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Kendall,
sorry, should have refreshed before posting......like 2 trains in the night. :)
Are you referring to R4C? I mean, is that what R4C would have provided?
Are you referring to R4C? I mean, is that what R4C would have provided?
Paolo has made it abundantly clear that R4C will not happen. I doubt that the initial plans for R4C included DS4 at all.
What I'm talking about is saving a Carrara scene to .duf. Loading that scene into DS4.5+ and sending what survives to 3DL, or Reality, or Octane, or whatever else DS4 gets access to that Carrara doesn't. Hopefully, DS4 will become more capable of loading Carrara specific settings/features, even if it can't manipulate the content.
Kendall
Personally, I love the Carrara rendering capabilities - mainly the refreshing speed that it has over everything else that I've tried - especially when it comes to ray tracing.
Anyways, I just wanted to report a cool find in this new build. To help illustrate, I have a specific "Light Enhancement" (very subtle) light rig grouped in with each of the main characters I'm working with. Previously, when I would bring these characters into a complex scene (or not so complex, for that matter), I'd have to go back and set what the light effects again, like "Only: > 'V4 Character 1'", for example. I just made a fairly complex scene, dragged in three of my main characters, and the allocation was still correct! Nice!
On the other point though (I admittedly only caught the last few posts - so I'm not certain where it started), I have messed around with Poser for a couple or more years before buying Carrara. Along that ride, I found that D|S was holding its own in the render quality department - like you've mentioned, with enough fiddling with the settings. Once I've started rendering in Carrara, I was shocked at the difference in speed - and the power that one has over the quality is excellent. The power of the shader room in conjunction with the amazingly fast raytracer is perfect for the animations I'm working on.
Just my two cents.
Not under the terms DAZ offered. I believe he would do it even now if they made him
an offer that would re-imburse him for his time and effort.
He didn't burn his bridges as far as I know, or close that door forever regardless.
And, based on the survey, it had wide support from Carrara users who were lining up
to purchase the plugin.
My point is, we could have and should have had a realistic render plugin or integrated capability
already instead of needing DS4 or one of the stand-alones, e.g. Lux.
Fine, but CLEARLY the intent of your challenge to akulla3D was to say "how dare you say that the D|S renderer doesn't give great results since it is a Renderman". Which means that Renderman = Great renders from your perspective, regardless of application.
Honestly, I have no clue what all of those specs are you're referencing, and none of that matters. IF you believe what I just summarized, then you must have a simple string of logic that makes you believe that. Just tell us what that is. Something like "yes, all Renderman renderers produce great results for a given scene regardless of app, because...". Very simple.
Or, if you overstated your case, then just tell us, "yeah, I probably overstated it". Simple. But throwing a bunch of specs at us and saying read it for yourself is tantamount to blowing us off because you don't want to admit you overstated. At least that's how it appears.
If you want to drop the discussion, I'll understand.
Not under the terms DAZ offered. I believe he would do it even now if they made him
an offer that would re-imburse him for his time and effort.
He didn't burn his bridges as far as I know, or close that door forever regardless.
And, based on the survey, it had wide support from Carrara users who were lining up
to purchase the plugin.
My point is, we could have and should have had a realistic render plugin or integrated capability
already instead of needing DS4 or one of the stand-alones, e.g. Lux.
Wait a minute, I don't see how Paolo's decision is
dependent on Daz giving him a higher percentage
of the "cut" from sales in the DAZ store. That's not
how I recall it went down.
He decided that Carrara's future is too uncertain
because DAZ is now giving away all the other
softwares for free. It makes no sense to me.
I got the impression, from his new bio at Renderosity,
that now sales are doing so well that he can even
support himself with it.
And how did all those new customers come about?
Could Daz Studio being given away for free have
something to do with it?
Paolo could have decided to simply host the plugin
on his own web site, and reap 100% of the cut from
there. There certainly was plenty of interest
shown by potential buyers.
So let's see, there exists many interested potential
buyers, and a means by which he could not even
*not* have to share any percentage of profits with
anyone else - his own web site.
The daz version of the plugin even already had a lot
of "marketing exposure."
It's all totally lame, imo. Mind you, I'm glad to at least
have it for Daz Studio, but I think the reason for not
making it for carrara was lame. And here I was sitting
around thinking, for almost a year, that he was making
the darned plugin.
I meant "even not," not "not even not."
Fine, but CLEARLY the intent of your challenge to akulla3D was to say "how dare you say that the D|S renderer doesn't give great results since it is a Renderman". Which means that Renderman = Great renders from your perspective, regardless of application.
Honestly, I have no clue what all of those specs are you're referencing, and none of that matters. IF you believe what I just summarized, then you must have a simple string of logic that makes you believe that. Just tell us what that is. Something like "yes, all Renderman renderers produce great results for a given scene regardless of app, because...". Very simple.
Or, if you overstated your case, then just tell us, "yeah, I probably overstated it". Simple. But throwing a bunch of specs at us and saying read it for yourself is tantamount to blowing us off because you don't want to admit you overstated. At least that's how it appears.
If you want to drop the discussion, I'll understand.
No, I said that DS's render engine wasn't "sucky" -- his word. Renderman is currently the most accepted, powerful, and flexible rendering engine in use. 3Delight rates at the TOP of the Renderman stack, vying with PrRenderman for #1 and #2 spots. So, by definition, it doesn't "suck."
And yes, ANY program can get great results from Renderman, including a Text Editor. I challenge you to find a more difficult interface for 3D work. The output from a CLI can be just as good as anything from DS, Maya, or Pixar. Conversely, any idiot can screw up anything even given the best equipment and interface.
Under RiSpec, every interface has the same capabilities as every other. The difference is effort. Your lack of motivation does not degrade that fact. ANYONE can get Pixar quality output since they are using the same technology. The difference between a mediocre work and a great work is effort, regardless of the tool.
I did not overstate anything, if you are not willing to do enough basic research to come up to speed, then I'm finished dealing with you. I provided information written for those not versed in the field -- information written for the layman. If you can't, or won't, understand it, then we have no base from which to debate. If I wanted to blow you off I would have told you to go spend the money the rest of us did to get the real documentation to do the job.
Obviously, you have no intent to debate seriously as you continue to throw out suppositions without even the veneer of knowledge. Educate yourself, then we can talk.
Kendall
Right, but he had to take the time to code it first.....once it was done, he
could profit regardless of where it sold.
(edited to add)...He could & would have done it if he was able to profit more from current sales,
instead of taking the risk to get paid just from future sales of R4C.
Since it would enhance Carrara's marketability, I thought it was a slam/dunk
that DAZ would give him a break, especially with the success of Reality DS.
yeah, well, apparently he is profiting more from current sales now:
His bio on renderosity seems to be gone now, but he said something
about how glad he is to finally able to support himself totally on sales
of his plugin.
My estimation of things is that he's probably making more sales because
Daz studio is now free, and people want to render in luxrender.
I thought it was a slam dunk too. (Lame).
I wish I was able to code myself. Programming makes
me want to tear my hair out.
Coders are magicians to me. :)
Don't they all use algorithms and simulate bouncing photons?
Thank you. That's all I wanted to know.
By the way, Kendall, I apologize if something I said got you so angry. That wasn't my intent. I really am trying to learn here, not debate or argue. Just looking for some answers.
Honestly, the sense I got from your statements was nothing more than this:
That an expert 3D guy who does feature films and makes insanely gorgeous renders in one of the professional "Renderman" apps could take one of his insanely gorgeous scenes over to DAZ Studio (assume export/import is not an issue), and using the exact same scene, and exact same tools provided in DAZ Studio (lights, shadows, materials, etc.), produce a virtually identical, insanely gorgeous render. Implying that nothing in the DAZ Studio toolbox is limited or hampered compared to his other apps.
A very simple question, has nothing to do with the skill of the user, and doesn't require reading stacks of specs.
Here's a hypothetical to illustrate my question::
IF, for example, DAZ Studio has a Renderman renderer, but, for example, the lights don't have any capability for generating soft shadows (again, this is a hypothetical), and the spec doesn't require soft shadows, but the scene you're rendering needs soft shadows, then the insanely gorgeous scene obviously will have a render that is going to look sucky. Nothing to do with the Renderman renderer, but because the main app doesn't have some feature not covered by the Renderman spec. If something like that were the case, then it's perfectly legitimate to say the DAZ Studio renders suck, not because of the excellent renderer, but because some features in the main app were either missing or limited or whatever. See what I'm getting at?
And the answer to that is not a stack of manuals or specifications, it's a simple yes or no. Nothing to do with the abilities of the user, solely a function of the application.
Don't they all use algorithms and simulate bouncing photons?
To a degree and not necessarily. :-) Raytracing and Radiosity do indeed simulate the path(s) of the rays of light. Other methods/features do not necessarily simulate light per-se. The algorithms used for "advanced" surface features make a difference -- introduction, or removal, of (micro)facets, sub-division, normal or bump mapping, etc all make a huge difference, and the distinct methods used make a HUGE difference. As everyone here should know, advances in rendering technology happen every day. Carrara's limitation is that the renderer is pretty much the same now as it was then: little advancement. This is not to say that Carrara's renderer can't do excellent work, we all know that it can.
Kendall
You're confusing the Application Interface with the Rendering Engine. The post that started this debate was specifically about the Rendering Engine.
As it stands, DS cannot read RIB and work with it as a scene definition. So importing a RIB from anywhere isn't going to happen. However, if one can export the target scene in a format readable by DS, then one could pull that scene into the interface, add content, and output RIB (or render). Assuming that one had the .sl code for the shaders used, one could import those shaders into the DS Shader Editor and create DS native matching shaders directly from the code. Since DS4 has the Shader Mixer, and the Shader Editor, one can work directly with Renderman Shaders directly within DS. There is no longer a limitation, as one can code directly to the RiSpec from within DS.
Even if DS4 didn't provide such a nice feature, one could still connect the "shaders" with the RIB once output. This would still provide all the same power to create the scene available to all other packages. Albeit with more effort.
As an example, Alessandro's "Look at my Hair" project uses the Renderman RiCurves directly as a DS shader. This allows for great flexibility, in effect adding "strand hair" to DS4 without coding it directly. In fact, according to a post of his, he's including the same shader in LAMH that was used in "Stuart Little", thus providing a "professional" shader for use in general in DS4.
EDIT: This is becoming a DS debate, not about Carrara or rendering. Let's see if we can get it back on track.
Kendall
I really don't think I am. In fact, my point is that there ARE multiple compenents to an awesome render: The USER, the FRONT END of the application (ie, interface) and the BACK END (renderer). Or maybe even more. And to make an awesome render ALL of those components have to be awesome. Nobody is arguing that.
And my point is that when someone says it's a sucky render, let's pre-assume that the user is awesome, so we can take that out of the picture. So what's left? The interface and the renderer. And when someone says it's a sucky render (or a sucky renderer, but doesn't understand the difference), assuming the user is awesome, that leaves the interface and the renderer that might be at fault.
Which is why I said that even though he was specific about the "renderer", he could have legitimately thought that the interface component was lousy, therefore it was a sucky renderer? Yes, you jumped on strictly the renderer component, but I am, and have been, speaking more broadly.
Come on, Kendall, you're just dancing around this. It's obvious the point I'm trying to get answered, and instead of protecting what you said and citing the specifics of what was said, I'm sure you can understand the concept we're trying to get resolved here. I can't get any clearer, Geesh, you guys will argue and argue and argue about specific words and inflections, instead of just stepping back and discuss the issues. You guys give me a headache.
And just to show that I'm not going wacko, here's the post I entered right after you put akulla3D on the stand for daring to challenge a Renderman-compliant renderer. I was the first to make a distinction between the renderer and the other components of a render, and suggested that while he said "renderer", the broader issue involved the application interface.
I've been saying the same stuff, over and over, 3 or 4 different ways for the last 4 days trying to get an straight answer.
Thanks Kendall. So it's basically Ray Tracing vs Radiosity?
Will study up on it to understand the difference, and get the most out of either method.
And will look at DS again to see what it can do at least for rendering. :)
Thanks Kendall. So it's basically Ray Tracing vs Radiosity?
Will study up on it to understand the difference, and get the most out of either method.
And will look at DS again to see what it can do at least for rendering. :)
Oh no. There are other ways: scanline (sometimes called rasterizing), and a few others.
Radiosity is sort of the converse of ray tracing. Instead of projecting a vector into a pixel and determining collision (ray tracing), one starts from the light source and projects outward from there. It is much more computationally intensive as one doesn't know if the ray one is following is heading (ultimately) for the camera until the final iteration is performed and a vector direction is determined. Meaning that in the case where (bounces > 1) the number of unneeded computations increases dramatically.
Kendall
I recalled an article from a couple years ago that dealt with selecting rendering software. Pretty decent article, and listed the strengths and weaknesses of the big players.
http://www.3dworldmag.com/2010/01/15/how_to_choose_rendering_software_part_1/
Personally, while the guts of how the renderers do their thing is nice to know, I think for the practicing 3D guy what's important is the practical differences. And, like always, I suggest you first decide what you need before you decide what you want.
IF your goal is super-hyper realism, and renders that look like photographs, you'll probably look at one group. But as with anything, you never get something for nothing, and that super-hyper realism has a cost, such as greater render time. And if you're doing animations, that cost might be far too great, so you'll want to look at other types of renderers. And other types of renderers typically take some sort of shortcuts to reduce render time, while also reducing some aspect of the quality of the output ("quality" being the super-hyper realism).
Some renderers also try to simulate real lights and real materials, unlike Carrara and others that have non-realistic (ie, non "physically based") material parameters (eg, Reflection, Highlight, etc). Those are non-realistic models used to make the renders happen faster. Same with cameras, etc. Some renderers and applications allow you to enter real world camera parameters (focal length, f-stop, etc.) So if you're trying to match a shot that was done on a set, and you know the real world parameters, and all that is important to you, then you probably want to look at some physically based renderers. But again, there's a cost.
And like I mentioned before, don't get caught in the trap of believing that it's all about the renderer, when in fact it is also a function of the application (and, of course, the user). You can have the greatest renderer in the world, but if the application doesn't take advantage of it, you're not gonna get much. The application can make it easy or difficult to get great results, not only with lighting and shadows but with materials. If the renderer is brilliant, but you just can't get the "shading room" or whatever to let you apply the layers of materials you want in the way you want, for example (a situation, BTW, I just encountered today in Carrara, and after hours of tweaking I still got trash...), you might be very disappointed with the results. Or, as Mr. Sears suggested, if the application provides some wonderful lighting presets that make getting those wonderfully brillant outdoor renders much easier, then you might want to consider an app like that.
I can believe you all are still going at it. :) I just want this next point release to come out already so I can stablize my environment and get back to work.
Are you kidding? In this forum trying to resolve even the simplest and most obvious issue usually results in days upon days of back and forth haggling over totally extraneous nonsense. It's unfortunate, but I guess that's just how it is.
"2+2=73.5"
"Um, no, I think you'll find that 2+2=4"
"That's just your opinion"
"Well, no, it's, like, a fact"
"Oh really, so when's the last time you posted a math dissertation here to show you're an expert?"
"Dude, just get out your calculator"
"I think you're just a stuck up jerk"
"That's fine, but did you check your calculator yet?"
"Don't you know anything about hex and octal? I was clearly talking about octal and hex when I said that"
"Oh, okay, but when I check my calculator and try it in both octal and hex I sure don't get 2+2=73.5"
"Some calculators use RPN, others don't. My cellphone has a calculator. My cellphone is blue"
"Thanks for the info, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the issue we're discussing"
"Dude, are you still arguing this? What a rude jerk. Leave it alone"
And that's life in the Carrara forum... :)
But hey, YOU STARTED THIS !!!! :)
(By the way, the above hypothetical dialogue was merely an attempt at humor to lighten things up a bit, and in no way was intended whatsoever to cast a negative light on any individual or group in this or any other forum. I apologize in advance if anyone was offended by any word or phrase in this post, but it certainly was not my intent to offend anyone or anything.)
Thanks for the link to the 3DWorld article.......good overview.
It's from Jan 2010, and things have changed, but it's still relevant. ;-)
Okay. It's now September 1st. I know that it is Labor Day weekend here in America. Fortunately, for some of us freelance artists out here do have to work. And, I rely on Carrara for some of my work. But, when the serial number for Carrara 8.5 expires on August 31, 2012, and we still would like to use Carrara 8.5 on September 1, and the app won't launch because the serial number is not up-to-date. Really?! This is becoming very annoying. Why the delay in providing a final, legitimate serial number for Carrara 8.5?
Because it's still in beta, that's why they haven't issued a final number. There's still work to do. I agree it would be nice to make sure a new beta serial number was issued prior to the expiration of the previous number. It is insane however, to use a beta for work that impacts your livelihood.
Because it's still in beta, that's why they haven't issued a final number. There's still work to do. I agree it would be nice to make sure a new beta serial number was issued prior to the expiration of the previous number. It is insane however, to use a beta for work that impacts your livelihood.
There was a new 8.5 beta build released and it's posted in the sticky area of this forum. Please see that the SN is good still.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/4700/
Sorry you didn't see this one.
WHAT THE HELL,,.........SERIAL............NO.
CAN YOU PLEASE POST DAM SERIAL NUMBER BEFORE EXPIRE ZA..........................
Calm down, please. DAZ did post an updated serial number, days ago, not in this thread because this is for an older beta but in the thread for the most recent beta, stickied at the top of the forum. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/98301/