By Howard Margolius (Howardm) (63.79.48.130) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 11:49 am:

Where can I find an up to date list of a comparison of the latest 3D software?

My Mac biased company is considering Electric Image, and Im desperately trying to convince them that LW is faster and to even convert to PCs!
Its a struggle, as they think PCs are the devils work (I guess they are, Gates is the devil!)


At EIs site, they have a benchmark comparing a scene to LW, stating that they render in 3 mins where LW renders in 42! I think its gotta be total BS!

So...here can I get a real comparision to prove LW is better?

Thanks!

By Arnie Cachelin (Arnie) (66.81.223.49) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 01:29 pm:

All the benchmarks are BS, since they compare apples to oranges. I would look at the site with the Sponza render competition, since they compare a standard image, where skilled users try to get a good-looking image in a minimum time.
More important would be to consider the state of EI, which had to seek bankruptcy protection from its creditors even after it ejected from the business-car-wreck that was Play Inc.
I believe their company is down to the owner, who picked it up on his way out the Play door, and his son.

I may be biased, but I think many of these last statements can be verified. Using LW will let you gradually incorporate PCs into the pipeline smoothly, or pick up bare-bones PC systems for render bitches while the artists stick with the Macs they know and love (assuming we are talking about OSX).

By Mathias (Lynx3d) (217.232.170.155) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 02:09 pm:

One thing is for sure, Lightwave on a Dual Xeon is a lot faster than on a Dual G4...just check the benches at http://www.blanos.com/benchmark/
(click on the top10 and change the limit=10 in the URL to 50 or something)

And i only heard of electric images a few times, so i just had a look at universe5 at electric image's site...

their speed comparison chart:
claiming to be more than 4 times faster than Cinema4d (!!) and almost 25 times faster than Max (scanline?)...that's not only bold that must be some loss of reality...?? (besides the fact that you can't compare 4 packages with a single scene, even without mentioning details besides polycount...)
and then this sentence: "By utilizing our new Multi-Processor support a Universe 5 user will gain 95-100% speed increases for every processor on the system."
Uhmhum...what a great unheard invention, and 95-100%...sure.

What also made me wonder is their feature list...many films that are on Newteks too (huh? ok nothing too strange) but also lots of films where Newtek has the successor on its list (like Blade => Blade II)

I don't know anything about that software, but THAT quality of information would never make me buy it...

By Howard Margolius (Howardm) (63.79.48.130) on Friday, January 24, 2003 - 05:00 pm:

Thanks guys,

Where can I find the Sponza benchmarks or even a real site? I mean Ive found tons of random users pages, but not the main site...is there one?

Yeah those are bold statements on their site, thats why i must protect LWs integrity against EI! I seriously doubt the 3-40 min comparision can be true...otherwise the whole world would be using EI!

Funny too, I bet all their Film credits are for things like onscreen monitor graphics or the credit animations or something, but not serious effects like LW!

I think Im getting through to these Mac biased guys....theres pissed that the MAC LW isnt as good as PC though!

By ingo (Ingo) (62.109.71.148) on Saturday, January 25, 2003 - 07:56 am:

C'mon guys, Electric Image was used for fx in cinema before anyone realizeses Lightwave could do this also, and of course its still widely used because of its speed, but nowadays mostly for previsualizing (just look at the SW DVD's).
Although that speed difference is not that much, i bet they used their fast high quality phong engine with reflection mapping and compare that to LW and C4D using raytracing, i think than the rendering times could be true. When using EI's raytracer, things look different.
Going back to your question, what is your company doing ? As Arnie suggested it might be a good idea getting LW on the Mac's and use Linux boxes for rendering, overall less costs and easier maintenance, if the rendering engine is available for Linux of course.
Otherwise i suggest you look for a new job, since it seems that your not a big help for your company with your ignorance. And if youre able to use a search engine you might have found that the Sponza results are her >> http://hdri.cgtechniques.com/~sibenik2/

Sorry for the harsh words, but please come back to earth and dont blame the equipment.

ingo

By Howard Margolius (Howardm) (63.227.57.132) on Saturday, January 25, 2003 - 10:26 am:

huh?! whats up your ass?

ok, to begin with, I DID use a search engine, and like I said, I found plenty of sparatic Sponza pages but couldnt find that one...thanks though.

We do have LW for the MAC!
I dont blame the equipment, I blame Newtek....why? for one thing, the MAC version is no where near as refined as the PC version (why?!), and to answer another question of yours, we DID buy a linux box, because NT said they MADE SCREAMERNET FOR LINUX...but of course when we called to install it on the box they gave us the usual bullshiit...oh its in beta, and will be out soon...yeah right...read up here on the groups...there is no linux screamernet, most likely will never be complete LW for linux.
...so what the hell are we to do with this box now?! The company doesnt want to shell out the extra money for a normal windows setup...so they are slightly screwed now thanks to Newteks lie.

anyway, thats why I am trying to convince them to stick with LW on MAC AND PC...not to convert to EI!

By ingo (Ingo) (62.109.71.149) on Saturday, January 25, 2003 - 04:13 pm:

Aaah, they still have Lightwave, thats what i didn't realized. But with that Linux/Newtek experience that is no wonder that they want to change. Glad my dealer told me not to rely on Newtek because i was interested in a Linux renderslave too.
I hope your company does the usual way of looking for a new program and they have seen a presentation of EI. From my own experience i can tell both programs work well together (i use them for still pictures) since they both have the camera mapping/front projection mapping feature (btw kind of invented by the EI guys for Terminator 2). My main reason using still EI from time to time are problems with high resolution print renderings in LW. But if EI is useful for you depends of course on your work, if you dont need a raytracer EI is still a lot faster than Lightwave, and has a better antialiasing. But EI has still no usable raydiosity, thats a big plus for Lightwave. Just tell them that buying a new software is only a small part of the costs, learning takes a lot of time and money.
Hope that helps a bit to clear things up and sorry for my harsh first response.

By Joao Neves (Joao) (81.131.193.31) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 08:10 pm:

Guys,
You shouldn't be too mean with Electric Image.
It is a much faster renderer than LW, but then again, it's also much worse at it and all in all is a more primitive package.
I heard however that EI's modeler is superior to LW's (which let's face it - is not that good). Is it true that Electric Image is a solid modeler (compared to LW's surface modeler)?
If it is, and depending on what you want to do in 3D, it may be a much better bet.
In architecture firms for example, most of the modelling is done in Form*Z as it is a solid modeler and much more precise and less buggy. The object is manytimes imported into LW for quality texturing and rendering as well as animation.

Sometimes two software packages can be quite useful - just like dual monitors :-)
Oh, and by the way, stop trying to convert your Mac-biased company and just switch... :-)

joao.

By Digital Freak (Trilogy) (203.33.171.14) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 09:46 pm:

Never trust any companies internal optimized tests and comparisons....

Macs are starting to age, they finally have a great OS, but the hardware has aged compared to the competition.

PC's will always be faster and cheaper.
PC's are even faster for AFX and Photoshop these days, which is pretty amazing really...
It has changed rapidly in a short amount of
time...

I'd try and integrate a Mac / PC solution...


PS: Mathias "Lynx3D"
"By utilizing our new Multi-Processor user will gain 95-100% speed increases for every processor on the system."
Uhmhum...what a great unheard invention, and 95-100%...sure.

Actually don't be surprised on that one!

I'd still have to see it, but Digital Fusion and a few other applications also claim to do the very same thing... I beleive it's possible...

Some programs only get a 50% increase, but i believe with clever programming, and load balancing it is possible.

By James Allen (Skonk) (80.74.170.20) on Friday, February 07, 2003 - 05:37 am:

The OSX version of lightwave is as good if not better than the pc version.

James..