Indigo is great, but...

General questions about Indigo, the scene format, rendering etc...
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Labello
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Post by Labello » Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:29 am

Oh come on boys, could you please stick to the topic?

for me this is really serious, because i think when the developing continues like this, there are wasted so many possibilities of indigo. and the work that needs to be done is work that can be done by noone better than by users. because they know best where the problems are when you try to get started.

i am a bit sad about the fact that the real powerusers of indigo except BbB didn't even answer to this thread. :(

And i dont think that it is the price that makes a tool attractive. it makes it attractive that it SEEMS to be real pro software. the price is just one aspect. it must be presented like the very best of the high-end-software and then people might get courious =)

and when someone wants to try it the tool it must seem like very easy to use and it also has to be. so the exporters, indigo, violett and the different material-editors should be connected through a pipeline so that a user barely doesn't realize that he uses different apps.

that would just take some more communication and the good will to reach this goal.

you might think that my stuff sounds a bit exagerated but in the last few months there grew a really great hate against crappy software that isn't for free and that supresses the free software -.-*

Edit:
I just now read BbB's post and i totally agree. =)
but i am still waiting for an answer from ono what he thinks about it and what his plans are.
BbB is right but why can't we share this work. I for example don't have got the right PC to bring indigo to it's maximum stress, and i am not deep enough in indigo to find bugs and so on.
but i could try to create some nice sample-scenes which at first show new users possibilities of blender and indigo when they work together. or something like that. so everyone could do what he's good at and what he likes to do.
but first things first. i want an oppinion from ono :)
Last edited by Labello on Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

BbB
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Post by BbB » Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:34 am

and when someone wants to try it the tool it must seem like very easy to use and it also has to be. so the exporters, indigo, violett and the different material-editors should be connected through a pipeline so that a user barely doesn't realize that he uses different apps.
My point exactly. But we're talking long-term effort here, and it can't really happen without Ono's help.

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Post by CarlosR26 » Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:37 am

Maxwell "popularity" is due to its commercial focus.

It is supported by a good company which have another 2 professional CG and simulation software (XFlow and RealFlow), the later was used for many Hollywood movies, and tv ads.

It has a lot of extras, like a nice MaterialDB, multilight, a community with commercial and professional expertise.

Contrary to the "underground" open-source community, commercial thinking is different, open source and independent development software (they think) are more prone to go dead, to stop developing, and commercial software from a established company are more stable and have its life assured.

Pace of mind: If you are creating a expensive TV AD for the BMW, you will need to have a company behind your tools... not because a company give more support,, that is a paradigm, but because you, your company investors, and your client will feel better, is easy to sue a big company, than a developer, o developers spread through the globe making a software.

Integration: I use Skindigo, and Blendigo, and they "look" really different in some aspects. They arent, but they look. For me, this is not a problem, i am into computers since the age of 12 when i was programming in C++ (today i forgot who to use programing languages but still), so i dont care, i love experimenting with this, but for your average TV ad creative in a marketing company, this is not welcome.

Interface: I like indigo interface, but it is not polished, so it is unpopular.

all these aspects make Maxwell better? No for us, Indigo can be more powerful, but all these aspects are important for commercial thinking work...

Maxwell Render itself, i don't think its that popular... Vray have almost all interior and exterior Viz market covered. Mental Ray have another big chunk in animation, and render market, and Yafray, Blender Internal another OpenSource "market"....

Unbiased engines are incredible, for math heads, crazy bast... who only thinks in perfection, Physicist, for artist who wants true photorealism, simulator obsessed, etc.. but for commercial work? Time is money, and 8-32hr for a render it is not profitable, processing power isnt there yet, not even in Quads... may be in a few years.

Vray (and alikes) take care of photorealism pretty good if you ask me, even it they aren't "physically correct"
http://www.3dtotal.com/home2/gallery/ge ... sp?id=3105

All this is only my personal opinion.

PD. I make a lot of assumptions, i don't know it Indigo is used for commercial work, or not, but i supposed not that much yet.
Last edited by CarlosR26 on Sat Jun 14, 2008 4:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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fused
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Post by fused » Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:53 am

BbB wrote:The same thing goes for the exporters. I see some exporters, including those that are being written for Luxrender, have interesting features (like the clay render feature for instance).
cindigo actually has that feature 8)

@topic:
i actually dont have much time lately to make my exporter more user-friendly or even to add new freatures...
Last edited by fused on Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by BbB » Sat Jun 14, 2008 2:54 am

Vray (and alikes) take care of photorealism pretty good if you ask me, even it they aren't "physically correct"
http://www.3dtotal.com/home2/gallery/ge ... sp?id=3105
Seen that image before. Very nice indeed.

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Post by CarlosR26 » Sat Jun 14, 2008 4:35 am

The same thing goes for the exporters. I see some exporters, including those that are being written for Luxrender, have interesting features (like the clay render feature for instance).
Clay render... Skindigo has it...

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Post by BbB » Sat Jun 14, 2008 4:41 am

i actually dont have much time lately to make my exporter more user-friendly or even to add new freatures...
Which was exactly the point I was making...

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Post by CarlosR26 » Sat Jun 14, 2008 4:52 am

The Best of Indigo so far, is the community... nice and active, and trilingual 8)

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CTZn
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Post by CTZn » Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:03 am

Carlos, if I get you right Indigo can't be popular the way it is, is that correct ? You made indeed a lot of assumptions, all pretty correct, but didn't came with a conclusion :)

Following and as a reference a few links to threads around this topic (or evolving toward this topic).

I targeted the search toward one person because he was active on it, quite unhappy with Ono's choice I must add. We had strong exchanges, but nothing personal remains as far as I'm concerned :)

http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... commercial

http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... al&start=0

http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... highlight=

http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... 5451#35451

Make up your mind !

My point is still to have a concertation (including Ono's point of view wich is not really "on demand" I'd complain ;)) before taking any action, so again I support your initiative, Labello !
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Post by OnoSendai » Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:27 am

Labello:
The albedo is called albedo because albedo has a more-or-less exact technical meaning in the context of rendering, as opposed to 'colour'.

BbB:
It's never too early to improve usability :)

I'm not a huge fan of standalone Indigo gadget programs either (with the possible exception of Violet), altho I guess I'm not the target user.

I think the new material DB is a big step forward, or will be a big step forward for usability, as it allows newbies to use materials, and learn about material creation, from the experienced users.

Integration of external materials, PIGMs etc.. into plugins will take a little while, but that's to be expected, as a lot of new code is needed by a lot of people.

As Fused suggested in another thread, since I added command line tonemapping into Indigo, I will have a think about integrating interactive tonemapping into the Indigo GUI.

Regarding manuals, documentation, etc..
Actually Filippo has made a really nice user-friendly manual for Maxigo + Indigo, which I need to post properly.

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Post by CTZn » Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:55 am

Thank you for your intervention !

If I get you right Ono, what you expect the most from users is uploading a bunch of valuable materials to the matDB ?

I have no crits on that, just trying to see how synergy can happen and obviously you lead the way :) That would make sense in fact, as pigm are readily usable by beginners.

Now on the doc part, you are salutating Filippo's work and with reason. Documentation has also a huge impact on popularity, as it was pointed out. My feeling is that you expect advanced users to put a nice doc/wiki together, aren't you ;) The lack of a slightly more explanative doc (be it completee) is IMHO n°1 in causing frustrations. Frustration is an inmediate feeling wich leads to shortcomings.

Can we settle here on how docs are supposed to be managed ? Do you see this as an issue anyway, OnoSendai ?

Yes I'm asking frankly, *I have made some assumptions too*, hoping I'm not showing too harsh :oops:
Last edited by CTZn on Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by CTZn » Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:03 am

Ok my first concrete action here will be to officially request a wiki forum under the Website & Community section.

It certainly won't be over-crowded but that'll be a meeting point and hopefully motivate editors and give more visibility to the wiki.

IIRC you were not a huge fan of users editing the wiki neither...
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Post by Doug Armand » Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:22 am

CarlosR26 wrote:Maxwell "popularity" is due to its commercial focus.

It is supported by a good company which have another 2 professional CG and simulation software (XFlow and RealFlow), the later was used for many Hollywood movies, and tv ads.

It has a lot of extras, like a nice MaterialDB, multilight, a community with commercial and professional expertise.

Contrary to the "underground" open-source community, commercial thinking is different, open source and independent development software (they think) are more prone to go dead, to stop developing, and commercial software from a established company are more stable and have its life assured.

Pace of mind: If you are creating a expensive TV AD for the BMW, you will need to have a company behind your tools... not because a company give more support,, that is a paradigm, but because you, your company investors, and your client will feel better, is easy to sue a big company, than a developer, o developers spread through the globe making a software.

Integration: I use Skindigo, and Blendigo, and they "look" really different in some aspects. They arent, but they look. For me, this is not a problem, i am into computers since the age of 12 when i was programming in C++ (today i forgot who to use programing languages but still), so i dont care, i love experimenting with this, but for your average TV ad creative in a marketing company, this is not welcome.

Interface: I like indigo interface, but it is not polished, so it is unpopular.

all these aspects make Maxwell better? No for us, Indigo can be more powerful, but all these aspects are important for commercial thinking work...

Maxwell Render itself, i don't think its that popular... Vray have almost all interior and exterior Viz market covered. Mental Ray have another big chunk in animation, and render market, and Yafray, Blender Internal another OpenSource "market"....

Unbiased engines are incredible, for math heads, crazy bast... who only thinks in perfection, Physicist, for artist who wants true photorealism, simulator obsessed, etc.. but for commercial work? Time is money, and 8-32hr for a render it is not profitable, processing power isnt there yet, not even in Quads... may be in a few years.

Vray (and alikes) take care of photorealism pretty good if you ask me, even it they aren't "physically correct"
http://www.3dtotal.com/home2/gallery/ge ... sp?id=3105

All this is only my personal opinion.

PD. I make a lot of assumptions, i don't know it Indigo is used for commercial work, or not, but i supposed not that much yet.
Just want to say I totally agree with most of this. Personally I love Indigo's Photo-realistic output and I'm lucky that in my line of work I can take the time to get the effect I want for a commercial end Image. I'm sure that is not the norm.

But the results, when you get them right, are truly Photo-realistic. And as a Photographer this is just so cool :-)

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Post by CarlosR26 » Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:34 am

Carlos, if I get you right Indigo can't be popular the way it is, is that correct ? You made indeed a lot of assumptions, all pretty correct, but didn't came with a conclusion
Well, i just point out why MAXWELL is more popular than Indigo.... not why Indigo is not popular :wink: at least in Blender community IT is popular, and i advertise the software to my friends, even if i came to it a few days ago.

I don't know why Indigo exist, and i don't know why Ono is developing this nice piece of software... so i cant conclude anything.. i dont know if one of the goals of the proyect is to become "popular", ¿popular to who? ¿professionals, amateurs, hobbyists, commercial, artistic, casual work? ¿everybody?

I do think Indigo can become popular... as it is. Just a little work in some areas, like a MaterialDB, integration with exporters, and documentation.

What i do think is that open-software, and software developed by small company or few devs.. (free or not) are not going to attract the big boys commercially speaking. Maybe a few freelancers (Im thinking in blender), and that is because a preconception about this kind of software.

Another point, is about Unbiased vs Biased software... one of the reasons even Maxwell is not that popular is because the processing power needed to achieve something in render.... Viz companies ask themselves if it is worth spend so much hours in render time to have a photorealistic-physically-correct render, or just Vray it, and in 45 120 min have a similar or better photorealistic render even if its not a light simulation.

I came to this problem recently,, a friend of mine have a little company of 3d Visualization... they use Autostudio-3dstudio-Vray. They didnt know unbiased render engines, when i talk to him about indigo, i showed him some renders from Maxwell-Indigo-Fryrender gallery, and become somewhat impressed... but when i told him about the hours need it to render just one frame, he lost his interest.. They show me a Vray gallery that compares to the ones i show him, and told me about the time need it to achieve those renders... it was inferior, real inferior to an Unbiased engine.

The only thing that Wowed him was renders underwater, getting caustics and volumetric light.... "so, for that Indigo is good" he told me... "Vray have problems with those effects"

But with multiple cores chips, this can change really soon.

Just some thoughts.

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Post by CarlosR26 » Sat Jun 14, 2008 6:44 am

But the results, when you get them right, are truly Photo-realistic. And as a Photographer this is just so cool
Really, really cool, especially on interiors scenes illuminated by the sun through windows and doors..

And that IS one of the strengths of Unbiased engines.. set up time, in Vray or another render e. with GI you have to experiment with a lot of settings, light positioning, etc, to make a render look right,, in Indigo, you are more like a god-decorator, put the sun in position, some lights... assign materials, hit render... and well wait and wait and wait... :wink:

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