I tried:
Maxwell render, Fry render - too expensive
Indigo - slow
Vray - too complicated and expensive
Kerkithea - free and very good, with more options (faster biased engine). Good social spirit (no $ involved)
Twilight - Kerkythea + simple of use
Thea - Aadvanced Kerkythea with future - not expensive, and Kerkythea community and experience.IMO the best solution for SketchUp would be Twilight with Thea engine
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@srx said:
IMO the best solution for SketchUp would be Twilight with Thea engine
Did you know that after setting up your scene and materials in Twilight, if you export it to XML (originally for Kerkythea use), you can open that XML file in Thea and more or less everything comes through without the need for further tweaking?
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Arail1's original question was for a 1 click low cost SU Rendering plugin review. We could discuss to infinity the plethora of rendering options out there. But when tasked with his specific query the options reduce dramatically.
The likes of KT and Blender are great products but the time invested to get to grips with the UI is sizeable. For Twilight's low cost you also get user friendliness which is a big plus.
But what matters most here is output. That is where you'll invest the majority of time. You may invest โฌ0 to โฌ3,000 but if your unable to produce images then both your money and time are wasted. Even the free solutions cost in the end.
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I agree. I am not a particularly talented renderer (yes, you need some talent there - much more than during the more logically based modelling) so for me a user friendly and (almost) "wysiwyg" renderer is more essential than one with all the bells and whistles.
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@gaieus said:
The very problem with these questions is that there is (probably) no person who uses all of these renderers to be able to correctly answer your question.
I wouldn't despair about the usefulness of these threads. I've read through many of them and learned a lot.
I think the problem is the initial question that starts the topic tends to be too broad - i.e. can you make dazzling photoreal renders with this or that program? And the answer generally is - Yes, if you're Solo.
But my interest was in the opposite direction - let's say you have a client who announces that in an hour she is popping off to somewhere (Paris, Biarritz, Le Cote d'Azur, wherever they go) and you want to show her progress so she'll cut you a check before she leaves. You want to send her something in literally 15 minutes and you want it to be a bit better than the native SketchUp or Layout output. Some amongst us could do that in any program but most of us can't.
So, given that scenario the question becomes quite different. I followed up on the Twilight suggestion and found that it fit the bill pretty well.
No setup, no lights, no fussing at all. Now I understand that Twilight can probably generate much more spectacular results than this but that wasn't what I wanted to find out. Given the parameters of very low cost and as close to being a one button solution as is reasonable - what rendering programs fit that description?
So I have one good option as a result of starting this topic. I intend to try out Shaderlight and LightUp but during the week I didn't have the time to try out 3 different programs.
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Certainly Twilight is an excellent renderer - I use it myself a lot, too. In fact, I have Thea, LightUp, SimLab, IDX Renditioner (and of course Kerkythea) and I have also tried Podium (back when it was still new) and maybe even others I forget now but I have found Twilight the most handy for my limited rendering capabilities (indeed I am not solo either
).So I did not really want to put the topic (and similar topics) down of course.
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Nice output
Glad you like it.
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Yes, I do. Sometimes however I feel that as an admin here, I should not express my preferences. But then who knows?
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@gaieus said:
Yes, I do. Sometimes however I feel that as an admin here, I should not express my preferences. But then who knows?
Admittedly, that could be an issue. I'm not sure what's appropriate. Cheerleading for a program as a user is different than cheerleading as an admin. It might give the appearance that Sketchucation is giving an official endorsement and that would be wrong.
I spoke to someone on the phone this morning who wanted advice on a rendering program and the conversation opened up a whole other avenue of thought.
On the basis of my very limited knowledge I suggested he try Twilight and dissuaded him from any of the more complex programs because he wasn't clear where he wanted to go with this. He's a designer / builder and he's not sure if he just needs a good renderer to show his work or he's going to follow a path similar to mine and leave shop work behind and try to make his living off his computer. If he was sure that his days of actually building were behind him I would suggest V-Ray or Thea. (I use modo but that's sort of a whole other thing.)
But when you're starting out it would seem that a program like Twilight is a relatively inexpensive way to get the basics down and, if you hit a wall up ahead, your cost to get there will have been pretty minimal and you'll have learned a lot of useful information that you can then take with you to V-Ray or one of the higher end programs when you need to expand your abilities. Alternately, you might get to a plateau where you find that the cheaper program does everything you need and you won't have spent six or seven hundred dollars for functionality that you'll never use.
So we could break this general topic down into different categories of questions:
What renderer produces the most extraordinary images (let the brawl begin)
What renderer is the easiest to produce the most extraordinary images (the brawl spills out into the parking lot)
What renderer should you own for those occasions when you need to get something out the door quickly (my original question)
What renderer should you start with if you're not sure how much rendering you're going to need to do in the future (my friend's question) -
Gai
@unknownuser said:Did you know that after setting up your scene and materials in Twilight, if you export it to XML (originally for Kerkythea use), you can open that XML file in Thea and more or less everything comes through without the need for further tweaking?
Yes I know that. I tried it with Kerkythea, but "more or less" is IMO more tweaking, because the material, light system is different itc. This way one doesn't use Thea's advanced features out of the box, and that would be my goal...and of course it is not in SketchUp window, like Twilight is...we are "tuned", waiting for new su2thea
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True, lights do not get through this way to Thea - but you can always just export and merge lights.
However indeed the new exporter should be the real solution!
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I didn't notice anyone mention shaderlight? I played with it only breifly and thought it might have promise, but I do not yet know much about the rendering game yet. What do you more experienced rendering folk think of it?
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