Hi Jean,
"Aidan it's nice to see that you have a wider look at the CG world
than most people."
Yes - thanks for that. I am a great believer in a 3D Toolkit which
doesn't necessarily fall down on just one app. I think it is
essential these days to have good import / export for this reason.
This because one may note the 3D workflow is breaking into specialist
apps for each area, For example Silo, Mudbox, Zbrush - for Sculpting
on hi poly meshes, Vray, Maxwell for rendering. Apps for poly
modelling only with no other features.
I myself have a number of 3D apps - Realsoft 3D, Lightwave 9,
Truespace 7.5, Silo 2, Hexagon, Vue Infinite 6, Messiah Studio, Bryce
6. In most cases I got each app as a competitive upgrade and / or at
a very good price. The way I see it - if the price is right and one
buys it, one does not need to use it right away. From their in, I
also found that once one has the app their are very well priced
upgrade offers in the future.
The apps I use most at the moment are Realsoft and one I did not
mention - Blender v2.44, more so Blender - I am having great
difficulties with RS on my PC at the moment due to OGL and stuff -
heres to v6 maybe. I also use Blender - because - in my opinion [ I
stress ], no one elses - the Character Animation tools are a tad
better than in RS at the moment. So typically I might model in RS and
animate in Blender, then I might render via Blender to one of these
standalone Render apps. Add to that a bit of Vue and / or Bryce for
veg etc. Also Blender now has Sculpt tools like Zbrush and can handle
large poly counts as required.
Right now I am using the excellent LWCAD 2 - a cad plugin for
Lightwave to knock up a rough of an extension I may be getting built
- WHY LWCAD? Well its excellent and it does the job fastest, thats
all and thats what matters. [ www.wtools3d.com ] - I asked the
developer of this tool ages ago would he consider a port to RS, he
may allow others to do so in discussion, but not himself - time!
So this is the kind of flexibility I like OR at least would like to
have available. AND as an aside I am really in love with the open
source side of 3D and Blender - I applaud this, which is hugely open
import / export wise AND therefore exposes one to lots of interesting
plugins and external tools accessible from Blender. I am still in the
middle of trying to get a Sculpted map from Blender into RS to give a
low poly mesh in RS the look of the hi poly mesh in Blender Sculpt
via normal maps. Experiment still ongoing, sent mails to list re same recently.
So - INTEROPERABILITY - in a word. In me you have a kindred open
minded soul who by the way would love to see RS connect with the
outside world much more than it currently is - it could only increase
the userbase and position RS right in their with the rest of those
apps. BUT maybe, peddling its own boat is RS'es unique way in this
market - we will all see - in this 3D world of increased
specialization as mentioned above!
Cheers
Aidan
At 21:08 07/08/2007, you wrote:
Aidan O Driscoll wrote:
Hi Jean-Sebastien,
As I have discovered from my travels with Blender their are
numerous OPEN SOURCE Free Standalone Render apps of different flavours:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/
http://sunflow.sourceforge.net
AND for those who favour RENDERMAN have a look here:
http://www.3delight.com/en/
http://www.aqsis.org/xoops/modules/news/
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~okan/Pixie/pixie.htm
http://jrman.sourceforge.net/
All of these - opensource also. 3DElight is free ish, but looks real good.
Yip - Jean, if some of our RS Coders could do some plugins for RS [
as is the case with Blender ] it would be excellent .. Hint Hint :)
Primarily, I stress because these apps are FREEE & Open Source.
Cheers
Aidan
At 14:04 06/08/2007, you wrote:
Aidan O Driscoll wrote:
Hi Guys,
Been using Blender [ v2.44 ] on and off over the last few months.
One thing that Blender has is access to a lot of FREEEEE EXTERNAL
standalone Render Apps. These include INDIGO, SUNFLOW and PIXIE [
Renderman ], [ google the words to find the sites ] but the one
for here is KERKYTHEA:
http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/
Their is a special build of Blender which has Kerkythea
integrated, but today I launched Kerkythea itself to find, in the
File, Open menu it can import OBJ etc. So this obviously gives an
in for REALSOFT. Model in RS, export as OBJ and then open in
Kerkythea for an alternative render [ as one may do with Maxwell
etc, but at huge cost as opposed to this being free ]. This
standalone render app has GI implementation etc, in fact read this:
/Supported Rendering Techniques
- Classic Ray Tracing
- Path Tracing (Kajiya)
- Bidirectional Path Tracing (Veach & Guibas)
- Metropolis Light Transport (Kelemen, Kalos et al.)
- Photon Mapping (Jensen) [mesh maps, photon maps, final
gathering, irradiance caching, caustics]
- Diffuse Interreflection (Ward)
- Depth Rendering
- Mask Rendering
- Clay Rendering
/as per features page here:
http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=48
<http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=48>
This one of course is for all you doodlers. Maybe some fun. AND I
stress, this mail is not set up for comparison reasons OR to
have a stab at RS, just may be of interest to some.
It has its own materials workshop, lights, cameras etc.
Cheers
Aidan
I wish Realsoft could be used as a command line standalone
renderer with a RIB interface.
Jean-Sebastien Perron
www.NeuroWorld.ws
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I know all the renderer in the world I tried everyone of the above
list and I know many others like pov-ray and small ray-tracers.
Let's start by saying that the ones that use xml are useless since
the syntax is too heavy ex : <color of polygon begin> <color r> 0.5
<color g> 0.2 <color b> 0.1<color of polygon end>
This is really stupid compared to every other scene description
language : color 0.5 0.2 0.1
The problems with other free renderer is that they don't work on
some of my computer or the binaries are not working : Pixie and
Redqueen http://www.redqueenrenderer.com/
And some of them does not support command line or are so slow that
it is impossible to use.
The best renderer and the cheapest is AIR http://www.sitexgraphics.com/
The other decent solution is pov-ray witch I know by hart but does
not feature subdivision surfaces.
I would like Realsoft to output to rib and also to be used a stand
alone command line renderer.
Renderman is simple, but the shaders are difficult without any User
interface tool to create them.
With my experience with many renderers I found that Realsoft will
give you the best sharp and vibrant picture. A 300$ RealsoftRenderer
standalone no user interface command line with a .rib as input would
be a dream.
Aidan it's nice to see that you have a wider look at the CG world
than most people.
Jean-Sebastien Perron
www.neuroworld.ws
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