Hey guys, I'm going to respond to the last few messages regarding the importance of speed later, but in the meantime here is a video of some live rendering in Softimage.
http://youtu.be/fjCguRdSlV0 -Nicolas On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:17 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > you are right of course, as always. > > what is really needed is a fine balance between quality and speed, > at a pricepoint that is affordable yet high enough to sustain development, > and available before my retirement. > > > *From:* Andy Moorer <[email protected]> > *Sent:* Thursday, March 14, 2013 9:02 PM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: Announcing Redshift - Biased GPU Renderer > > Well said, but speed is still important, deadlines are tight and > particularly in the iterative direction phase often re-rendering takes much > more time than making a directed change. "Dailies" reflect this... A series > of several directed tweaks to a shot can stretch over several days in part > to allow time to make changes and get them rendered... A major limitation > to working with rendered VFX elements versus composite effects which can > often be altered in near realtime. > > Sent from my iPad > > On Mar 14, 2013, at 4:21 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Please also bear in mind that we're still just in alpha and > constantly improving performance. We're kind of obsessed with speed :) > > speed is great of course – but IMO it’s not the most important factor. > > over the years we have all been doing productions with rather long > rendertimes, running into hours per frame and more. The bottom line was > rarely “it has to be rendered in X amount of time” – clients couldn’t care > less. It has to be good enough first and rendered in time for delivery. > > it’s been a long time I’m looking forward for a viewport/GPU mental ray > replacement in softimage. > Hopefully staying below 5 minutes for complex HD images and within 1 > minute for more simple stuff – but more importantly, it should have the > bells and whistles of a modern raytracer, and deliver production quality > rendering – that can be very precisely tweaked by the user. > > It’s very frustrating to get a promising image very fast, but not being > able to make the image really final - some remaining artifacts, sampling > problem or no ability to finetune this or that effect or simply lack of a > feature you really require – so in turn you have to bite the bullet and go > back to good old offline rendering – and the corresponding rendertimes will > be twice as frustrating. > Very extensive support for lighting features – not just GI / AO / > softshadows / softreflections – but also SSS, raytraced refractions, motion > blur, volumetrics, ICE support, instancing, hair – and a good set of > shaders and support for the rendertree and as many of the factory shaders > as possible. > > Mental ray never became the standard it was because of speed – but because > of what one can achieve with it. (and then you have to turn off a few > things left and right for final renders in order to make rendertimes > acceptable) > Obviously in this day and age it’s features are getting long in the tooth > as well, which opens the door wide open for others – but it remains a > reference for what a renderer should at least aspire to. > > just some thoughts and hints of what matters to me when considering a new > renderer. > >
