Battlestar Galactica multilayer rendering and compositing example

[plsyvjeucxfw]

Very, very interesting. I imagine that if EIAS were a more well rounded package, i.e. modeling, texturing, with support for multi-pass output that it might have been the package of choice for BSG. Of course Lightwave has been used for space type stuff as far back as Babylon 5 on the Amiga.

Part way through the first page the writer claims "Thank the gods Lightwave is the fastest rendering system on the planet", which made me laugh. EI has always claimed that they're the fastest.

Still, the vitriol, as you say, is just dripping. People are obviously passionate about their choices and their opinions.

Let's hope version 7 of EIAS brings all we've hoped for, and maybe one or two things extra.

[FelixCat]

The man is a little bitter, but his steap by steap is very useful. Good planing is always important. Thanks for sharing.

FelixCat

[juanxer]

Are RPF and OpenEXR very different? As read in the article, OpenEXR supports floating point colourspaces. Even if EIAS won't produce deeper than 8 bpc imagery right now, one hopes it will eventually do so and that its upcoming multilayer capabilities will support them when that happens.

After Effects seems to support both formats.

[RoundPixel]

Well, being both a Lightwave and 3DTK (i know it´s not in the same league as EIAS) user i have to say that EI (Camera actually) is the fastest Phong renderer in the universe, and even does it with such an outstanding quality hardly equalled by no other render engine. This is a fact.

This said, i´d add that what Kat implies in his statement by saying that Lightwave being the Fastest Render System, is not the same as saying that is the Fastest Render Engine, and even so, they have used OpenEXR, layers and passes, motionblur (old style) and some other things, some of them not still implemented in Camera (or at least not that i know of, like the almost full OpenEXR implementation found in the EXRTrader used in BSG).

If you could load the same scene in EIAS and apply exactly the same render parameters used for BSG 3d portions, this would make for a great render speed test, to see if under the same conditions, same bit depth, etc.., Camera would still be as fast as in Phong only renders.
Just as a reminder, Mr. Granger is now at Newtek, and he has done several things to LW´s render engine to further improve it.

LW´s Phong mode has formerly been a nice render engine in all previous versions, very much used everywhere, but then it was much better and nicer the output you would get from EI.
Nowadays LW render engine is a different beast sporting many options, bells and whistles, not all of them equally supported within Camera (but it gets closer by the day).

Have you noticed that Kat gives away a fakeGI scene in the tutorial, the one they have used for Fill Lighting the ships in the series, optimized for 24P (but perfectly usable in PAL systems)? It´s a very smart rig with a null controlling the intensity of the 28 spinning fill lights parented to it. It´s a LW scene but i guess EIAS can import it (haven´t tried).

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