Which 3D rendering engine/CAD combination

Bjorn,
I had a very little experience with Cinema 4D, it was pretty easy and very quick to use at that time.
Lately I was not so impressed by how they implemented the new rendering engines, right now I definitely prefer to do all my job in Rhino and directly render into MaxwellRender.

You'll need a good hardware for it. The last version is much quicker (well, 1.7 it's quick enough vs. 1.1 being incredibly slowwwww) but you still need a beefy HW. I'm on a dual xeon quad core 3.0 with 8GB Ram. I can render pretty decent images at 4000x3000 in just about two/three hours.
Overnight rendering will produce excellent ones.

Maxwell works just like a camera and studio. Light means it all. And NextLimits (Maxwell's producer) supports an invaluable materials repository online with free access to all registered users (access is free, you need to be registered to freely download the materials) filled with thousands of stunning materials posted by users, ready to drop and use.

What you need is to have some photography and composition skills, play with your light set and take a shot.
The multilight option will allow you to interactively adjust light intensity, film sensivity and shutter speed along the rendering itself or at the end. Yes, you may render once and save different shots.

I'm posting a sample image of a 38' lobster I recently designed, this shot was just a "studio" composition, playing with light in order to get a good graphic and visual effect more than displaying the boat itself. Just a "designer" thing.


The second shot was taken in similar set conditions, made for advertising purposes. The sail boat represents a concept and the superstructures were a 5 minutes surfacing in Rhino just to make it ready fr the shot.


Lars,
I agree 100% with you when referring to Freehand vs. Illustrator. Freehand had a very bad reputation due to poor printing performances on early releases (I mean for professional typography purposes) but I love it and I feel it's so friendly and easy to use that I never considered Ill. as an option.

Paolo

The lines below the sailing yacht are construction plans of a classic yacht. That image has been produced for advertising purposes, meaning an avolution in the continuity of yacht design, from classic boats to modern yachts, built on wood (now using a patented wood composites technology).

As I already mentioned, MaxwellRender license allows the user to render from inside the MXWL Studio environment or directly by his favoured application since plugins are freely available for most of the current CAD and 3D applications on teh market, including SolidWorks, Cinema, SketchUp, Maya, Softimage, 3D Max, Rhino, Lightwave and more.

What's really different from MaxwellRender and the common rendering engines is the fact that in MXWL you immediately get a rough representation of the final image, only it'll be very noisy and not very detailed but already showing the light and shadows as they'll be. Thus you can decide if it'll satisfy your expectations or not, if let it go or stop it, modify the setup and re-launch or, eventually, to play with multilight settings (sensivity, shutter speed and lights intensity) while the image keeps rendering and updating.
This process of rendering multipass may keep hours or even days, depending on your needs and your settings.
It'll just refine the image offering you more and more details (if correctly setup).

It's something similar to real photography. In low light moder cameras may be able to take a shot with very low natural light at a candle's flame, it'll be pretty grainy and dark but it'll still be readable.
You may also choose to use additional lights, a flash or to set a much longer exposure with the camera on a tripod, and you'll get a much better image, but it'll take time to shoot.

Here's the same, the more detailed the image, the longer the rendering time.

You'll never need to spend hours waitng for the random squares to slowly reveal a poor image at its final resolution or at ridicolous very low resolution setup like it happens with the other rendering engines.

RAMD, HD, resources .. hhmm this is a good question.
It depends. Several factors may have influence on this.

How large is your scene ? How far from the 0,0,0 origin are your rendering ? How may polygons in your scene ? How complex your emitters are ?
Do you have sub srface scattering materials ?
I don't actually know of any size limit to MXWL rendering scene and files.
A setup like the ones depicted may produce (depending on several factors) MXS and MXI files in the range of hundreds of MB up to some GB.

A simple rhule of thumb indicates at least 1GB of RAM for each processor or thread.

The bigger and faster your machine setup, the quicker and more detailed rendering you'll get.

A dual Xeon quad core with 8GB of RAM or more and a good NVidia Quadro FX graphics gard will be able to render at decent speed.
If you need to render animations then I would suggest you to setup the scen on your machine, perform the stills and preview shots, then outsource the rendering queue to a rendering farm.
There're a few ones, Maxwell certified.

I would kindly sugegst you to check teh Maxwell Render forum, tehre're very useful informations and images to give a look.

Hope this may help you.

Paolo

To qualify my statement...
We are talking rendering in this thread. In my world, rendering takes second stage to the actual modeling. Being able to render the model for promotional or visual purposes is a bonus, but the important aspect is the final production surfaces for me. Primarily to feed to a 5-Axis CNC machine for buck tooling.
Rhino can achieve this, but has a few issues with stitching surfaces together and the way it deals with fillets. Im my experience, it generates very large model files, which in my environment run slow and are unstable when asking it to complete complicated trims / extensions and the like. It also (Rhino 4) has limited parameterisation in its modeling structure.. for pure final surfacing and full integration of several concurrent linked components being modeled by several people in an office, Unigraphics is better than Rhino. Not easy to put into words, but the difference is astounding.
Now back to rendering. Unigraphics does not work so well with Maxwell for instance, as Rhino...translation / conversion is required which to me brings the issue of file size and model detail. The ultimate render (if you are into photo realism say) requires every fillet / blend / crease / screw head / teak plank / handrail base / cleat / bollard etc etc. Especially when renders are wanted of zoomed-in areas, not just images of the entire craft from a distance. Unigraphics can produce said detail, but convert it all to Rhino (even worse, .iges) and you have a model that is very large and compromised. There are converters, but the hassle of conversion and large file size remains. This is where I am at the moment...ideal design software for product design, compromised when converted to the ideal software for rendered images.

Here is a non-specific detail on a large yacht that was rendered to give 'certain people' a clue as to what the hell the designers were talking about.
To obtain this rather basic image, and others from different angles, the original model was done in Unigraphics. Note the full radius details on the handrails, and the grub-screws holding the stanchions into the bases.
When it was imported into Rhino via .iges to use either Maxwell or V-Ray, the rails doubled the file size and the rails were corrupted due to the minute blends. Also, the hull and portlight surfaces were no longer sewn together and gaps were visible. So a translator was used to take the UG into Rhino direct. Much better. The whole process therefore from modeling to printed image is protracted, expensive in time and of questionable usefulness. Imagine this being the entire yacht, with similar exact detail throughout, and how long the rendering would take.
An example perhaps of the demands of one software on another becoming the biggest obstacle between production and promotional 3-D design.

Bjorn,
yes MXWL produces the same effect as a standalone application or as a plugin from any of the supported applications. However, its standalone STUDIO allows for more accurate and complex setup.

I, personally, use (95%) the Rhino plugin. But I do not exclude a changing in strategy in the next future, it's only matter of time I'll dedicate to rendering.

Codog,
I agree with you for what regards some issues with complex models, large assemblies and very detailed (thiny filleting) parts in Rhino.
I think it's related to their maths and memory management.

However, do not forget that Rhino is probably the best modeler for hull surfacing and fairing. It still lacks some important features and I'm continuosly soliciting them but it already works pretty well and it's very easy to handle.

Second, there's the cost factor which plays an important role for small studios or individual professionals to whom a NX or Catia license fee would cost definitely too much.

And, are you sure you actualy need to model every single fastener with extreme precision, including the smoothing and filleting of edges ? I think that such a level of detail on a large assembly like a maxi-yacht doesn't make sense.

Why not working with multi-resolution assemblies and libraries ? Re-calling the more detailed part only when you actually need it ?

Do not think that a 0.5mm radius/fillet will render better than a single edge when the whole model is above 100 feet in lenght.
It just doesn't make sense. The art of rendering is to keep it simple and to get stunning results, anything else is just wasted time and resources.

Paolo

My direct experience is extremely limited. I've played with both, and have directed others using both to achieve the end results. I'm not a renderer....an art form requiring skills I don't have time to master. I am, however extremely precious when it comes to the visualisation and presentation of designs I'm involved in..
In my rather limited opinion therefore, I like Maxwell more than V-Ray.
V-Ray can produce very similar results. However if render time (and therefore final time scale and cost) was not important, I would prefer any renderings of designs that I'm involved in to be done in Maxwell.

I agree Rhino is good at surfacing and hull fairing. Its not as good as Unigraphics, in my opinion. Whatever works best for each of us though. Rhino is certainly very competent, and I am certainly not criticising it...many of the designs I've been involved in were executed in Rhino.
Yes, cost is a good point. Rhino scores a point on this one.

As I said in an earlier post, rendering for me takes second stage to final design modeling. To be honest, in my environment where most components are manufactured (either in house or by suppliers to our designs) by mostly CAD/CAM of some sort, the attention to detail in original design is totally necessary. Each component in an assembly is tagged with supplier / weight / cost / design drawings etc, without full detail they couldn't be produced.
Yes, time could be spent loading simplified versions of components into an assembly to be rendered. Yes, fillets and grub screws need not be shown in promotional renderings.
The art of rendering as you put it is not a skill I'm adept at...at present, to me, you either have a photo-realistic rendering of the components you want to illustrate, or you just export a perspective view .jpg of the native model. I'd argue that either will sell the product...a screen grab or .jpg export is instantaneous and free. You mention cost / return....our money is in the design software, not the rendering software. Renderings are expensive in time and money, especially when outsourced. To make an outsourced rendering quicker and cheaper, we would need to spend more time / money in-house adapting / converting final models and so on.
We don't have time to selectively load / unload components from a model depending on wether its a full view or zoomed in detail.
I think we have reached the cross-roads between commercially driven promotional renderings and renderings that are a bonus by-product of a final design. By that I mean conceptual vs actual....the difference between rendering a basic concept model (before the product exists) for promotional purposes and rendering a highly detailed final production model to augment a product already in development. So many layers of what is acceptable lie in between

hey ppls

im just doing a boat on rhino at the moment and i see what u mean about the file getting to big and the whole thing starts to stall (so i just play with layers). anyways,

Q: im trying to get my hands on V-ray at the moment, and cant, but what i can get is Flamingo... what are your thoughts? im not after great rendering like the hand rail picture, but i am after something good. should i bother with Flamingo for a starter, or should i go stright to V-ray? comments?

far

Hi,
I would suggest you to double check the optimization of curves in Rhino (fairing). If the curves are unfair and with too many CPs youìll get heavy and not so good surfaces.
surface parametrization is the most important trick when modeling boat hulls.

About the rendering, VRay would be my choice between the two, however I prefer MaxwellRender. Brazil is also being finally released for Rhino (just announced).
I would just forget about Flamingo.

Try to find "Rhino Modeling for the Marine Industry" tutorial, it explains pretty well how to keep your surfaces faired and under control.

Have fun

Paolo

Forget Flamingo.......go for v-ray..........

hey pavel59 and ratrace2

well the boat is 85m long with a beam of 16m, so it might be a bit tricky in regards to surface parametrization, but ill have a go and see what i can come up with. as i was saying, i just turn off the layers that i dont need at the time and that brings running speed back to normal.

so u and ratrace2 recommend go straight for the V-ray... wheres that credit card ha! i live in australia... so im going to get ****ed over with the exchange rate...

thanks for the help

far

Sorry about that exchange rate mate, but you get distributed rendering with V-ray(6 computers working in a network on the same file). Plus, V-ray is cheaper than mental ray, Maxwell Render, and just as good. Flamingo, you are going to want something better in the next 6 months so wait and save your money.........



If Rhino is "lagging", I think you need to upgrade your computer.
I have a 3gig intel machine and a 3D connection "space commander" by logitech and a 26.5 in LCD Samsung display running Rhino, ALibre and V-ray.

I rendered my Avatar with V-ray.............

hi ratrace2

im running a HP 17" laptop - 4G - 2GHz - 2core(about one and a half Y/O)... having said that im also running Autocad and Keycreator along with the Rhino and vista. and plus i could get rid of a lot of crap in 'files'. but i wouldnt mind getting a weapon of a laptop, i think the speed is up to 2.9GHz - 4core (think)... what would u recommend to look out for in a laptop eg, speed, memory, cores, brands? or get the best of everything? yours is 26.5", thats massive!

Price for V-ray? i saw a price at around $1600, would this be right/am i looking at the right V-ray? all is there a place that u guys recommend to buy off?

http://www.evermotion.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=57408

also question for everyone, whats your view on vista??? i did here they have a replacement coming out soon, maybe at the end of the year or something...??? comments

far

hmm .. just a question: why to spend money on a laptop ?
You should be able to get a much better hardware on a desktop machine.

I'm using a dual XEON 3GB quad-core with 8GB of RAM, a Quadro card and a 26" monitor at 1900x1200 + a Samsung 19" for the menus and additional stuff.

I'm not updated pn sw prices but for what I remember Maxwell should cost something around 900 Euros. VRay should cost almost the same.

And anot the OS, I would stay on XP (I've it actually).

Paolo

This is my oldfashioned setup for Freehand 2D renderings. I must work on a Mac PowerBook G4 since I sometimes have need for OS9, otherwise it is OSX 10.4, and my screen is 17" with a 1680 x 1050 resolution. The additional screen is 30" with 2560 x 1050 which is very nice, I don´t have to zoom in and out all the time.

I have mainly used laptops over the last decade and last week I put my desktop computers in a storage. As backup I now have another identical PowerBook and an Iomega 1 TB hard drive.