Oh-Oh
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Just read a review of Thea 1.1 and I have to say, I hope this next release is friggin awesome because I am seriously considering moving to Thea. As a person who started rendering with Kerkythea, I am no stranger to the guys who put Thea together. The features highlighted are just amazing. Just the relight, interactive render, and assets pallettes are enough to sell me... oh and wait... THE PRICETAG! I really love Vray but I am a little disappointed in how little its moved in the last year and the plugin that exists currently is rather... archaic in comparison to other engines out there these days. I will keep my fingers crossed that a lot has been developed in the last year and a half.
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I too came from kerkythea to Thea, but I never got into Vray.
Just experimenting with Thea's new release, and it's just a great renderer. And price is very low for what this program does. -
"You ain't seen anything yet" Trust me from the backroom of the Thea development where I have privy to be a mere spectator and part of the team (I just play and try break Thea) there are huge plans and features still to come.
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Not to bash Vray in the Vray forum, but I just feel like it is a missed opportunity and Chaos makes all of their money from MAX users, so the SU plugin has fallen to the wayside. I mean, its a $900 plugin and one of the most expensive renderers for SU and is buggy as hell. I just feel like I am not getting a $900 product when I see Thea features.
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Hmmmmmmmmmm and again hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I actually own Thea just haven't played with it yet. I bought it at that really good price before its release. I put it on the shelf because there were other programs which I felt i needed to learn before another renderer.
But it might be time to get my teeth into it. I bought it because it promised instancing in the future. Which i believe they have now implemented.
I have become alittle disillusioned with Vray 4 Su. I just cant see how they are ever going to be able to achieve a similar pluggin as they do with MAX, Maya or even Rhino while working within a program which has major RAM limitations. Sorry just to point out, Ive never expected Vray for SU to be in par with the MAX pluggin. just competing with similar renderers at its price bracket.
I use Vray for Arch Viz. 90% of my work is exterior. So I would love to be able to use some vegetation in my scenes. So is a rendering pluggin within SU ever gona be able to achieve these results? I have read on here that proxy's or instancing is in the pipe line. But is this a pipe dream? I'd be keen to wait it out for this, but within reason. Or maybe I just chose wrong.
Also I'm spending alot of time going back to saved files because Vray/SU has had a memory cash and suddenly all my material layers have doubled up. This has been a well known bug for quite sometime. Yet as far as I know has not been fixed. This one problem can happen several times a day. Which costs alot of time which is money.
I feel like alot of other users. Standing at a fork in the road. Wondering which direction to go in. Time is my biggest hurdle. I'm self employed and time is money. So do we wait around till Vray catches up or fixes itself. Or do we commit to learning a new renderer which offers these things already. I realize that there would be major sacrifices changing renderers.
Vray has outstanding qualities. For me the best being how fast and clean it is. Im no idiot to realize that Vray's competition is not perfect and has down falls too.
If any of the developers happen to read this. Please don't take it as bashing. I do know developing software and keeping customers happy is not easy. Also we all get, that working within SU is a nightmare. But I too, like others have to consider our own customer's to keep happy.
Would love to know a loose development road map. As I'm trying to build one for myself. Trying to figure what direction to go next.So hope you understand that knowing where the development is heading is vital to my business.
Sorry if this reads bad. I'm dyslexic and writing is truly a mountain to climb.
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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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