By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Monday, January 27, 2003 - 03:41 pm:

Did you see this?

http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/tech_gallery_index.php

Come on NT!

By Lamont Gilkey (Lamont) (204.210.26.244) on Monday, January 27, 2003 - 04:26 pm:

If Newtek were to try to out-do every little app that's "cool" for the moment, we'll never get to the next version of our software.

One-upping is the nature of this business.

Besides, you can always get these results with a little elbow grease and Lightwave know-how... kids now a days...

By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Monday, January 27, 2003 - 05:51 pm:

That´s right, is always possible to fake some effects tweaking parameters and doing some compositing but at last is just a fake not real simulation.
Take a prism for example, you can simulate the dispersion effect but anybody with experience can note the difference. This reminds me those 5.6 version days faking radiosity, don´t you think is better to have LW 7.5 with the real one insted?

Best
Christian

By Userdelta (Userdelta) (24.239.165.129) on Monday, January 27, 2003 - 06:21 pm:

eh. brazil is just a plugin renderer, and it doesnt come with max. its more of the equivalent of G2 then of LW so consider the amount of awesome render plugs for LW. nothing to be jealous over.

By David Allen (Daveallen) (68.2.86.65) on Monday, January 27, 2003 - 07:55 pm:

I wouldn't just write off brazil as just another render plugin. They are a pretty dedicated team (like lightwaves) that has a strong user community (like lightwaves).

I am not into software rivalry, its what works that counts. I hope this raises the stakes at Newtek to get something out there the competes.

Brazil has multiple bounces (that doesn't take an eternity), EFFICIENT use of multiple processors, seperate ray recursion of reflect and refract, support for IES photometric data (version 2.0), etc. Basically just more control of the render.

Lightwave has hands down the best animation/render package on the market. But the brazil 'plugin renderer' for Max/Viz is superior because that's all it does (actually gaffers too).

Keep in mind its sold as a plugin renderer NOT a gaffer like G2 (which I have and is very nice). To my knowledge there are no plugin renderers for lightwave.

But alas, I am learning Viz to use in architectual visualizaton because of the ease of workflow and the availibilty of great renders in brazil. So...I could be bias.

-Dave

By Userdelta (Userdelta) (24.239.165.129) on Monday, January 27, 2003 - 09:58 pm:

oh dont get me wrong, im not saying that brazil is crap. just saying that its not fair to compare a standalone renderer to a full featured 3d app.
but anyhow either way i explain it, it doesnt matter, lets see whats in the next release of lw

By David Allen (Daveallen) (68.2.86.65) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 12:19 am:

I'll drink to that

By Lamont Gilkey (Lamont) () on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 02:00 am:

> No, there are no plug-in renders for Lightwave. But there can be.. well what about OGO_Hikari? It's a renderer. It intercepts the rays and does what it needs to do.

By Hervé Steff (Hervé) (212.76.255.164) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 02:41 am:

OGO ? Too slow, Too complex (at least for me), no docs... I am also looking at VIZ, so much better for Architectural stuff and Brazil... ouh la la...

By Hervé Steff (Hervé) (212.76.255.164) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 02:56 am:

in case one's interested

http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/article1_SF.asp

By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 02:20 pm:

"Lightwave has hands down the best animation/render package on the market"

I don´t think so, XSI is more powerfull as far as I know.

"its not fair to compare a standalone renderer to a full featured 3d"

why not? I have a lot of faith in NT development team, they CAN write a killer product, but IMHO they are putting efforts in the wrong areas.

Best
Christian

By Digital Freak (Trilogy) (203.31.48.50) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 04:35 pm:

I agree that Lightwaves renderer has fallen behind the current cream of crop, (it's been at the front for many, many years)

Brazil and to a lesser extent Mental Ray
have both improved their rendering engines.
Brazil, is definately capable of rendering effects that LW can't.

Brazil costs more than LW, and it's just a renderer. With just a single render node.
You still need to add Max5... Ooouch!

And then you get a completely buggy, 3D program with a buggy renderer, that is not native.

Have you actually used XSI or Max or Brazil?

It's easy to say Program X is great when you have never used it, even easier when you don't actually have to spend $10,000 to buy a licence.

LW is never going to have everything that other programs have.... It's always a game of leap frog, and the other frogs have a bigger pond.

Is it fair to make comparisons against apples and oranges, ferrari's and hyandai's?

LW and XSI?

Sure you can compare how XSI costs $$$$$$$$$$
and LW costs $$$.... Bang for buck LW wins.

If your after a very low value for money 3D application, that can possibly make a semi accurate prism. I'm sure you have plenty of choices.


The rest of us, can live with no dispersion,
and great bang for buck. (Hikari does it)
Sure LW needs plenty of things, and an improvemnt in the renderer would be cool.

But Brazil and Mental Ray, are developed by respecitve companies, and all they do, all day long is develop them.

NT are a smaller company, who are trying to develop the whole application. not just the renderer. While adding Linux support, bug fixes,
and new features. (think about it)

Can i ask which areas do you think Newtek are doing wrong? IYHO

By Userdelta (Userdelta) (24.239.165.129) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 04:43 pm:

its not fair because there is a lot more to lightwave then just the renderer. you want to compare a large diamond to a diamond necklas.

"IMHO they are putting efforts in the wrong areas." uh what areas are those? animation? character animation? i think thats much more important then sss and microdisplacements and real dispersions.

By william greenlee (Billyboy) (12.218.128.69) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 05:32 pm:

Therre is nothing wrong with Lightwaves render engine except that capablitlies of the user.
There nothing in those renders that cant be done with Lightwave.
If you think me wrong go look in the Lightwave gallerys.

By David Allen (Daveallen) (68.2.86.65) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 06:27 pm:

My My what was render envy has degenerated to render insecurity.

Lightwave can do any of the above given enough time. Its just a matter of pushing the pixels around. I just say that brazil is doing it faster and more true to life.

Lightwave is to Max as Brazil is to Lightwave as far as render quality go. I have used and am using both. Lightwave has the catching up to do.

I don't think its a matter of what's 'wrong' with lightwave as much as it is what could be made 'better'.

AND if the quality is the final render is soley left to the end user then...Lightwave has no need to give us anymore updates. Unless of course you want to push the envelope. I do!

-Dave

By Chris S. (Fez) (68.51.141.174) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 09:18 pm:

That subpixel displacement looks as sharp as Prman. Don't see anything like that in the Lightwave gallery.

By Larry Shultz "SplineGod" (Larrys) (209.179.235.60) on Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 11:41 pm:

Maybe when Brazil has a good modeler and animation package and costs less then Lightwave Ill take a look...

By David Allen (Daveallen) (68.2.86.65) on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 12:19 am:

Larry, if Hash and Brazil could combine then you'd be set!!!

By Larry Shultz "SplineGod" (Larrys) (209.179.235.60) on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 02:01 am:

I said GOOD modeler...
Hash, Brazil...sounds like a drug run..

By Werner Ziemerink (Werner) (196.41.163.201) on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 02:13 am:

I've never heard of anyone who needed dispersion
in production. We don't need a lot of cool but useless goodies in Lightwave...we need more speed for rendering GU scenes.

By Werner Ziemerink (Werner) (196.41.163.201) on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 02:21 am:

I've never heard of anyone who needed dispersion
in production. We don't need a lot of cool but useless goodies in Lightwave...we need more speed for rendering GI scenes.

I must admit, the wax shader looks awesome. Can this be achieved with G2?

By Greg Trent (Trentonia) (128.158.11.42) on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 08:07 am:

You don't have to buy Brazil. Just go to http://www.respower.com . They handle Brazil renders for a small license "rental fee", and coming soon (hopefully) is Mental Ray.

By Derek Mebius (Mebek) (152.163.189.134) on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 12:54 pm:

The only thing I really envy about Brazil is that it handles all the special effects at render time -- no post-process filters. Camera bloom is computed as the ray strikes the surface, not afterwards when the program tries to "remember" where the hotspots were supposed to be. Personally, I can never get Corona to look right. Maybe I'm just not doing it right. But it would be nice to compute the effects during raytracing rather than afterward.

Oh, and maybe some speed improvements as well.

--Mebek

By Mike Morrison (Boulyabase) (24.186.181.23) on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 11:57 pm:

IFW2 Textures offers an alternate rendering system, with new shading algorithms for ambient, diffuse, and specular. I don't think a lot of people are aware of them (or the various flavors of them, such as dedicated Blinn, Oren Nayer, Strauss, etc.).

Anyway, I just recently did a review of IFW2, for In Depth Arts:
http://www.critical-depth.com/Reviews_Software/PC_IFW2_v5/PC_IFW2_v5.asp

They're not much slower than LightWave's native renderer and might be of interest if you're after a different "look".

By Digital Freak (Trilogy) (203.33.171.12) on Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 02:15 pm:

Isn't IFW2 just a shader?

I don't think IFW2 offers an alternate rendering system... It might have a few algorithims for differen't effects, but it's still using LW internal raytracer. I don't think it will quite make the same effects as Brazil... (or Hikari)

But IFW2 textures are very cool..
Flownoise and the new Skin shader look good.

By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.193) on Saturday, February 01, 2003 - 02:05 pm:

G2 can do some SSS effects but it seems it´s only optimized for human skin and is not very accurate in comparision to brazil or final render solution.
I like LW renderer a lot but IMHO it needs more advanced features, speed optimizations and maybe alternate algorithms to be "more" a raytracer than a scanline renderer.

Best
Christian

By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 09:06 am:

I can´t understand why Newtek and the developer of Hikari doesn´t work together and improve the weak areas of LW renderer. That would be really good for both of them.

Best
Christian

By Digital Freak (Trilogy) (203.33.171.196) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:23 pm:

If LW renderer is so bad, than make a better one!

Go on!!

I'm waiting!

And really if it's so bad, then go and use something else.

By Dustin D'Amour (Wizcraker) (68.99.218.128) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 07:11 pm:

Xsi uses Mental Ray 3.1 as its rendering engine. Now Renderman 11 is nice, and it comes in cheap for students [just over a grand]. It would be nice though if Newtek supported .rib so we could get a plugin to interface Renderman with Lightwave like we can with Maya. But I guess that is to hopeful thinking since Lightwave seems to be anti-Renderman.

By Jeff H. (Pixelmonk) (64.32.196.143) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 09:31 pm:

There's Lightman for LW, so quit whining about Renderman support and saying Lightave "seems to be Anti-Renderman".

By Dustin D'Amour (Wizcraker) (68.99.218.128) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 10:09 pm:

I haven't used Lightman before. Does it work seamless and as easy as MTOR?

By policarpo (Policarpo) (66.25.138.182) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 11:39 pm:

why not contact the developer and see how it functions with your copy of PRMan?

http://www.td-grafik.de/softw/lightman.php3

By Dustin D'Amour (Wizcraker) (68.99.218.128) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 04:54 am:

Policarpo - thanks for the link.

By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 05:11 pm:

Digital Freak: Relax man! this is only a forum conversation, in the end the only objective of all this is grab the attention of Newtek´s development team.
I know LW renderer is a very good one but is important to express and say what are the weak points of it for doing some improvements like speed, texture filtering, and advanced features in order to be COMPETITIVE in terms of marketing.
This is important (at least to me) because I like LW so much and I would love to see it at the very top of 3D apps, not in a mid range place as always.

Best
Christian

By Userdelta (Userdelta) (24.239.165.129) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 06:28 pm:

how about waiting for the next release before you guys start bashing lw's renderer's developement. every release so far has had tremendous enhancements and improvements that put lw's renderer up top of its game. its the nature of the business for other programs to advance too. this attitude is like a 5 year old being angry at his parents because he doesnt have the NEW toy his friends got on their birthday, but guess what? his birthday hasnt come yet, and maybe he's going to get that toy and MORE when his birthday comes.
everybodys birthday comes once a year, NOT every day. lets not get rediculous guys.

By Lamont Gilkey (Lamont) (204.210.26.244) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 07:31 pm:

Yeah UserDelta,

I like your analogy with the 5 year old BTW. The "OOHH!! I want this new thing" thing has got to stop.

By Digital Freak (Trilogy) (203.33.171.14) on Thursday, February 06, 2003 - 10:50 pm:

Agreed Userdelta nice analogy...

Dude i am relaxed, you don't want to see me upset.. (incredible hulk style)

Like i said in a post further up the list.
I can spot a Brazil image with the naked eye..

I do know that LW has slightly fallen behind,
the cream of crop renderers.
But the differences are still very minor IMO...

It's a constant game of leap frog, and the other frogs have bigger ponds.. No, one renderer or 3D program, is going to have everything, always.

Considering the price of LW a fully featured package, compared to that of Max & Brazil for a single node. LW is still a much better package.

LW was even used as a comparison for much of Brazil's development.

Look at the LW gallery, it's right up with the best!.. Brazil is good, no doubt!...

But as LW has always been at the front in this particular area, i have no doubt the next major release will look even better... Until then complaining about what the other frogs are up to, is pointless.

I share your passion for LW, and i do think it is good you do care about LW.

But you have bought up this discussion, multiple
times, with nothing constructive as a result.

I don't mean any offence, but i am entitled to my opinion too...

NT have had a hard time, over the last 12-18months. So it's only fair that we let the new staff etc, have the benefit of the doubt.
It's not easy to program a 3D renderer, not to mention a fully fledged 3D program.

Wait for a Major release, until then...
Hikari and G2 to a lesser extend, can add extra
functionality to the LW renderer now.

Over and out..

By Christian Avalos (Cavalos) (64.213.56.192) on Friday, February 07, 2003 - 10:53 am:

10/4