By the drew (Pawn707) (68.164.88.163) on Monday, January 20, 2003 - 08:50 pm:

Does anyone have any experience with this plug-in? What are its main benefits?

thanks

By Hervé Steff (Hervé) (212.76.255.168) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 01:53 am:

There is a super main benefit... no docs (or so little), very complex to manage, very long to render, But but..... but... not expensive....

No really I have bought that plug a while ago, and have never used it.... unless you speak japanese...

Hervé

By david maas (Dobermunk) (195.211.178.146) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 07:56 am:

I also bought it - and it was worth hitting the render button with presets. I tried for two days to figure out what the many buttons on the many panels did but never managed to push the render in a direction that i could in any way foresee. I am technically -ahem- intuitive, so this is mainly a critique of user interface, etc.

I got great effects by copy/pastin ghte pre-sets. I now use G2 and am happy.

By Hervé Steff (Hervé) (212.76.255.89) on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 - 12:19 am:

What about the upcoming Taïki, let's hope a better interface and some docs....

By Psyhke (Jbeck) (24.163.209.122) on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 - 04:27 am:

I sometimes wonder if these Japanese developers realize the potential market they have with english speaking LW users. If they only were to always make their work as approachable to this audience, then they would open up many door for more sales and success.

By Hervé Steff (Hervé) (212.76.255.95) on Thursday, January 23, 2003 - 01:20 am:

Well I just dont think sales are so important for them, I mean look the price of OGO_SSS compared to the Worley's G2 price....

By Tom Burbage (Tburbage) (192.150.10.150) on Thursday, January 23, 2003 - 12:55 pm:

>>Hikari G2
While there is some overlap in the G2 an Hikari feature set, G2 has a broader (and different) general agenda. See of course www.worley.com.

>>Documentation
I doubt we'll ever see it. Too bad because, despite the fact that Ogo provided a fair number of examples and presets, some well-translated high quality insights into the software would be invaluable. As others have mentioned, it can be very slow because of its need to do alot of calculation-intensive raytracing, so a huge amount of time can be spent in experimentation due to the large array of variables.

The killer for me is that LW crashes *alot* when experimenting with the plugin. I believe there is a known problem when using Hikari with VIPER -- which note may well be a LW problem and not Hikari. To me, VIPER is a must for surfacing experimentation. So far as I know, Ogo has never commented on the above problem one way or the other.

BTW: I think one of the more interesting and less known features is Kougen or object/vertex-based lighting. It is pretty darned fast and in a sense can be used to simulate HDR and radiosity lighting effects.