"I would think just about every modeler would want to put good inferencing and snapping like SU in their application."

Aye, that's one the things about SU I simply love. Would be better if the boys at Google would make SU able to handle high poly models, though.

That would be ... drooling

You’re right it’s not explicitly meant for arch viz - SU’s far more efficient for that. Hence the ‘SU translator’. As far as rendering goes, it’s good, though.

As you can surely tell, I’m not all that great at texturing and lighting just yet, but I’ve rendered some fairly complex test scenes on an 8 core machine, and I must say: modo delivers good quality at blazing speeds.

Biggest downside is indeed modo’s complexity. I’m putting in two 12 hour days a week to learn how to use the app at a decent level, and I’m pretty sure it’ll still take me many, many (many, many ...) months.

Nevertheless: I’m intruiged by it.

Let's see how Podium V2 compares to it ...

Imported this model (it's an Evermotion one) into modo using Luxology's new SkethUp Translator, of which a beta has been released recently. Not that impressive, as I currently haven't quite figured modo out yet. But! It rendered @ 1800 x 1600 / 300 dpi in 7 minutes and 34 seconds on a moderate dual core. Modo's rendering speed scales up almost linear with every core you throw at it, so this'll most probably render in 2 minutes on my octo core. Not bad!

@roger said:

Stinkie, I don't understand what you meant about vegetation on mountains. Out here in the Sonoran desert the only vegetation on the mountains is more rocks. It looked like home to me .

Hmm. Guess I'm used to 'European looking' mountains. The ones Solo used looked rather, er, exotic to me. Not too many deserts in Belgium.

Very, very nice.

9 minutes? Gee whiz!

Looks good, despite the dramatic sky. How about some vegetation on them mountains? And what was the render time?

BY "maket", you mean "maquette", I suspect. I'm not an architect, but I'd say: no. Renders and physical models have a different feel to them.

I agree with you 100%. Obviously.

Though this little debate isn't about design or 'having an eye for things'. It's (IMO!) about the question whether or not IRender is an app worth spending quite a lot of money on. Y'all know my opnion by now, so I'm gonna give it a rest.

One more thing. Biebel said the proof of the pudding et cetera. There's some truth to that. Generally, people who want to get into rendering should try as much demos as they can. This is the way to go: ignore the sales talk completely, look at the user gallery, try the demo.

Don't fall for talk like "oh, it's gonna be real good". It's gotta be good now. You pay for software, not to finance someone's business plan (or to pay back their investmenst, for that matter ).

Yes, that's what I meant. Vray may be expensive (even more so than IRender), it's user gallery looks a lot better. What's the chances of all untalented yet (relatively) rich render enthusisasts flocking to IRender?

"Take in consideration that Render Plus has the expenses of buying the Accurender engine license wich possibly can make the end-users product more expensive."

True, yet I'm guessing the Podium guys didn't get the KT engine license for free.

Whether the proof of the pudding is in the eating, however, also depends on the pudding. Sometimes, all you need is a whiff.

Don't get me wrong, I wish the IRender team good luck, but as mr. Hart is advertising here, I thought I'd throw in a different view just to even things out a little.

That is shrouded in thick layers of mistery.

Ugly car, Mateo. But a very cool concept.

I second that. And I'd like to be rich enough to buy one of those rigs, so I'd have a hideout where I could work on my formidable Stink Ray Cannon. Muhahaha!

My apologies. Just finished a project at work. Bored out of my mind now.

But yeah ... away with oil. Would be good for peace too.

Hmm. We all do.

Real progress, I suspect, will be made when we finally run out of oil. We'll have no choice but to come up with an alternative.

@gaieus said:

@unknownuser said:

...Con: when everyone's got a car, the environment will be going down the drain at an even faster rate.

So should only the rich have the right to pollute the environment?

You know what I meant.

Looks like the peeps at FormFonts designed it.

Pro: this will bring private transportation within the reach of many. Con: when everyone's got a car, the environment will be going down the drain at an even faster rate.

I agree that Biebel could probably create a decent looking image using IRender. As could Solo, I imagine. Yet the fact remains that IRender's quality/price ratio is a bit off.

For the price they're asking, IRender should be able to produce a decent "out of the box" image. I'm not being too strict here, as for the moment I'm defining "out of the box" as "without the need for either Solo's or Biebel's talent and many hours of tweaking".

Now, obviously mr. Hart's company can ask whatever they want for their products. The reason why I'm being so persistent about pointing out that IRender IMO is way too expensive, is that SU attracts many people that are completely new to 3D. They might be inclined to buy IRender without looking any further first.

Shall we postpone then?

Although it wouldn't be much more than some fun, it would be nice to see Podium 2.0 go up against KT Echo.

Thanks for the explanation, Fletch. I did think "higher is better". Anyway, I also did it out of curiosity ("will my Mac Pro catch fire?"). By now, I've tried some of the presets - those work dandy. Fast, yes.

"If Podium makes you and your clients happy, and you're having fun - well THAT'S WHAT MATTERS!"

I'll slurp coffee to that!

"Trying to compare them is, again, IMHO, both pointless and silly. "

Valid point. But I think Sepo and Frederik both are smart enough to know that - them youngsters just wanna have some fun.