@unknownuser said: Thanks, Pete. I was surprised about the speed/quality ratio myself. All praise Mado! PLEASE SHARE YOUR MADO !

Yeah, been fiddling with that one. Which is the reason why I asked. I'll have to follow Steve's advice, I think.

Hi, how about: Habanero Fly Fishing Zach

After messing around with Maxwell for a couple of months and then discovering VRay I've never looked back. Sure it's still a bit buggy (which software isn't these days? ) and the numerical inputs of the VRay UI are very dry and confusing at first, but the manual explains most of them them pretty clearly and the way the whole plugin is integrated with SU is streets ahead of Maxwell IMO. The results are as good as almost any renderer out there and in a fraction of the time (we're talking 1/100th of Maxwell), and it's possible to render out your SU Scene animations or batch render all your SU scenes overnight- this has saved me sooooo much time when I needed multiple views of a model asap. Yep, I'm a VRay fanboy!

@kwistenbiebel said: Pietzak! (=Vlaams voor geluksvogel). Ik moet het zelf nog kopen maar de zilverlingen zijn schaars efkes....Nog even wachten voor mij. Ik heb wel de SR versie (demo-) momentel lopen. Ik ben al een jaar van plan Vray te kopen maar ik wachtte steeds op een bugvrije versie. Ik zal er toch aan moeten geloven want de hoop op insectenvrije Vray is tevergeefs I'm afraid Maak je geen illusies: mijn fondsen zijn nu ook uitgeput. Ik heb de laatste maanden érg veel poen (ik gok: ruim drieduizend ballen ...) aan software, hardware, textures en 3D-modelletjes besteed. Nu, wat ik kocht, wilde ik ook al een jaar - ik heb ervoor gespaard. Wat kan je anders, als werkmensch? Ja, je kan het allemaal (afgezien van de hardware) illegaal van het net plukken. En dat deed ik vroeger ook. Maar die tijden zijn voorbij. Zelfs een mp3'tje jatten lijkt me moreel niet meer kunnen. Ik word volwassen, geloof ik. Overigens ben ik er - godzijdank - vrij behoorlijk in geslaagd om mijn voormalige werkgever nogal wat dingen (waaronder mijn Mac Pro) af te zetten. Als het moet, kan ik behoorlijk hulpbehoevend kijken. Jij bent zelfstandige, niet? Voorlopig ben ik, geloof ik, wel even klaar met kopen. Ja, Podium V2 schaf ik me nog aan, als ik niet van ouderdom sterf voor het uitgebracht wordt, tenminste. Je zou weleens gelijk kunnen hebben over een bugvrije versie van Vray.

Kwistenbiebel wrote: “Any one knows a good one? Preferably one with free love and drinks.” A. Behold a “good one”, w/ “free love”: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27) B. Regarding “drinks”: “He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38) “And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come! And let him that heareth say, Come! And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” (Revelation 22:17 ) Cornel

Nag all you like. Otherwise there wouldn't be much point in posting renders, eh? Seriously: I primarely post renders to hear what people think I could improve, not to get an ego boost. So nag, boy, nag! You obviously never met my mom. Your nagging compares to hers as a toothpick model to the Eiffel tower.

@remus said: there's a tool that lets you select parts of the render to concentrate on, would be very useful for clearing up noise i imagine.Edit: re-read your post and realised this was totally off topic, its still pretty cool though That is indeed a cool feature. Though it would be better if unbiased rendering just got faster. @kwistenbiebel said: Fry is comparable to Maxwell, though someone needs to put some more effort on the Maxwell plugin for SU as it really is far behind the exporters for other host apps. No sh*t. While I'm truly fond of Maxwell (it does yield fantastic results, doesn't it?), I'm not fond of NL's "philosophy". With Maxwell, a streamlined workflow seems to be out of the question. Almost everything is a hassle. The plugin has it charms, but it certainly falls short compared to SkIndigo. It baffles me that an independent developer like Whaat can come up with such a great plugin for free, while a whole company cannot deliver an equally good one with it's € 1000 app. And I'm not even mentioning the bugs. I'm under the impression NL hasn't got much of a clue of what SU users want - or that they couldn't care less. EDIT: These are my preliminary thoughts on Maxwell and (Sk)Indigo: both produce excellent results, but Maxwell seems to do a slightly better job on really fine details if you want to try out different lighting setups, Maxwell is the way to go, as it's got Multilight if not, choose Indigo. Certainly for daylight renders, as Indigo's got skyportals (these speed up rendering) the same goes for skydome renders: Indigo Maxwell generally seems to go easier on yer RAM (can anyone confirm this?) EDIT 2: I should add to the above that, despite it's clunkyness, I'm steadily growing fond of the Studio. All in all that one's quite a powerful and versatile tool.

Oh yeah, that one's pure gold too. And this was Greece's entry in 2002: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=GWDU9ZWMoEw I remember seeing it on tv and having the distinct feeling I had suddenly been catapulted into a parallel dimension.

I was at an IKEA today and was very tempted to buy a Helmer...

@igor said: hey, that last one looks great. the grass especialy, best ive ever seen. Nah! Personally, I like the grass in the first image I posted better, though it isn't displaced. De gustibus ... @igor said: i like the night scene slightly better. just so that you can use some more dramatic lighting As do I. The final render will be a night view. The control over lighting Maxwell offers, is the prime reason why I got the app (and the ridiculous amounts of RAM it needs).

I don't use Parallels, but from the info I read on the web , it is pretty fast on the 'usual' software. The only thing that isn't supported to the fullest is the GPU graphical card power. So any software that depends a lot on the graphical card (like Sketchup) will have a slow down. For applications as Office etc... it should work fine.

I've gone off topic sort of in my last post. I can remember back when I was a little lad going to school. If we stepped out of line we got 'six of the best' across the bum with a leather or cain. I really believe it did no long lasting harm and put us on the straight and narrow. It was over and done with in a few minutes and life moved on. The lesson was remember as it was associated with some PAIN! These days corporal punishment is a big No No. I think this is mistake. I can understand this attitude in Europe as we have abolished capital punishment years ago but in much of the USA it still stands. I believe Texas still has the death sentence for certain crimes but teachers are not allowed to chastise students with the cain. This simply does not make sense to me. I would go as far to say its natural for a parent (teachers undertake the parents role in school) to physically chastise its offspring. Just look at a bitch feeding her litter. If one of the pups is misbehaving he gets a sharp rebuff that puts some manners into him. It works and is natural! Why should humans be any different?

Ah, hp support ... imagine what killer app we'd have! Surely the rock climbing, base jumping and bronzed alpha males at Google HQ are aware of the possibilities. I simply cannot imagine that they aren't at least considering improving SU's support of hp models.

Better UV mapping tools high poly support Organic modelling tools

Good luck, and no thanks necessary.

@kwistenbiebel said: @unknownuser said: A new release of SU doesn't need a lot of extra whistles and bells, just a couple, and MUCH better support of high poly models. Then it'd be perfect for it's job. Erm, IMO. That's the frustrating part. If Google would just fix the high polygon support and multi processor cabability I would be satisfied again for some years. The rest is bonus. I agree with the above, but another BIG thorn in my side is to be able to lock the toolbars and of course the shadow error. There are some other issues, but the above four are the main ones I think.

awesome, alan! i cant wait to try this

Great work Chris !

Tad too 'doffy'. Still working on the model. [image: doftest2pa3.th.jpg] Rethinking what I want to do with stuff like this. Drawing's great, but I've printed a couple of renders (not this one) on photo paper - and the result's brilliant. They look just like crisp b & w photo's of 'physical' models.