Thea - is it the best? ;)
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been rendering all week and starting to get bummed on the 12-18hr render times.. it's not bad for one or two images but i need to make 12 or so..
i currently use indigo and have a lifetime license but i'm not against looking for better solutions.. quality wise, i'm not too concerned as i've seen really great looking renders from thea.. i'm more interested in speed at this point both in terms of setup and rendering times.. i can set up an indigo render relatively quick but even then, getting a downsized preview can take up to 10 minutes or so till i get a clean enough shot to make a decision..
anyway, i like the new sketchup plugin for thea.. but other than that, i don't know much about it..
if anyone has any indigo->thea experience (or other general things to say about the topic), let me know.
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I've tried most rendering plugins there is and I'll say Thea is the best out there currently.
With the new 1.2 release with Field mapping and Presto GPU engine (for Nvidia cards with lots of memory) you have several great ways to approach a tight deadline.
Set up times are shorter than with Vray but raytracing might be slightly slower in some cases.
Quality is great.
Plus the developers and community is great as well. -
There is no such thing as 'the best render software'. Jeff, the only way of finding out whether Thea could be useful to you, is by running tests.
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@pixero said:
I've tried most rendering plugins there is and I'll say Thea is the best out there currently.
With the new 1.2 release with Field mapping and Presto GPU engine (for Nvidia cards with lots of memory) you have several great ways to approach a tight deadline.do you by any chance know if they're going the openCL route in the future? apple has made it pretty clear that they'll be dropping nvidia
@unknownuser said:
Set up times are shorter than with Vray but raytracing might be slightly slower in some cases.
Quality is great.
Plus the developers and community is great as well.yeah, i definitely like developer-community involvement.. so that's a plus for sure (well, indigo is like this as well)
@unknownuser said:
There is no such thing as 'the best render software'. Jeff, the only way of finding out whether Thea could be useful to you, is by running tests.
i know, i know
i needed to find some things to do while waiting on renders and starting this topic was one result
i was using my laptop as a node so i couldn't try any thea tests.. i ended up unhooking it last night to try some things with thea and yeah, it's good.. i was able to get some decent results without too much fuss (i.e.- the UI is easy enough to understand since i already know indigo.. whereas vray looks pretty foreign to me)
anyway.. i'll probably end up sticking with indigo.. definitely for the time being.. and maybe i'll mess around with thea some more when i have free time..
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maxwell 3 is comming in oktober...
(and v-ray 3 too later this year)
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@numerobis said:
maxwell 3 is comming in oktober...
is it still going to rely on silverfast (or silverlight or whatever that thing is called?)
because i tried that out a while back and didn't like that i had to install other stuff besides the application itself.. i mean, i kept getting silverfast popups telling me this&that even while sketchup or maxwell was closed.. dunno, i don't like that kind of crap (ditched adobe for this reason - amongst 2 other reasons).. -
@unknownuser said:
@pixero said:
I've tried most rendering plugins there is and I'll say Thea is the best out there currently.
With the new 1.2 release with Field mapping and Presto GPU engine (for Nvidia cards with lots of memory) you have several great ways to approach a tight deadline.do you by any chance know if they're going the openCL route in the future? apple has made it pretty clear that they'll be dropping nvidia
From http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12500
@unknownuser said:
...
CUDA vs OpenCL
In the beginning there was only one path for us, the standard path, that is OpenCL. But we have found out (the hard way) that OpenCL is not really "tuned" for complex staff. There is a varying performance and quite a lot of fighting with getting the code to actually run. Nevertheless, this is the path we would like to follow and this is why, the language used during programming has been made with OpenCL in mind and to exactly help the transition to the standard when it is more mature. We will be visiting this topic frequently to see how we can make Presto running on ATI/Intel graphic cards.OpenCL was the original platform on Presto GPU rendering was plan to be build on, but unfortunately it did not meet set requirements. Anyhow, as far as a know, giannis is open to develop on it. So I'd say OpenCL renderer might some point be released.
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@unknownuser said:
is it still going to rely on silverfast (or silverlight or whatever that thing is called?)
because i tried that out a while back and didn't like that i had to install other stuff besides the application itself..silverlight has been dropped with the latest release
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@numerobis said:
silverlight has been dropped with the latest release
well that's good news.. maybe i mountained out of a molehill'd it but i that was sort of an immediate turnoff for me..
in all reality, i'm starting to think i'd be better off paying someone else to do the renders.. it's basically two fairly solid days worth of work which unnecessarily drains some of my project energy.. i don't nerd out that much on rendering as i do with modeling so it starts feeling too much like work
..then do personal renderings during down time for fun.
how much would you guys charge for, say, 8- 2000px wide renders? you do the texturing too. (unless it's some oddly mapped thing which i'd handle).. ? not for right now- but future thinking
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@notareal said:
OpenCL was the original platform on Presto GPU rendering was plan to be build on, but unfortunately it did not meet set requirements. Anyhow, as far as a know, giannis is open to develop on it. So I'd say OpenCL renderer might some point be released.
thanks. understandable..
hopefully we'll see some changes and improvements with openCL -
I wonder ... what sort of stuff do you render? Interiors? Exteriors? Product shots?
Edit:
@unknownuser said:
(...) vray looks pretty foreign to me
Yeah, its UI doesn't look very inviting. There's a lot of parameters, tick boxes and other stuff in there. Don't let that put you off. I learned how to use it.
http://www.lynda.com/Google-SketchUp-tutorials/SketchUp-Rendering-Using-V-Ray/105502-2.html
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@unknownuser said:
I wonder ... what sort of stuff do you render? Interiors? Exteriors? Product shots?
pm'd
@unknownuser said:
Yeah, its UI doesn't look very inviting. There's a lot of parameters, tick boxes and other stuff in there. Don't let that put you off. I learned how to use it.
http://www.lynda.com/Google-SketchUp-tutorials/SketchUp-Rendering-Using-V-Ray/105502-2.html
that's the thing though.. it doesn't look inviting so when there are lots of other options out there, it drops from the contenders list pretty quick. fwiw though, i think all render apps are still too nerdy..
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I do too. I'd like nothing more than a rendering app with a 'make pretty pic' button. But we're not going to see that one any time soon. So, like it or not, we're stuck with the nerdy interfaces for the time being. Those have an upside too, btw. Lots of parameters? Lots of control. Lots of control = shorter render times.
Vray's not that hard learn, by the way. The Lynda tutorial should help you, or anyone else, for that matter, to get up to speed in a matter of days. I learned to use VfSU before there were any comprehensive tutorials available, and I'm not bl**dy Stephen Hawking, I can tell you that.
Rambling. Time for a healthy dose of shut-eye.
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@unknownuser said:
how much would you guys charge for, say, 8- 2000px wide renders? you do the texturing too. (unless it's some oddly mapped thing which i'd handle).. ? not for right now- but future thinking
Running a business where i can render all day long for good money is one of my future dreams
...but i guess i still have to learn alot, so that's not really realistic. And also i don't think it's that profitable to live from it 
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Hi Jeff, As I'm writing this I have a render going in Thea and I am amazed how much faster it is compared to the Maxwell version done a couple of weeks ago...
I was a staunch supporter of Maxwell since the beginning but Thea is have changed the benchmark in my opinion.
Good luck
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Possibly useful to those interested in Thea.
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Hello,
Long time no posting, but follow with full attention all interesting discusses here.
Of course, in my opinion Thea render is a superior render engine, I absolutely love it.
From the release date of Thea render version 1.2, I keep waiting and wating and waiting
for download trial version, please, why not everybody can't enjoy and test the new version? - maybe a limited download time if it is possible, please! -
I render out of MODO and V-Ray but it's worth pointing out that Thea is a stand alone application so, unlike V-Ray, you won't need a separate license for Rhino and SketchUp. I envy that. Like you, I work in several applications and I'm not happy about the idea of paying for a separate rendering license for each one.
I'm not a rendering genius (mentally challenged would be more accurate) plus I'm not that interested in rendering. My clients have been shown enough photo real stuff that they don't really see it anymore. It's a necessary component of a presentation but it doesn't make a presentation like it used to. So exorbitant amounts of time rendering seem to be a bit of a waste. I'd like a one button 'pretty pic' solution as was said above but that's not going to happen anytime soon.
Let us know how it works out - I'd like more info about the Thea / Rhino plugin.
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well, the proposal i was working on when i started this thread was sent out a few days ago.. it looked good. the renders were fine and served their purpose..
since then, i've done a little experimenting and i'm pretty sure i'll just stick with indigo.. i mean, it gives good results and i already know how to use it for the most part so...
i guess i should also mention i'm currently rendering on an old computer (1,1 macpro from 2006.. quad 2.66 ghz with an amd 5770).. i started shopping around for a new computer about 2 years ago then decided to wait on the new mac pro unless my 1,1 died (which it hasn't).. then i decided waited some more
..but it's now been announced and looks like it's going to be sweet for me and indigo.when indigo first integrated gpu acceleration, i had an 8800gt.. so i used cuda with indigo and saw some good improvements but broke the card fairly quickly.. replaced it with the 5770 and didnt' really try out the openCL features until now..
but with openCL enabled, i'm seeing ~30% performance increase.. with the new mac and it's dual gpus, i imagine i'm going to see some great performance boosts.. maybe to the point of what i'd see with using a 32core machine vs a 12..
but thanks for letting me whine last week
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Now use Thea Render and its great, i found it a steep learning curve (though helped by a great support team and brilliant forum) after years of vray, but now find the ability to work with huge files a massive boost to my work flow and the results are fantastic.
Beta testing Vray 1.6 which is fantastic with the new proxy system, but will be continuing with Thea.
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