Author Topic: What's your favorite rendering package?  (Read 5164 times)

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Matt__W

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What's your favorite rendering package?
« on: August 08, 2008, 08:52:28 AM »
I've been doing a lot of renderings lately and my boss and I have been talking about the images, quality, cost, etc...  I know there's 3DSMax, VRay (for 3DSMax), Accurender and of course AutoCAD's mediocre rendering engine/materials.  What else is out there?  What do you like/dislike about them?
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jnieman

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2008, 09:00:09 AM »
Autocad uses the mental ray engine, actually, which 3dsMax also uses.  From what I can tell, as far as the digital art worl is concerned... mental ray is the red headed stepchild.  It's a bit dated and seems to have inherent flaws.  I can't expand on that much... however people can tell right off the bat that I use a program that has Mental Ray because, as they say, by the blurriness, color, and the way it handles light bouncing...

however, 3dsmax also uses a few others.. povray or vray or something like that (I forget) as well as it's scanline renderer, whatever that is...

Because you're already an Autodesk user, one cool thing is... 3dsmax will inherit layers from the .dwg file you bring in, and thus material assignment can be greatly hastened.

Now, Rhino with the Flamingo (rendering) addon will do the same... it has good DWG support.. but it's renderer is not as flexible as 3dsmax, as well as 3dsmax having a great deal more support for additional addons, scripting... and the shear size of the knowledge base around 3dsmax is astounding and goes back over a decade.

3dsmax can do all your basic animation as well, including animating actual objects rather than simple fly-bys... though as expected it'd handle fly-bys quite well.

Of the few I messed with, 3dsmax seemed like the easiest to get up-n-running from existing models and was not too bad to learn from, using the interwebs.  Of course if you wanted to get some training, obviously that's easy enough to get some formal training for the product.

Maverick®

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2008, 09:26:24 AM »
  How does 3ds Max work?  Do you import a .dwg or .dxf into the program and then render the model?

jnieman

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2008, 09:41:17 AM »
  How does 3ds Max work?  Do you import a .dwg or .dxf into the program and then render the model?

It's a totally different stand alone app... you can model and do everything in 3D you normally would... it's just that you wouldn't create a model for construction drawings in Max... there're no 2D tools to speak of.

But you can open a DWG cleanly with it (probably dxf, but I'd have to check... dwg is preferred for me) and then apply any materials, textures, lights, cameras, and then ACTION!RENDER!

Max has infinitely better material and mapping tools and the lights are just as good as Autocad, maybe better, but I dont know much about lighting in max.

mjfarrell

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2008, 12:39:52 PM »
  How does 3ds Max work?  Do you import a .dwg or .dxf into the program and then render the model?

Max will allow you to LINK to an autocad drawing, it honors any and all materials that it finds applied from the vertical applications.

Then the fun begins!  The last Viz/Max Class I taught.  We built a rather innocent building in ADT.
Then we Linked it to Max. Applied Materials, Created some glassware, built a pool table and a bunch of balls.
Took pictures of each other and Mapped our faces on the pool balls..motion pathed them, put smoke over the table....
Put flashing neon Duff Signs in the window....and well we built Moe's Tavern from The Simpson's....By the Second day no one wanted to leave for lunch........
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jnieman

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2008, 12:40:58 PM »
haha that happened in college when we started on that stuff...  that's when I knew I was right for this field...

The teacher gave me the copy of VIZ he had, and said to have fun, and gave me the tutorial books..

mjfarrell

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2008, 12:47:00 PM »
Did I mention I loves me some 3dMax?


I told that group to have fun in class; because after they got back to the office they wouldn't be allowed to play any more. :evil:
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Matt__W

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2008, 01:01:40 PM »
Did I mention I loves me some 3dMax?

You also mentioned that you built some balls!  :-o  :lol:
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mjfarrell

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2008, 01:03:01 PM »
We also 'animated' those balls ...

you should have seen those balls in motion...
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hendie

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2008, 02:16:41 PM »
  How does 3ds Max work?  Do you import a .dwg or .dxf into the program and then render the model?
.......
Max has infinitely better material and mapping tools and the lights are just as good as Autocad, maybe better, but I dont know much about lighting in max.

Max/Viz lighting is infinitely better than Acad's ' like comparing Etch a Sketch to AutoCAD as a drawing tool

Maverick®

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2008, 03:21:44 PM »
What I was getting at was that I can export to .dwg or .dxf from Softplan and was wondering if it would be worth looking into.  SP does rendering pretty well but maybe rendering the model would be faster or better looking in 3ds just because of the interface and/or process.

jnieman

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Re: What's your favorite rendering package?
« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2008, 03:29:08 PM »
What I was getting at was that I can export to .dwg or .dxf from Softplan and was wondering if it would be worth looking into.  SP does rendering pretty well but maybe rendering the model would be faster or better looking in 3ds just because of the interface and/or process.

I bet if your closest Autodesk reseller is worth any salt, you could send him a DWG, ask him to show you what Max can do, and how much time it took him to do it, and you could find out that way.

Possibly.  Also depends on how much they support Max.  Not all autodesk resellers carry all autodesk software, or support it, rather.  The one near us just dropped Architectural packages because they didnt sell enough, and Autodesk forced them to focus on the mechanical and Inventor side of things.