Opinions on Shave 2

[Per-Anders]

Shave 2 quality is excellent, speed is terrible (it's really really really really slow), the dynamics are probably the best hair dynamics out there in a commercially available package, ease of use, shave scores pretty highly on too.

all in all, shave is something for you if you've got a lot of patience. it's quality is very good, it's also easy to use, but just beacuse it takes so very very long to see the results (even on a fast pc) it's hard to tweak, and you must have the patience of a saint to use it in animation.

[tjnyc]

mdme_sadie,

Thanks for the info. Isn't there away to reduce the number of hair being displayed so it could be faster to tweak and work with?

[LucentDreams]

the speed of diaplay when tweaking (when in the shave app) isn't bad at all, its the rendering results that are the problem. Shave is very powerful and highquality, its only serious draw back is its super insane rendertimes.

[Shademaster]

What are superinsane rendertimes? Could you give an example? I am in the process of deciding wether or not to buy Shave, only thing holding me back is the lack of a demo version to test it out, what are peoples experiences with this? Is it renderfarm compatible too?

Thank you in advance.

:)

[MJV]

Originally posted by mdme_sadie
Shave 2 quality is excellent, speed is terrible (it's really really really really slow), the dynamics are probably the best hair dynamics out there in a commercially available package, ease of use, shave scores pretty highly on too.

all in all, shave is something for you if you've got a lot of patience. it's quality is very good, it's also easy to use, but just beacuse it takes so very very long to see the results (even on a fast pc) it's hard to tweak, and you must have the patience of a saint to use it in animation.

I disagree about the quality. It's almost impossible to get rim lighting, and there is no ability for translucent effects. Highlights can only be produced by lights hitting the hair from the front, and don't represent the direction of the light. I haven't extensively tested the dynamics, but I do know that it has trouble with ears for example, or any complicated geometry. Then there are the issues with flicker which can be difficult to solve especially given the difficult nature of doing render tests in a reasonable amount of time. We've all seen good hair done in movies like Monsters Inc and Srek, but I seriously don't think that Shave is capable of achieving anything close to those results. In short, I'm pretty disappointed with it, though it's quite a bit better than Shave version 1, especially the AA.

[LucentDreams]

Yes the hair in Shrek and monsters inc are absolutely amazing, but the hair in X2 was pretty damn good, and that was S&H.

The rim light problem is a huge problem, I remember that discussion, but thats only one type of lighting (granted I use it almost all the time) and when using hair for realistic stuff especially for compositing into film, seems like S&H is up to snuff.

of course we've also seen ICE AGE, which was pretty damn good too (not monster's inc quality for sure but still very good) and that was done using sprite planes

[Scott M C4D]

What about Hair Department and using the magnet tool to form the hair?
It's free....

[bobtronic]

Originally posted by Kaiskai
of course we've also seen ICE AGE, which was pretty damn good too (not monster's inc quality for sure but still very good) and that was done using sprite planes

I found the fur of the tiger very impressive - and all done
with sprites ? amazing

here is a brainmelting link for the developers among us.
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/proj/fur/


Bob

[flingster]

i think you guys are being slightly unfair.
cost for what you get...incredible!
results good
try and find me something comparable for cinema...maya users can get it...and xsi has it native as far as i'm aware! i wouldn't say its that limited.

as for render times...what do you expect...look at what you are talking about creating:rolleyes:

difficulty in styling its not just a case of dropping hair on a model and saying voila..you gotta style this stuff...new tools for this have been improved.

overall i think its damn impressive...but i do take your points..and think so long as you go into it with these in mind you should be fine.

monsters inc well that is mind blowing..but what would it cost you to get it for cinema...and has anybody actually sat down and said lets try and replicate that in SH? :shrug:

[LucentDreams]

Originally posted by flingster
monsters inc well that is mind blowing..but what would it cost you to get it for cinema...and has anybody actually sat down and said lets try and replicate that in SH? :shrug:

Well MV mentioned Two tings that make it impossible to match MI's hair, mainly the fact that almopst every scene in MI uses some sort of rim liht, and sully's fur had a definite translucent halo effect which S&H is not capable of.

For cinema your right it is the best current hair solution. XSI it should be noted no longer is using S&H, they've dropped Joe Alter and continued developing the hair system on their own.

One of S&H's biggest advantages as of late is its growing support for more apps, I mean Maya, C4D, Mirai may be getting it in the near future (if a new version ever comes out.) So its growing in userbase.

[bobtronic]

I have read the rendertimes for the hair in
Final Fantasy were about 20% of the whole
rendertime. So I think hair is generally a
CPU hog. Personally I will stick to faking hair
with planes and tubes and an alpha texture.

Bob

[AdamT]

I think Shave 2 is pretty darned good. As mentioned above, render times are high with any hair system. The rim lighting issue is real though, and kind of sucks. Apparently Alter is primarily attuned to what the Maya community wants, and the Maya community doesn't seem to care about this. What's up with that?

[MJV]

Originally posted by Kaiskai
Well MV mentioned Two tings that make it impossible to match MI's hair, mainly the fact that almopst every scene in MI uses some sort of rim liht, and sully's fur had a definite translucent halo effect which S&H is not capable of.

For cinema your right it is the best current hair solution. XSI it should be noted no longer is using S&H, they've dropped Joe Alter and continued developing the hair system on their own.

Perhaps because they realized that Joe's shading system is crap. We'll probably have to now wait for the Maya guys to realize it too before there is any chance it will be fixed.

[tjnyc]

I'm not much concerned about rim highlights and transparencies for hair. From my experience much of that can be done in post anyway as it is faster to composite and create lighting effects with higher degree of control of the finish look. As long as I can create separate passes I should be fine.

[bobtronic]

Can some explain what rim lighting is, please.

Bob

[MJV]

Originally posted by tjnyc
I'm not much concerned about rim highlights and transparencies for hair. From my experience much of that can be done in post anyway as it is faster to composite and create lighting effects with higher degree of control of the finish look. As long as I can create separate passes I should be fine.

Good luck then, and let me know if you come up with a good solution. :thumbsup:

[JoelOtron]

Isnt there a way to get the effects yoi want to achieve via compositing in post? I would think that much of the effects you cite (MI, X2, etc) were achieved via multi pass compositing. From what I have read in mags such as cinefex, pretty much every shot you see in cgi or animation is finished up in a compositing app. Maybe for rim lighing, try 2 or more passes to the fur/hair, one straight and one using a depth channel. You can use the depth channel to add highlights just to the edges of the furr render (?). even in big budget film studios there is often a cheat of some sort that is needed to get the look just right.

I was looking at the current cinefex and they showed all the layers of renderings that were needed to get the Hulk's final skin texture right. There was a pass generated for sweat specularity, muscle bump, blood vessels, , dirt, and many other elements. I think the workaround for shave may be found thinking along these lines (?). As far as time, this is a pretty sophiticated (and somewhat new) effect and big film studios can afford the render power to do it. I guess its not surprising that this kind of rendering would be really slow (same goes for such things as dynamics).

Of course, I dont have shave, so maybe I'm talking out my ass, but it seems that theres got to be a creative solution--am I wrong?


(EDIT--WHOOPS--just actually read tjNYC's post! : )

[Brent Turbo]

JoelD, you're absolutely right. What people fail to think about when they're wanting their renders to look just like the ones in the movies, is that those movie frames are thick composites, comprised of sometimes over 100 layers. And there are just as many fakes as there are layers, too.

Here's a hint about film CG, since this is obviously what the people complaing want their stuff to look like. Those aren't straight renders up there on the screen, meaning, they didn't click render, save the frame, and then print that picture to film. Every one of those frames are made of many layers. Raytracing is practically never used in film, so there's none of that. Depth of field is usually faked using layers. Motion blur is often faked, as well, in post. And here's the shocker: a lot of frames are painted on top of, frame by frame, to fix little things or smooth things out. Also, you'll rarely see a single frame that contains only one 3D application's renders in it. They might do hair in a proprietary software, characters in XSI, backdrops in Maya, particles in Houdini, and composite it all together in one shot.

Shave is the best (and only!) software for convincing hair in Cinema. Get creative and make it work for you, or do your hair in another 3d package and composite your results. You can't have it all.

[JoelOtron]

Originally posted by Scott M C4D
What about Hair Department and using the magnet tool to form the hair?
It's free....


HD is great. I use it from time to time--but I dont usually have a need for character rendering so never really tried it for hair on a head (use it for cilia and bug hair and stuff like that). You can get dynamic hair out of it, but HD only creates the geometry or splines, not the shading effects that shave does so well. From what I've seen, the dynamics and rendering and manipulation is much quicker and accurate in shave then in HD.

[MJV]

Originally posted by Brent Turbo
JoelD, you're absolutely right. What people fail to think about when they're wanting their renders to look just like the ones in the movies, is that those movie frames are thick composites, comprised of sometimes over 100 layers. And there are just as many fakes as there are layers, too.

Here's a hint about film CG, since this is obviously what the people complaing want their stuff to look like. Those aren't straight renders up there on the screen, meaning, they didn't click render, save the frame, and then print that picture to film. Every one of those frames are made of many layers. Raytracing is practically never used in film, so there's none of that. Depth of field is usually faked using layers. Motion blur is often faked, as well, in post. And here's the shocker: a lot of frames are painted on top of, frame by frame, to fix little things or smooth things out. Also, you'll rarely see a single frame that contains only one 3D application's renders in it. They might do hair in a proprietary software, characters in XSI, backdrops in Maya, particles in Houdini, and composite it all together in one shot.

Shave is the best (and only!) software for convincing hair in Cinema. Get creative and make it work for you, or do your hair in another 3d package and composite your results. You can't have it all.

I never looked at it that way. So actually, it's a good thing that shave doesn't have good shading. No need for raytracing or radiosity either. Yeah! I can save so much money on software now -- after all, look at Rustboy. I'm going to go fire up Infinid right now and forget this other stuff.

[JoelOtron]

I see your point MV--didnt mean to start a bad turn to the thread. :shrug:

If I was trying to render a scene that had rim lighting, for instance with Shave, and had this same problem (especially for an animation) I'd be pretty annoyed too I'm sure.

I guess what I was trying to get at, is that we may be reaching a ceiling (for the moment at least) to what we can expect to accomplish in a single render with the current tools we have. I'm sure there will be a time soon when the particular problems users are having with this app will be a thing of the past. But I guess i was trying to say that maybe theres a workaround--and one that even the big boys wind up having to use as well.

Having just read the cinefex article (and attending a Shake demonstration at Macworld recently) has opened my eyes a bit more to how the proccess usually goes. I'm beginning to try and employ similar methods when rendering my stuff now just for kicks.

Anyway--I have no idea if the method I mentioned would even work with a shave render--I suppse that would mean that shave would allow for alphas and depth maps to be generated while isolating just the generated hair. And it was my understanding that shave didnt really create geometry (from which an alpha could be created), but was a post effect anyway.

[MJV]

Originally posted by JoelD
I see your point MV--didnt mean to start a bad turn to the thread. :shrug:

If I was trying to render a scene that had rim lighting, for instance with Shave, and had this same problem (especially for an animation) I'd be pretty annoyed too I'm sure.

I guess what I was trying to get at, is that we may be reaching a ceiling (for the moment at least) to what we can expect to accomplish in a single render with the current tools we have. I'm sure there will be a time soon when the particular problems users are having with this app will be a thing of the past. But I guess i was trying to say that maybe theres a workaround--and one that even the big boys wind up having to use as well.

Having just read the cinefex article (and attending a Shake demonstration at Macworld recently) has opened my eyes a bit more to how the proccess usually goes. I'm beginning to try and employ similar methods when rendering my stuff now just for kicks.

Anyway--I have no idea if the method I mentioned would even work with a shave render--I suppse that would mean that shave would allow for alphas and depth maps to be generated while isolating just the generated hair. And it was my understanding that shave didnt really create geometry (from which an alpha could be created), but was a post effect anyway.

Dispite my sarcasm, and clear frustration, I agree with you, at least some, in principle. There is more than one way to skin a cat, but in this case I've yet to figure it out. I've already tried quite a few special workarounds, and while I've had a little success for stills, I really don't see how I can afford to be doing special passes for Shave and lots of compositing tricks when it would be so much simpler just to have some decent shading options to start with instead, especially given how long the hair takes to render in the first place.

[JoelOtron]

Originally posted by MJV
... I really don't see how I can afford to be doing special passes for Shave and lots of compositing tricks when it would be so much simpler just to have some decent shading options to start with instead, especially given how long the hair takes to render in the first place.


Yeah--thats for sure. Throw a deadline into the mix and forget it--I'd be slamming my head against the table I'm sure. Well--I did initially include the talking out of my ass" disclaimer :)

[danb]

i have been thinking of buying shave 2 also. i have a question. what are hair polygons and how do they work. what are the advantages to them compared to just growing hair from selections?

[Brent Turbo]

Originally posted by MJV
I never looked at it that way. So actually, it's a good thing that shave doesn't have good shading. No need for raytracing or radiosity either. Yeah! I can save so much money on software now -- after all, look at Rustboy. I'm going to go fire up Infinid right now and forget this other stuff.

Hey MV, whether you're being sarcastic OR serious, I think you missed the point. I certainly didn't mean to belittle your problems with Shave, or make any assumptions about your ability, so I think your sarcasm was off base. I was merely trying to comment on the fact that people complain that their renders don't come straight out of the package looking brilliant. Neither do any frames from films, either (which is, by and large, the baraometer by which people judge photorealism in CG). The point is to come up with clever workarounds, as you've also tried, and just like the people JoelD mentioned. Do whatever it takes to make your renders look good with the tools availble to you. If photorealistic hair is a must for a paying project, then buy whatever software will do the trick for it, and bill your client. If it's just for fun, then you'll get a lot of great practice out of making do with what you have.

I apologize for getting this so far off topic, I was just trying to agree with JoelD's compositing method.

[MJV]

Originally posted by Brent Turbo
Hey MV, whether you're being sarcastic OR serious, I think you missed the point. I certainly didn't mean to belittle your problems with Shave, or make any assumptions about your ability, so I think your sarcasm was off base. I was merely trying to comment on the fact that people complain that their renders don't come straight out of the package looking brilliant. Neither do any frames from films, either (which is, by and large, the baraometer by which people judge photorealism in CG). The point is to come up with clever workarounds, as you've also tried, and just like the people JoelD mentioned. Do whatever it takes to make your renders look good with the tools availble to you. If photorealistic hair is a must for a paying project, then buy whatever software will do the trick for it, and bill your client. If it's just for fun, then you'll get a lot of great practice out of making do with what you have.

I apologize for getting this so far off topic, I was just trying to agree with JoelD's compositing method.

I understand that you have to come up with workarounds until there is a better solution, but that doesn't obviate the need for the better solution. I've been doing 3D long enough that I've seen the same discussion happen countless times, with raytracing, radiosity, caustics, light falloff, you name it. There is always someone who says to just accept the way it is and learn to live with it, through it, around it. I personally don't enjoy complaining about things and I would like to just be happy-go-lucky, positive and glass-half-full all the time, but the truth is in order to get things improved upon usually first requires educating others about the need, and then building sufficient mass to get the programmers to do something about it. I'm pretty sure that if Joe doesn't know what hair should look like, and render like, he at least should. The theory and practice of creating good looking hair with rim lighting and realistic highlights is not new. My guess is that Joe either doesn't care, doesn't know, or is hoping that others won't notice or won't care. I find any of those scenarios pretty unacceptable, and hope to be a catalyst for change and improvement.

[JoelOtron]

Originally posted by bobtronic
Can some explain what rim lighting is, please.


Rim lighting is placing a light slightly behind and to the side of your object which produces an edge highlight and fills the shadows a bit.

[bobtronic]

Joel, thanks for the explanation.

Bob

[Brent Turbo]

Originally posted by MJV
I personally don't enjoy complaining about things and I would like to just be happy-go-lucky, positive and glass-half-full all the time, but the truth is in order to get things improved upon usually first requires educating others about the need, and then building sufficient mass to get the programmers to do something about it.

Okay, then we're in total agreement, just misunderstanding each other. I completely with you on that, and we must always move forward with technology and techniques, or else we'd all be doing those teapots on checkerboard floors. I was only referring to sharpening your skills with what's available right this second. Of course it's our responsibility to ask for the features that'll be in future releases.

[JoelOtron]

Originally posted by Brent Turbo
... or else we'd all be doing those teapots on checkerboard floors.

I remember being blown away by chrome teapots on checkerboard floors! Never even dreamed I'd be using those tools when i first startied seeing this stuff back in the 80s!

[bobtronic]

Originally posted by Brent Turbo
...or else we'd all be doing those teapots on checkerboard floors.

Whats wrong with teapots on checkerboards ? :)

Bob

[MJV]

Originally posted by bobtronic
Whats wrong with teapots on checkerboards ? :)

Bob

Nothing -- as long as they have blurred raytraced reflections, are lit by radiosity, have caustic reflections, and realistic hair growing out the top. :)

[bobtronic]

Originally posted by MJV
Nothing -- as long as they have blurred raytraced reflections, are lit by radiosity, have caustic reflections, and realistic hair growing out the top. :)

I try to imagine a hairy teapot - not very useful, all
the hairs in your cup if you want to fill it :)

[MJV]

Originally posted by bobtronic
I try to imagine a hairy teapot - not very useful, all
the hairs in your cup if you want to fill it :)

What can I say? Some people like hairy teapots, some don't. ;)

[AdamT]

Waiter! There's a teapot in my hairball!

[tjnyc]

Originally posted by JoelD
Anyway--I have no idea if the method I mentioned would even work with a shave render--I suppse that would mean that shave would allow for alphas and depth maps to be generated while isolating just the generated hair. And it was my understanding that shave didnt really create geometry (from which an alpha could be created), but was a post effect anyway.

Using depth maps would be just part of it as you will still need the highlight pass to work with to get a really convincing look. One method that has been done very well, using Shave (Maya) is to use hidden proxy geometry hair, basically convert the hair to polygons and keep them hidden until rendering. The geometry hair are used to extract the highlight and self shadowing passes, while the beauty, specular passes were taken from actual hair or volumetric hair. The depth map comes in real handy when you composite in the passes to adjust lighting, shadows and create subtle effects to the hair, like glow, blur and so on.

I believe Shave 2 for C4D also supports convert to geometry, so it seems plausible that a similiar proxy hair setup can be created to work in C4D. It would be beneficial if there was a demo so a potential user can try it out.

Maybe someone with it can try it out and let us know. :)

[squidinc]

this thread doesn't do much for Joe Alter's marketing, I don't think I'll be buying it after reading all this, the rim lighting thing sounds particularly annoying as this is a lighting setup I like to use with a lot of my stuff, although I doubt I'll ever want to make hairy robots anyway :p

[Shademaster]

LoL@squid

I think a demo would do wonders for Joe's marketing, try before you buy is always better than guess before you buy. I won't buy any software if there isn't a demo version available first, I can't afford a misbuy and so do many other users.

Hmm, demo version...free....hmmmm:drool:
:)

[thorn3d]

Just passing through, thought i'd offer a comment...

One thing that that's always struck me is the lack of nearly any gallery images on joe's site. The ones that are there are beyond old (the wolf), irrelevent (what are those, tribbles?), or meant to be impressive yet really don't look good (The Xmen/Mystique hair is awful).

Shave's coding problems aside, it can't help his sales to not even bother to show what can be accomplished with it.

(For reference, check out Worley's page for Sasquatch... now THERE is an impressive bit of gallery marketing.)

thorn

[Thalaxis]

I have to admit, I wish that Maxon had convinced Worley to
support Cinema instead of Alter... because as impressive as the
dynamics are in Shave, even v2 isn't particularly stable.

[tjnyc]

I would also have to agree with that. Worley has done a great job with Sasquash, unfortunately they don't support other platforms other than LW. Couldn't hurt to email them to see if they will consider bringing Sasquash and G2 to C4D.

[Thalaxis]

You're right, it is possible that they would consider the port if they
get enough requests for it.

[flingster]

G2 would be sweet for cinema

[prayas]

oh yes want worley stuff on c4d::

P..:

[Brent Turbo]

Once Maxon finishes the FBX import/export for Cinema, this shouldn't be a problem at all (except for your wallet). Then it'll be possible to export your character and animation, do your hair pass in Lightwave using Sas, and then composite them up. I used Sasquatch for a project a while back, and it was wonderful. Super fast, too!

[JoelOtron]

Originally posted by flingster
G2 would be sweet for cinema

Wasn't G2 the realtime scene preview?

Have you not seen "sniper pro" from Paul everett? Its been out for 6 months or so now. I use it all the time--its great:


http://www.tools4d.com/SniperPro/sniperclips.htm

[thorn3d]

Originally posted by tjnyc
Couldn't hurt to email them to see if they will consider bringing Sasquash and G2 to C4D.

Well, it couldn't hurt but it's definately a complete waste of time.

thorn

[bobtronic]

Is there a way to make convincing hair without
Shave ? Tried to make it with tubes and alphamaps
but I am not very satisfied. Are there some tutorials ?

thanks in advance, Bob

[thorn3d]

There's a basic tutorial here:

http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/hair/index.html

Designed for 3dsmax, but the concepts are identical for c4d. It's rather basic, but making more complex hair styles uses the same techniques that are explained.

thorn

[tjnyc]

Got word back from Worley. Seems they did have a plugin planned for Cinema 4D. No word on what the plugin is/was, but due to unsatifactory contract terms with Maxon, Worley has since put it on hold. One way to move things along is to send Maxon suggestions to get Worley plugins for Cinema 4D. If you want Sas and G2 on C4D, email both Worley and Maxon.

[michaeli]

Originally posted by tjnyc
Got word back from Worley. Seems they did have a plugin planned for Cinema 4D.

Wow, good news! :beer:

[LucentDreams]

Originally posted by tjnyc
Got word back from Worley. Seems they did have a plugin planned for Cinema 4D. No word on what the plugin is/was, but due to unsatifactory contract terms with Maxon, Worley has since put it on hold. One way to move things along is to send Maxon suggestions to get Worley plugins for Cinema 4D. If you want Sas and G2 on C4D, email both Worley and Maxon.

Sas wouldbe nice for a little competition in the hair department, and while G2 is an impressive plugins set, we have most of its functionality available thorugh plugins already, add them all together and the price is pretty equal.

[tjnyc]

Hey Kai,

Can you elaborate on what those current C4D tools are that have the same functionality to G2. These are the things I am interested in from G2 for C4D.

- Real SSS without performance hit like in G2
- Advance Specular control and Edge tool
- Soft Reflections
- Skin Tools :thumbsup:
- Area Lights as good and fast as G2's
- Realtime preview as fast as G2

If you can tell me where I can get some of these I would be very happy:)


Thanks,

[AdamT]

> - Real SSS without performance hit like in G2

It's not real SSS, but Arndt's Translucent shader produces some very nice rersults, and it's pretty quick too. http://www.vreel-3d.com/

> - Realtime preview as fast as G2

Paul Everett's Sniper Pro plugin is outstanding (demo available):
http://www.tools4d.com/

[tjnyc]

AdamT,

Great. The Plugins from Paul Everett are very nice. That solid spline pro plugin would go nicely with Shave 2 to get rim highlight passes.

[LucentDreams]

- Real SSS without performance hit like in G2
As adam said, Translucent, btw the statement about no render hit from the addition of SSS is not true whatsoever, read some reviews on it.


- Advance Specular control and Edge tool
Uhm yet again built in their called lumas and Fresnel under the SLA shaders

- Soft Reflections
Uhm C4D has this built in, granted you can't control environment seperately from raytraced :/, but since our environment channel is a spperate channel, you can simply blur your environment channel normally.

- Skin Tools :thumbsup:
Again, Its just another SSS effect specially atuned for skin type effects, and yet again its in Arndt's translucent. Also note Arndt's is using accurate algo's, so its not really that much of a fake

- Area Lights as good and fast as G2's
I haven't seen the speed of g2's but our built in areas lights (which have been there since XL 6) are of better quality for sure, heck even on their site, sure theirs a lot of noise in the LW lights, which are worse then C4D's, but at least the light is right unlike g2's, look at the tank sample, all wrong in the G2 image.

- Realtime preview as fast as G2
Again as mentioned sniper pro, now granted there are many extra features for G2 that sniper pro doesn't have, at the same time there are features in sniper pro not in G2's preview. Also its usually realtime, not always :) Isn't marketing great I could say this button creates toy story and people would believe. THat said its the most impressive part of G2 for sure.

Now dont' get me wrong, for the most part G2 is a very impressive set of tools for LW, but for 499 USD its simply not worth it for C4D. you can buy two plugins for about 100$ USD otherwise most of its built in.

Something not available at all for C4D, the Artmode, but using an environment is similar, but artmose doesn't use the surface normals.

[tjnyc]

Actually, the last studio I worked for used G2 for 2 projects and SSS for a CGI shot in a music video and it was fast under a distributed rendering environment. I don't know what these reviews are from, but our TDs was more than impressed with it, and I was referring to performance hit and not NO render hit, because any effect and calculation like that would incur render time.

The tank example on Worley's site is just bad and wrong which I agree with you on, and they have had updates since then that really shows the power of area lights in G2.

Thanks for the information Kai. It helps alot. As long as there are good alternatives and workarounds I don't have to tell clients no I can't do that. :)

[LucentDreams]

whats the difference between a performance hit and a render hit. If they dont' mean how long the render takes, then the only other thing I could think of performance regarding is editor time which it shoudln't affect since it doesnt' display in the editor.

The site is old now, so if their are updates sinc ethen thats good to know, but the area light wasn't accurate at all in the example render on the site.

[tjnyc]

When I was referring to performance I was referring to working with it pre-render stage. Using G2's Interactive previewing and working with G2 had little noticeable performance hit for us when we worked to get SSS setup for rendering which included alot of previewing stages, lighting adjustments and so on. I hope that explains things.

regards,

[LucentDreams]

ahh with its previewer opkay I see.

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