Anyone knows some good papers on the theory of rendering? Like:

what is 3d rendering?,
Photorealistic, non photorealistic,
Unbiased vs biased,
The different render styles,
...

It's for a work for school and I need to put/mention some references as the base of my work because otherwise it will not be taken serious if I only write from what I know..

Thanks a lot!

everyone can attend? even from europe?

Thea is way faster then Maxwell!

Thanks for the help guys, I apreciate but finally I talked a bit more with inmotion support and we found a good solution. I will be sharing my HDRi's soon (after building my website off course )

I made a little more research and tested the wordpress.com free blog. The problem is that I can't embed a panorama for live preview because wordpress.com doesn't accept flash files. So I think I will need to find a own webhost. Someone knows a good cheap one?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

For some time I'm looking for the best way to share panorama HDRi's I make for use in rendering applications. I just want a basic website (blog) where I could post new hdr's I make for sharing. I was planning on using the wordpress interface, but I didn't find the best solution yet. I'm looking for something cheap because I'm planning on sharing them for free. The problem is that the files I want to share are quite big (up to 200mb) so I can't take a normal webhosting solution. The support from Inmotion told me to get a personal server, but that's way too expensive for me.

The best solution I found so far is to use a free wordpress blog and link my download files to another filesharing service like dropbox, rapidshare, hotfile,...

Does someone know a better solution?

Thanks!

I personally think an Ipad will attract way more people then a 3d mouse. I own one and never use it for sketchup because the navigation is already easy.

@hieru said:

Oh no, that sounds like AutoCAD. I'll still give it a chance though.

Haha I understand exactly what you mean.. at first I was disappointed because it looked like another autocad feature and I must say I'm disgusted by everything that looks like autocad, but here it's intelligent: in autocad you have to type the exact command to get it, here you just type something close and it gives you different choices while typing, it's a lot easier and sometimes I discovered features I needed just by typing the word I was looking for and then clicking on the choice I thought was good. It's not as fast as sketchup for designing something from scratch to finish, but it's really close (and I'm an experienced user of sketchup and a noob in rhino)

But I'm talking from an architect's point of view, I need good cad like snapping tools, be able to make plans and sections of my projects, ... if you need something only for rendering, then I would advise you to look at a more complete package that renders, models and is able to make some animations. Then Modo (or blender) is a better choice. Modo's renderer is really fast (almost instantly) and it is not an autodesk product (so it should be easier to learn)

I wouldn't take the time to learn 3dsmax as you're not working for a big company that uses it. As freelance I would learn something cheaper (3dsmax +-3500euro <=> rhino +-1000euro) or even Blender. It's maybe not an industry standard but for freelancers 3dsmax is a huge investment to make every year.

rhino and skethup: I don't really know because I didn't try but rhino imports and exports skp files so I think it's an easy workflow between the two. The main difference with sketchup + 3dsmax workflow is that rhino is mainly a nurbs modeller. Your imports from sketchup will be meshes where rhino is not really strong. Try it out, the trial has 30x save limit but except that it's fully functional. It imports really a huge amount of different formats so as freelancer it could be a good polyvalent choice. (I say it could because I'm not really an experienced user of rhino so I did not try every import yet)

But what I can say from the times I used it: It's easy to learn (comming from a cad background), I needed a modeller for organic architecture for one of my projects and I started the project with rhino. I felt almost instantly at home, you just type in the command you need (or something close) and rhino instantly completes the word and gives you a choice of commands which use the same part of word.

I spent more time using 3dsmax then rhino and still I feel I understand rhino well compared to 3dsmax which is still a big question mark for me.

to the topic: Your chair material is much better, but maybe try one with a more dramatic lighting and maybe the background will not look like a picture anymore.

I understand what you mean.. but I'm learning 3ds and I must say it's really a pain in the ... to learn it. For now as student I'm lucky to be able to use it for free but still it's really difficult to get used to it. Everything is made to be complex while in sketchup and rhino (and maybe moi and modo, but I don't use them) they do it in a easier way. I really feel like the 3dsmax workflow is made on purpose complicated to frighten of the noobs.

For the HDRi's I have some new ones waiting to be processed but I'm waiting for the solution to the grain problem. (which can be resolved with supersampling on high, but I would prefer to be able to use them normally)
So untill then I'm waiting before releasing the new ones because I had in mind setting up a blog where the users could see a live preview of each panorama I share, but for now it's still just a project.

don't forget to look at rhino, it's really easy to learn and powerful. You can also export directly to thea with a very good rhino to thea exporter.

Nice model by the way

just wanted to say thanks for this one, it works incredibly well!

nice render!

just put a lttle less bump on all your mats, the chairs and table for example look way too rough.

great render! makes me wanna try podium

When I tried I found shaderlight a little too slow. They have a nice integration with sketchup but if it's already slow in stills it must be really time consuming to render an animation. (I must admit I tried it only once and not the latest version so maybe it's faster now)

it's saved with the material so if you set it up in sketchup through the plugin it will be saved in your sketchup file.

If you set it up in the studio (like I do) then you can use the merge feature to update only the geometry changes done in sketchup and not the textures. So all your material/camera setups made in thea will stay the same even when updating the model. It's not a perfect workflow but it gets the job done.

For a better workflow you should look at completely integrated render solutions. But if you do this for sketchup you will be limited by the sketchups limits (no highpoly, only 32 bit (not much ram for rendering,...) so if you find that the workflow sketchup-external renderer is not the one for you, then I would say to do it in blender like you said. This way you will learn how to use blender and you will not find yourself limited so fast as in sketchup. I learned 3dsmax for the couple of months and I must say I really regret not have done it earlier.
I still mainly use sketchup but when I know something is easier in 3dsmax I don't loose my time and do it in there. The renderers are completely integrated (most of them) and it's a real pleasure to work this way.

anyway don't be afraid of asking question on the theaforum. The people there will be glad to help you with your lighting questions

@andybot said:

On the rendering side of Thea, I'm not hugely impressed with the quality, partly I think it's the limitations of the artficial lighting. I'm working on an interior scene, as that is what I've found to be the limiting factor for a lot of the rendering add-ons.

which limitation? you can use every material as an emitter or ies and you can easily setup point lights, spot lights and omni lights (in studio and in sketchup). What do you want more?

For the animation I understand you completely, thea is better at stills then animation. But however you can lock irradiance cache ond photon mapping to calculate it only once (like the light pass in vray)

I've heard the cycles renderer for blender is really fast, maybe you should have a look into that one for animations. Personally I never tried it so I can't say.

+1

great render and realism , the only thing that looks fake/photoshopped is the lens flare otherwise really good render

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to get a folding chair animated with sketchyphisics, but I can't get it to work.
On the picture you can see what works (the one on the back) but the chair I want to animate is a bit more difficult (on the front). I don't know if it is possible to make in sketchyphysics because of the multiple hinges on the same parts at the same time.

here is also a video explaining what I want to do with my chair in sketchyphysics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiaPKT_7c9k

Any help or point out to a tutorial would be appreciated.