I know what you mean Xrok! Thanks for posting the link Solo. Since we upgraded the machines here we've been hunting for a GPU renderer that worked well with sketchup. I've been messing around with Octane which is OK, but still pretty limited. I'm confident this will be an excellent renderer but it's not polished enough at the moment, which you'd expect from a beta version. My main issue with it is the speed of texturing. It doesn't (currently) have pre-made textures which would really speed things up.

I'm really impressed with Arion, the interface is pretty slick, the textures are already loaded in which (particularly in my job!) is very useful. It's a bit twilight-like........if that makes sense. Click, tell it what it is, then move on! The difference is the GPU speeds things up so much you can make small adjustments as you're going along to perfect things which has always been a little hard for me in Twilight. You have to wait a while before you know what's right and wrong which is eliminated in this instance.

I'll post some higher quality renders when I'm more familiar with it. The gallery on the product site looks incredible so hope I can get something close to that soon enough

All the best guys,

Puck

Hi guys,

Got the model from the 3d warehouse.

This is my first render with Arion and I have to say it's a very good bit of kit. The interface is nice and working with GPU is so much faster. This render was 20 mins and took about 5 mins to set up with the materials.

Puck

Hi Guys,

Had a free night tonight so thought I'd have a little crack at this one. I'm on my laptop and have no rendering software (or power to run it!) so I'm just posting the sketchup model for now. Twilight render will follow in a few days when I'm home.

Puck

Amazing!

I'd be very keen to see the lighting setup in twilight (by that I mean the positions of the lights in the model). It's never been my strong point and I'm working on that side of it to create images as good as yours.

Keep up the good work.

Puck

The body looks super slick on that, really clean. I'd be very interested to see your technique. Could you describe or post some images?

Great work

Puck

Hi Guys,

90% of my works is in aluminium and I'm trying to get a good effect for the renders I'm starting to create in Vray. The picture attached shows the brushed aluminium profiles we manufacture and it would be great if anyone had a nice material or a series of settings for Vray that I could use repeatedly for good continuity of renders. I'm looking to get as photo realistic as possible............of course

Thanks in advance,

Puck

Hi,

Sorry, yes, just to clarify, there is one licence and it will be on one machine.

Regards,

Puck

Hi Guys,

Been a while since I've posted anything here but getting back in the game now! We've just got Vray for Sketchup in the office and I understand that we can use on our single licence up to 10 machines to render.

We are looking into upgrading a few of the machines here and literally binning the old ones. My question is, what is better? A couple of quad core machines linked together or several slower machines (single and dual core jobs) in terms of rendering speed. I want to get the maximum speed when producing final images for clients. It's an interesting one as you can pick up a dual core machine second hand for practically nothing or around £700 for a something with an i7 processor in. My gut is telling me that 4 cheap dual core machines will be more cost effective than a couple of i7 machines but I'm not sure what impact there will be on speed. My calculation tells me that 4 dual core machines working together will give me 8 true cores and hence, be quicker.

Can anyone give me any advice on this please?

All the best guys,

Puck

I live in Kettering! I know this place!

Thanks guys!,

Another one on the way tomorrow. This is only a 6m x 2m stand so not a lot of space, more just to make the staff comfortable and utilise the space around the edges for the customers.

Puck

Hi guys,

Latest project final renders. Any thoughts or comments welcome.

Puck

Very very nice!

Have to agree with the guys above. Twilight is excellent, you can't go wrong. Easy interface, seamless integration with SU, incredible price................go for it!

Puck

Hi Guys,

Just for fun! Have a good weekend all!

Puck

Lots of good comments guys. I think it's right not to compare directly having thought about it. Hypershot will render several things better and easier but I think Twilight is my preferred choice especially for internal renders and exhibitions stands.

Some useful comments above too guys, thank you for those. Twilight has caused a bit of a storm in the community, and rightly so, it really is an amazing bit of work and I still feel like I'm robbing them at the price!

Puck

A quick update to the twilight render which will be more like the final project. Looking pretty nice I have to say. So simple to set up and tweak!

Really loving twilight

Puck

I agree with the twilight comment. Have a good read of the manual which you can download of the website for some good tips. Really really excellent package and the price is just amazing.

http://www.twilightrender.com is the place to look

Puck

Hi guys,

I got on the twilight bandwagon today and wanted to upload my first render with it. The blue one is hypershot and the red one is twilight. The setup in twilight took literally 5 mins and the colours are very far from correct! I just wanted to see how the plastics and glass would look really before going any further with it.

I have to say even though hypershot is an excellent and extremely powerful bit of kit twilight really blew me away on this one. The shadows are so much more realistic, the reflections more vibrant and in general I think it's a better render in this instance.

I was looking for a good renderer of internal settings and twilight looked excellent for the money, well, just excellent for any price really!

Anyway, far from a finished product but I'll still use hypershot for some things but looks like I'll be making the move over to twilight for the exhibition work I do.

Any thoughts or comments welcome as always

Puck

Hi guys,

Just a few bits I'm working on at the moment. All rendered in hypershot.

Comments welcome as always.

Puck

Thanks guys!

Superstars as always

Puck