Rendering Technology and the Cyclops Wave!
Blog post November 24, 2017 cebas.org/blog
It’s been quite a month for rendering software this last quarter, first Chaos Group and Render Legion (Corona) merged in August. Rumours abound but we are not at liberty to make comments on the whys and the then what…? We do know that there are users who were with Corona because they didn’t want to be on Vray. Then on November 19, one year after relaunch, NVIDIA announces the demise of Mental Ray.
Edwin Braun, founder of cebas Visual Technology (info@cebas.com), writes about his view on the changes in response to many emails to him. You may know that finalRender trueHybrid recently launched (September 15, 2017) offering a powerful option to those seeking a faster, upgradeable and affordable renderer : full blog article @ http://www.cebas.org/blog/2017/11/
What are your views as a frequent user of rendering technology?
Thank you for checking in and I hope this will spur some input from the 3dsMax rendering populations in a positive way, please be constructive.
Seth,
This is about the rendering software changes happening in the market - general topic. I was seeking some feedback since this area is where we talk about renderers although I think your point is that it is more a place for technique than general user feedback, yet these two major changes I brought up is not something that has happened over the last 5 years so I feel it is worth inviting those interested to say something
I think it’s mostly the wrong audience because a lot of us don’t use render engines for more then just rendering out sims onto flipbooks.
Most vfx artists working on stylized stuff probably never even render anything.
@cebasVT I think the issue here is the tone - it doesn’t feel like you’re actually trying to start a discussion around the subject that relates to the community, but rather mechanical like a bot posted it. I very much want you to share your insights with us, and tell us about the changes that you see from your perspective (We here at Beyond-FX use your tools almost daily), but you’ve got to actually try to engage with the community here, or else it’ll get flagged as spam.
@Niels - I slightly agree, although I’d like to see more VFX artists exposed to more technical opportunities than what we consider classic stylized effects, so I’d love to encourage more discussions around the secondary technologies we use.
So let me try:
We’ve been watching the shift towards render efficiency, driven by fairly obvious monetary gains, over the past several years with excitement. I do feel like this year has been really really compelling, as so many of these tools are hitting fast enough iteration cycles that their render techniques are becoming extremely compelling for real time solutions.
On the other side of the spectrum, real time engines are starting to be used in film productions for previz (or even final shots), so we’re seeing our own tools and pipelines open up to better technologies (Octane Renderer in Unity!?)
I’ve spent most of my career saying that game technology sits about 10 years behind film, simply because of performance reasons, but there’s finally been a massive shift on both sides to bring these technologies together. My favorite part of this? I’m seeing a future where our tools can get out of the way and let us focus on making great art, not technology.
Keith,
I like those paragraphs you wrote… “We’ve been watching the shift towards render efficiency, driven by fairly obvious monetary gains,…” And that was what I was hoping you reply to my post – that is, your point of view.
I did not actually write those views - you mentioned ‘mechanical’ tone ( I deleted it after you mention it was not suitable for the audience here…so my apologies for those not seeing it now ) I did credited those quotes to 3dallusions founder, Russell Thomas, who is in the business of architectural visualization, so I am not in a position to alter much of his points
So please Keith, do post your views.
@Niels : Thanks, my bad, this is Realtimevfx.com forum - I had no idea that VFX artists do not use rendering tools! I thought they do render at certain points of the production work.
I think Keith has mentioned something that only folks in the industry will know so if Keith has no objection, I would like to post just this short but insightful (without the ‘So let me try’ and hmm, not mentioning Octane, either…) to Facebook to see if more will comment. Thanks.
