[LiW]

Hi Everyone,

Looking for some help;)
We need to buy an instant rendering tool for our company. I am considering Arion and Octane. I have only tried octane demo as there's no such for arion so far.
It will be used for quick presentation of architecture in a paper model look manner. Our clients don't see much difference between sweet renders and these quick ones so I thought about reorganizing things a little bit to save our time and money. We will buy a GPU oriented workstation (2 gpu's onboard I think) and maybe you could help me to pick the software. Price doesn't matter.
To ease the workflow even more it will be a simple Sketchup file export. Ultimately photoshop will do the magic so I don't care much about the "tone sliders" in the renderer.

What is your experience with the mentioned renderers? If Arion better in any way? What about the workflow and rendering times? What sort of bugs do each of these have that cause delay in the process?

Thank you for your time and looking forward for your comments!

Here's an example of a sketch from octane demo:


instead of heavy rendering and scene setup we can deliver such image in 5 minutes from scratch. It eases the communication and makes people react like "wow, a paper model! you're cool";)

jed

[Maximus3D]

You are asking the wrong people on the wrong forum about the wrong product.

/ Magnus

[LiW]

yes
but here were always the right people to answer difficult questions
edit: and I've been following this forum since beta

[Maximus3D]

I know this much about that Arion thingy, it has not been updated in over a year now and they have now a bunch of pissed off customers over there demanding updates to fix bugs and add missing features. It has turned into a tool which only their betatesters seem to enjoy using. It's not something i would spend the fortune it costs on. You should look for other alternatives which are futureproof with a better workflow. Perhaps VrayRT is better for you.

/ Magnus

[tom]

instead of heavy rendering and scene setup we can deliver such image in 5 minutes from scratch. It eases the communication and makes people react like "wow, a paper model! you're cool";)

Have you tried Maxwell Fire with this scene? Will it take as long as 5 mins?

[tokiop]

Hi LiW,

didn't test Arion and Octane, they are maybe quicker than Maxwell's Fire, but still in the same range..

Have you heard of Twinmotion ? http://www.twinmotion.com/ the videos are impressive..
It looks much more real-time and could bring you a wider range of solutions than another physical renderer.

Victor

[Bubbaloo]

I vote for Maxwell. I'm sorry, but that render you posted looks like hammered dog shit. The Max to Maxwell connection on an i7 computer could do 10x better than that in 5 minutes. Any plugin with Fire capabilities will beat any GPU renderer for overall quality/speed. I'm not trying to be an ass, but I just hate to see people spend thousands on new Tesla GPUs for no good reason. Maxwell can do what you want. Simple geometry, simple materials, and simple lighting will make Maxwell fly. Have you tried with Fire yet?

[Half Life]

The Sketchup plugin does not have fire yet -- so it would have to be studio.

Best,
Jason.

[numerobis]

yes... sketchup on fIRE would be nice!

...but as far as i understood arion it's not more comfortable with sketchup for now.
you have to export your scene, apply the materials and setup the scene in arion then you can start the render... you can do this with studio too.
And as Max said, there are no new versions of arion for nearly 1 year... looks like they are rewriting everything - and the forum is almost dead.

and for octane... not much progress over there too - and the chief developer has left their team. i don't know if this will be good for the progress

my vote for maxwell too... fire rocks!!!

[rusteberg]

Press F13.

It's a global command in computer programs that few know about. It will expand your mind.

[Half Life]

Another point -- if money is no object then why not put that towards a powerhouse computer and just keep using Maxwell?

Best,
Jason.

[LiW]

Hi all, thank you for the answers.
I haven't tried Fire yet but maybe I should have read more. At first glance it looked like a preview window only. I promise to test it.
We are looking for a solution of WYSIWYG type. Price of the software doesn't matter to be precise. Simple market prices dumping forces us to stop producing nice yet costly imagery for each project. Now some will get more quality and some will get less. Money. Many people around here don't see much difference between artlantis and vray/maxwell and I am really sorry to say that. I used to care about presentation quality but recent experience has learned me that cheaper=better for most of the clients. And they don't care about "photoreal" quality. That's really bad but that's how it is at this moment.
Of course we will keep quality stuff, but only for those who want it and see point in receiving it. Here's a bit more on my company: www.architect.com.pl

all best
jed

[Half Life]

Fire can save out images and of course you can optimize your materials in Maxwell for a simpler look (and faster render) -- if it is only time you are concerned for then fire can easily be the answer for you.

Using the new Sketchup plugin I can render a scene from Sketchup with the defaults for materials and an HDRI background with a shadow pass have it composited in Photoshop using 2 different methods in less than 7 minutes (that includes file setup, render, and post processing time)... much faster than that seems a bit much and thats using the regular Maxwell engine. (I did this for a video demo on how to use the shadow channel)

If you are looking for a more stylized final product that looks "cheaper" to the client (weird I know but sometimes necessary) then there are many to choose from but here's an excellent thread about some of those types of engines:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtop ... 81&t=33097

and this:

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtop ... 80&t=33486

For a long time I worked in american comics -- and I used to (half) joke with other artist that the fans don't want quality, but that I charged extra to "crap it up"... the truth is that can apply to nearly any field or product.

Best,
Jason.

[Mihai]

More publicity for Maxwell with FIRE but I'm not unbiased
A few advantages compared to the GPU renderers you mentioned:

FIRE is already integrated in the following plugins:
3dsMax, Lightwave, Maya, Rhino, Solidworks, Modo(still in beta though)

So you can construct your scene while using FIRE at the same time, move/add/remove/change objects and see the updates directly without having to re-export-reload your scene in a GPU renderer for every change to your scene geometry.

Second big advantage is you can use any mxm, also instances, displacement with FIRE. So you don't have any material conversions to do or have to create two versions of a scene, one for "fancy" renders and another for quick cheap ones. Any material feature Maxwell can render, is compatible with FIRE. You can also save images at any resolution using FIRE and create animations of say 30 seconds per frame.

I really suggest giving it a try, it seems perfectly suited for the type of image you posted above.

[m-Que]

First of all, you should definitely give FIRE a try - it's not just a preview window; It's 'Draft mode' is exactly what you need.

And regarding those GPU renderers - just as Mihai mentioned, you cannot move/scale/add etc. objects. So, if your client says to move something "just a little", you basically have to re-export and do it from scratch and that's a HUGE disadvantage.