Like Stefan, said. Check out Arnold, 3DLight, Vray and Redshift, nothing is perfect; but those are better than MR. :)
On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 3:51 PM, Perry Harovas <perryharo...@gmail.com>wrote: > Redshift is brilliant, and really a bargain in terms of price. > It uses GPU, so you have to have a good graphics card, but it > really works amazingly well. > > Delivered 3 projects in it already, one of them was while it was an alpha > product! > > redshift3d.com > > > > > > On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs <illus...@mip.net> wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> I was beginning to ponder, in another thread, some rendering issues in >> SI. I've never really liked mental ray, tried to, spent a long time >> studying it, and could never get the kind of aesthetic I was able to >> achieve in Lightwave, with the Steve Worley plugin FPrime, or the newer >> Kray, which was beginning a promising development about when I left. Seems >> to have taken off now, too. >> >> I ported several projects over from Lightwave to XSI some years ago, and >> tried to reproduce the very nice rendering results I got in Lightwave. >> Totally different system of course. I figured it was one good approach to >> learning mental ray. Well, I couldn't get anywhere close, and it was a >> struggle, and I never really got acceptable results. Every other aspect of >> the projects went so much better, though, in XSI. And there was animation >> in XSI I couldn't even begin to do in Lightwave. >> >> I need fast GI effects, that's integral to what I do. A lot of interior >> architectural-like surfaces. Not necessarily total realism, just an >> aesthetic -- I need to really be able to get in there and tweak things and >> make them work. I use a lot of HDR lighting, I know how to hand tweak it in >> photoshop, or create it from scratch, and I like to use that to control my >> light and color. I've used FG quite a bit, and am not always happy how it >> translates things. GI is way too slow in my scenes. >> >> FPrime and Kray had a way of handling these GI lighting effects that was >> very efficient, and tweakable. That's the one thing from Lightwave that I >> REALLY miss. Anything comparable for Softimage? >> >> I remember I also could get some reflectivity and ray tracing in >> Lightwave at a fraction of the rendering time mental ray takes. I can't use >> it at all in mental ray, with GI (including FG) except on a single object >> basis. Not for animation on many frames, too costly. But I do like the >> nodal texturing system built into SI. >> >> Anyway, considering these factors, is there any rendering solution for SI >> that anyone can recommend that will give me what I'm looking for? That >> isn't too expensive... >> >> Thanks, >> Nancy Jacobs >> >> http://www.childofillusion.net/ >> > > > > -- > > > > > > Perry Harovas > Animation and Visual Effects > > http://www.TheAfterImage.com <http://www.theafterimage.com/> > > -25 Years Experience > -Member of the Visual Effects Society (VES) >
