LuxRender2.org is here ;-)
xD
"Other renderers forums"
actually, any renderer, that's supposed to be used by others, should have his own forum
Wouldn't be bad, anyway^^
following idea:
"other renderers"
+
"comparison renders"
+
"link collection to other renderers" (not in the forum)
But all three of them, to be fair, in any included renderer, that has it's own page
"Other renderers forums"
actually, any renderer, that's supposed to be used by others, should have his own forum
Wouldn't be bad, anyway^^
following idea:
"other renderers"
+
"comparison renders"
+
"link collection to other renderers" (not in the forum)
But all three of them, to be fair, in any included renderer, that has it's own page
pretty much. better question would be, why not another renderer? the more renderers there are the greater the competition there is to write a better renderer that more people can use that will render faster. the only possible result of this is more better renderers so people will be able to chose from a larger selection what they render with and will also have better renderers to chose from. the only downside to this is it is confusing to the newcomer to 3d graphics who still doesnt quite understand what a renderer is and is overloaded by the vast options.
a shiny monkey is a happy monkey
- and that with free ware 
-
Knaxknarke
- Posts: 21
- Joined: Thu Nov 23, 2006 10:14 am
just some random thoughts on this
Hi, just some of my thoughts about this:
I think it's very wise (or just clever?) to base this OSS project on the solid base of PBRT. Because:
- they don't reinvent the wheel
- there is good documentation for this (the book)
- it is used in academia, so a lot of students know it
- a lot of students wrote extensions for course assignments
So there are a lot of people to join this open source development or just find bugs or contribute with exporters. This could be much faster than a "one-man-band".
On the other hand it could withdraw ressources from other good free projects like Indigo, Kerkythea, Yafray, Sunflow, Radium (no order intended). A render engine alone is of limited use without stable and mature exporters for the common 3D modeling packages. The support from a dedicated user base is importent (beta testing, demo material, tutorials, material presets, forum advice ....)
I think why commercial render engines like Maxwell, Fryrender, Vray, FinalRender still exist: ease of use, fast setup.
Mental Ray is still the most used - not because of speed or feature set, just because of it's integration in 3dsmax, Maya, XSI, Catia,...
Lightwave, Modo, C4D come with their own render engines. Most people will use this. C4D may be a good target for external render engines, as C4D AR is a bit dated and too expensive for it's render quality. A lot of the C4D pro users look at Maxwell, Fry, Vray and FinalRender because of this. But bets are high, that C4D R11 will come with improved AR3.
LW renewed it's render core with 9.x and there are Fprime and KRay with good integration. The Modo renderer core is still quite new.
So free renderers are used a lot by Blender users. Maybe because of the internal Blender renderer (no GI), or because they love free software, or like experiments, more enthusiasts but less professionals with tight time frame...
So it's interessting to watch. Highly photorealistic offline rendering seems a
solved problem to me, what counts now is:
- ease of use (exporters, GUI, setup time, material library...)
- render speed (optimizations, GPGPU, network rendering, ...)
- feature set (SSS, participating media, instancing, ...)
- user base (tutorials, more material presets, forum to ask...)
- price tag (for the commercial stuff)
- learning curve (may be a pro argument for unbiased rendering)
I think it will be hard for newcomers to establish and especially to earn money with render software. The 3d software market is very crowded and this is what I think could be a big pro argument for using OSS:
it can't disappear
Ono could get bored of Indigo and stop development, Modo may gets bought off by Autodesk (or Maxon/Nemetschek or Avid or Dassault). And then they kill it, because they don't know what to do. Look what happend to Amapi Pro 7.5! E-Frontier bought it and fired the whole developer team. Any chance their will be Amapi 8 (soon/at all)!?
Feversoft, WorleyLabs may go bankrupt. etc.
Who will die next: EIAS? Realsoft? Caligari? Strata?
(I wish them all the best, but well: there is XSI Foundation for $500 and there is Blender for free)
GPL codes still remains, even if all the original developers leave it, chances are high, that when it is used and needed, there will be someone to take care of the code.... if it's not to messy. But PBRT is a clean design, don't think someone will mess it up to soon.
In some way variety is a good thing, on the other side fragmentation may be a waste of ressources and peoples time... If quite a lot of the OSS renderer developers would join forces, there could be a OSS render package with professional features, usability, support (exporters, presets, forum) very soon and it could rival with Maxwell or Vray. In the current state of things, there are a lot of small free and OSS renderers that are used by a small user base of enthusiats, but won't find widespread use in the 3d mainstream too soon.
I think it's very wise (or just clever?) to base this OSS project on the solid base of PBRT. Because:
- they don't reinvent the wheel
- there is good documentation for this (the book)
- it is used in academia, so a lot of students know it
- a lot of students wrote extensions for course assignments
So there are a lot of people to join this open source development or just find bugs or contribute with exporters. This could be much faster than a "one-man-band".
On the other hand it could withdraw ressources from other good free projects like Indigo, Kerkythea, Yafray, Sunflow, Radium (no order intended). A render engine alone is of limited use without stable and mature exporters for the common 3D modeling packages. The support from a dedicated user base is importent (beta testing, demo material, tutorials, material presets, forum advice ....)
I think why commercial render engines like Maxwell, Fryrender, Vray, FinalRender still exist: ease of use, fast setup.
Mental Ray is still the most used - not because of speed or feature set, just because of it's integration in 3dsmax, Maya, XSI, Catia,...
Lightwave, Modo, C4D come with their own render engines. Most people will use this. C4D may be a good target for external render engines, as C4D AR is a bit dated and too expensive for it's render quality. A lot of the C4D pro users look at Maxwell, Fry, Vray and FinalRender because of this. But bets are high, that C4D R11 will come with improved AR3.
LW renewed it's render core with 9.x and there are Fprime and KRay with good integration. The Modo renderer core is still quite new.
So free renderers are used a lot by Blender users. Maybe because of the internal Blender renderer (no GI), or because they love free software, or like experiments, more enthusiasts but less professionals with tight time frame...
So it's interessting to watch. Highly photorealistic offline rendering seems a
solved problem to me, what counts now is:
- ease of use (exporters, GUI, setup time, material library...)
- render speed (optimizations, GPGPU, network rendering, ...)
- feature set (SSS, participating media, instancing, ...)
- user base (tutorials, more material presets, forum to ask...)
- price tag (for the commercial stuff)
- learning curve (may be a pro argument for unbiased rendering)
I think it will be hard for newcomers to establish and especially to earn money with render software. The 3d software market is very crowded and this is what I think could be a big pro argument for using OSS:
it can't disappear
Ono could get bored of Indigo and stop development, Modo may gets bought off by Autodesk (or Maxon/Nemetschek or Avid or Dassault). And then they kill it, because they don't know what to do. Look what happend to Amapi Pro 7.5! E-Frontier bought it and fired the whole developer team. Any chance their will be Amapi 8 (soon/at all)!?
Feversoft, WorleyLabs may go bankrupt. etc.
Who will die next: EIAS? Realsoft? Caligari? Strata?
(I wish them all the best, but well: there is XSI Foundation for $500 and there is Blender for free)
GPL codes still remains, even if all the original developers leave it, chances are high, that when it is used and needed, there will be someone to take care of the code.... if it's not to messy. But PBRT is a clean design, don't think someone will mess it up to soon.
In some way variety is a good thing, on the other side fragmentation may be a waste of ressources and peoples time... If quite a lot of the OSS renderer developers would join forces, there could be a OSS render package with professional features, usability, support (exporters, presets, forum) very soon and it could rival with Maxwell or Vray. In the current state of things, there are a lot of small free and OSS renderers that are used by a small user base of enthusiats, but won't find widespread use in the 3d mainstream too soon.
Am I the only one here that thinks it's somewhat bad form to promote a direct competitor to a product (with possible comercial aspirations) within it's own forums...? Sorry Radiance, you are obviously well know and well liked around here but I think this is straight up rude.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." - Emerson 1841Who is online
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