Oh-Oh
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+1 for Thea. I used probably a dozen+ render apps for SU and Blender, free ones, demos, you name it. I tried everything I could get my hands on. Thea, for the price, has the best feature set, the most advancement, a variety of app plugins for whatever modeling app you use and a very active community with some fantastic community produced textures (free for licensed users) and models. I've got a not-insignificant portion of my HDD loaded up with Thea goodies. I couldn't think of any other render app that had all that going for it. I wanted to get in on the price "ground floor" as upgrades are going to be significantly less pricey than potential price hikes with v2.0.
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I got both V-Ray and Thea ...
best of both! -
As a complete newbie i can say that i like the interface of thea, but i love to work with vray because it is easier to learn. But when you learn a lot with vray, then you can better undertand how thea works.
But for me now i work to most with vray for exterior work, and for interior products rendering i use thea. So also the best for both works.
But Thea has definitly the best forum, people helps everyone and you get a very quick answer. That is the main problem with vray and the chaos group
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My problem with Thea so far, as I've not worked so much with it, is that I can't get the render times I want/need. The Unbiased mode seems to be something one cannot cut times in (?). But the biased mode should let me do that - though, then I've pretty much where I am with V-Ray, except I know how to tweak V-Ray.
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@thomthom said:
My problem with Thea so far, as I've not worked so much with it, is that I can't get the render times I want/need. The Unbiased mode seems to be something one cannot cut times in (?). But the biased mode should let me do that - though, then I've pretty much where I am with V-Ray, except I know how to tweak V-Ray.
I havent done any serious testing but with a cornell box I get about half the rendertime with Thea...and the result is better. Maybe it's different with "heavier" scenes though?
I got the chance to talk to two people from Chaos group some time ago and they didn't know much about the SU version of Vray. (Not even that it wasnt 64bit and that it lacks serveral features the Max Vray version have.)
I told them about my feelings about it and they would look into it.
Still I do almost everything in Thea now. Even if rendertimes might be a bit slower for some scenes the time to set it up is faster than in Vray. IMHO. -
hmm I think that supposed issue of vray would help this discussion, or any information about next release..
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I don't find the setup time to be of an issue. Where most of my time goes is in re-rendering when a project is updated. Which is why I emphasize on being able to squeeze through the renders as fast as possible.
ASGVis is still focusing on VfRhino, but the development should soon be going simultaneously. Things where shaken around when chaosGroup bought ASGVis, so the previous schedule was scrapped. VfR has gotten some very nice new features, such as proxies, Light Dome (where you can use HDRI images and get proper shadows), the progress window is finally back.
Their goal is to implement all the features of 3dsmax, provided that Rhino allows it. Remember that the host application itself brings on its own set of limitations. SU's 32bit nature is one of them. Though, after SU8M1 I've not had any issue with memory limitations, the extra 2GB works great.But I agree, there are some annoying issues with VfSU. My biggest problem is the DR spawner which is slow to initialize and flaky.
Thea users: do you use the Biased or Unbiased mode? What render times do you have on a typical exterior or interior architectural project? (And at what size?)
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I use unbiased for 2/3 of my renders approx. Biased for stuff that need to be "noise free".
However I have just started using NoiseNinja with great result to reduce noise in unbiased images.
(Example here: http://pixero.com/stuff/beforeAfter.html)For unbiased I usually let it cook overnight. For biased it depends on the settings.
Maybe 50 minutes for an advanced render at 5000 pixels wide. -
So even cooking overnight there is still noise? 'cause that's another thing I was struggling with, with these unbiased engines, is how long it takes to get a noise free result.
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I have a quite old PC at work (quad core) but have just got a i7 as a render farm machine. Havent tested its performance yet though but it contributes about 75% so it will be faster...
About noise I think it has a lot to do with how dark the image is. Bright parts are noisefree rather fast but in dark areas the noise is more evident. A material ID and object ID pass and some local noise reduction helps a lot though. -
I also own Thea.. but too lazy to try.. i like the output of unbiased but waiting time is a bit too long. I will be willing to look at biased but its indeed about the time and effort.
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Thea users: what are your results with a PhotoMatched camera exported from Sketchup to Thea?
I know that with Vray, Photomatching is a true pain in the @$$ because as soon as you try to render you realize the view is not the same.
I came up with a cluncky workaround some time before, but it's not very usable. More so when I check Artlantis and it renders Photomatched cameras flawlessly!
So again: if you do a photomatch in Sketchup and you export the photomatch scene in Thea, does it work immediatly?
Thank you, if you let me know.
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@unknownuser said:
Thea users: what are your results with a PhotoMatched camera exported from Sketchup to Thea?
Got a scene to test with?
I have never done a photo-match before but can say that I can match SU camera and Thea camera 100% without doing anything just export...even 2 point perspective.
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I am gald to hear that I am not the only one who is a little bit frustrated with Chaos. My dont think there is a huge base of VfSU out there so this plugin is a last priority for them. Vray for Max and Maya obviously come #1 then other programs, then Rhino and lastly SU. It is a bummer because I use Vray all the time and love the quality but the few buggy things and lack of a decent UI are turning me off. That and the fact that this thing costs $900 bucks is insane in my honest opinion. It's just a few hundred dollars cheaper than the MAX engine which comes with all the goodies. The other rumor is that the next version will have a dongle, so their licensing terms will change. I think I am going to download a demo of Thea very soon. How is the back and forth to and from SU? Is it a pain to make changes after going to Thea and returning to SU?
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@valerostudio said:
Vray for Max and Maya obviously come #1 then other programs, then Rhino and lastly SU.
Remember that ASGVis where the ones developing VRay for Sketchup / Rhino. ChaosGroup had nothing to do with it other than that ASGVis was using their SDK to develop the plugins. And it's still the same team of people working on it.
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I am aware of that and I think the guys at ASG rock, especially Fernando. But I do feel that the corporate machine that is Chaos, may have had them switch gears and focus less on the SU plugin for now. Which I do understand, because the Rhino plugin is far behind, but I am disappointed with where we are a year later. I have lost count with the number of rendering engines and GPU engines that came out this year but here we are still using 1.49.01 with buggy DR, no proxies, and enough bugs to make you want to quit using it. Not to mention that the Chaos formums are deader than a doornail. If it wasnt for this forum, there wouldn't even be a pulse.
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First, I would like to address this proposed road map. Here it is:
1.)Get VfR up to speed with VfS
2.)Put out a new version of VfS that has bug fixes from the latest changes in VfR
3.)Start doing simultaneous releases of VfR and VfS
4.)Start adding in all of the 3D Studio Max features that we can possibly cram in to our VfS and VfR implementations.I don't consider this a closely guarded secret, and I've said this many times before. If you're looking for a more broken down view, then I'm sorry, we don't have one. I can't tell you exactly when we will be adding realtime to SketchUp. I can't even pin it down to a month, release version... year... All I can really say is that item #1 on this list is almost done, and then we are going to be working towards item #2 after that, and so on (unless we are instructed to do otherwise). I can clear up some other confusion though...
1.) Chaos Group does not consider VfS and VfR to be any more or less valuable than any other V-Ray products, that's why we were acquired in the first place. We used to be our own company, and simply licensed the V-Ray engine from Chaos Group. Now we are a part of Chaos Group. Same 2 developers, same 2 products, just a different name. If you spoke to Chaos Group at any point, and they had no clue about our product, it's because they really didn't have anything to do with our product until they bought our company. Even now there are some details that may not have been completely communicated to them, or us for that matter. We are working towards closing the gap though, to avoid any misinformation or confusion in the future.
2.) We have access to V-Ray core code that we didn't have access to in the past. We will hopefully be able to get to the bottom of the DR related issues with access to the code, along with a bunch of other bugs that we have basically had our hands tied with, due to lack of source code.
3.) SketchUp is a 32bit process, that's why V-Ray for SketchUp is also 32bit. We are a plugin that is inside of SketchUp, not an external process you export to. We have a workaround in progress that will allow you to basically export your render to a 64bit process, which is how the other guys get around that problem. Of course it would be optimal if SketchUp would just put out a 64bit build of their product... but I'm not holding my breath for that one...
4.) The Chaos Group forums are "dead" because everyone is posting here rather than there... Of course it's not very busy... We still have lots of visitors, but if you just browse and not contribute, then the forum will always be empty...
5.) The latest release wasn't a huge step forward from our old version, because we rewrote our entire plugin. If we changed the inner workings AND the UI AND added tons of new features, then there would be no solid way to test to see if the new inner workings are any better than the old ones. Yes there are new bugs, but for the most part the latest version is better than the old version, and fixed a number of bugs that existed in the previous version. We know this because people who were familiar with our old UI were able to pick up the latest version and test it against the older version. Now our UI is based entirely in Python and XML, which makes it MUCH easier to modify later on. The big hurdle we had to overcome, was all of the back end stuff that needed to be changed to allow this to happen.
I understand that there are other render engines coming out every day. That's fine, competition is good! By all means check out the competition, and if you want, you can let us know why they're better. It might give us a hint of what direction to go in for the future. We are aware there are bugs in the current release. We have fixed a lot of them during our VfR development process. Once both plugins are up and running and we can get to the point where we do simultaneous releases of both products (that's item #3). Fix a bug in one product, it's fixed in the other too. Add a feature to one product, and tada, it's in the other product too.
We completely agree with the changes that have been suggested
-make it 64bit
-make it less buggy
-make the UI a bit more useable
-make it easier
-add new features
-make it as good as the max plugin if we're going to charge the same price for bothIn fact, that's pretty much what we were told right after we were purchased by Chaos Group. It was a short meeting. They told us we should do these things, and then we agreed and said we were already on it. I don't take any offense from anything said in this thread, it's more of a confirmation of things we already know. I'm actually glad that everyone is ready for the next release, and that everyone is buzzing about new features and changes. That's fantastic! I really hope our next version will bring some things to the table that you have all requested and hoped for over the past few years.
I'm going to go back to item #1 now. Stay tuned for more updates, I think we're pretty close to moving to item #2.
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@dkendig said:
We have a workaround in progress that will allow you to basically export your render to a 64bit process, which is how the other guys get around that problem.
Excellent.
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Thanks for chiming in Devin.
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@unknownuser said:
4.)Start adding in all of the 3D Studio Max features that we can possibly cram in to our VfS and VfR implementations.
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