Been having fun…definitely love having full HDRI within EI. The refraction mapping is so useful. I haven’t had a chance to explore any of the other features as the HDRI has absorbed my attention.
No illumination other than from reflection and refraction maps.
A little scratchie shader.
http://homepage.mac.com/sherstobitoff/.Pictures/EI%20V7/V7.jpg
Actually, with your experience (and great results) using the past work-around version of HDRI’s in EI, you’re going to love how they behave now!
Great work Paul. 
Looks like someone is having fun with his newly arrived 3D program ! 
Great to see that even with all those great 3D apps you have you’re still using EIAS.
If only Camera could be multithreaded.
Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette
Thanks…and more:
http://homepage.mac.com/sherstobitoff/.Pictures/EI%20V7/Twist01.jpg
EI holds it’s own quite well in many/most instances. There are other apps I have which probably have more features but EI seems to have the largest grouping of features I need for most projects.
Yes, I too would love multi-processor support.
With this last image, and it doesn’t show it too well, I used the layered rendering feature (I LOVE THAT FEATURE! and created a shadow layer with seperate object alphas - it becomes just a snap now to soften up raytraced shadows selectively.
Wow that last one is great ! 
Thanks Paul for sharing and keep those beautiful renders coming, they are really appealing to anyone interested by EIAS !
Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette
Thanks.
http://homepage.mac.com/sherstobitoff/.Pictures/EI%20V7/Twist02.jpg
This is a variation and shows the blurring of the ground shadows a little better (than the previous) using the shadow pass and object alphas. The blurring didn’t effect the ground caustics at all.
Thats great, nice renders Paul, i now have 2 big reasons to upgrade 
i’m still going to wait for the download version though, maybe they’ll have a bugfix by then too.
And this image is a prime example of one way in which EI kicks the arse of modo: smooth, almost effortless artifact-free glass anti-aliasing, not to mention the caustics, beautiful EI caustics the best I’ve seen anywhere.
Yes, the Anti-Aliasing part is what has always impressed me the most in EI.
It’s always soft and eliminate moiré pattern like no other 3D software.
And the glass renderd by Paul is very interesting.
On my side, while trying it, i’m fighting a little bit to figure out and understand how it works exactly. 
Are there any “secret things” that need to be known before trying to do good glasses render ?
Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette
I don’t know about secret things, but a lot of people forget the basics, for instance that realistic glass needs a non zero refraction value, and not only that, but the correct refraction value. For instance, if you want a glass of wine to look truly real, you can’t use the same refraction values for the wine and the glass. Wine – alcohol – refracts light differently than glass. Try a refraction value of 1.52 for the glass for starters.
Another thing about glass is that, contrary to what you might think, it’s not very reflective at least not face-on. The edges are highly reflective, so you need low reflectance but with a high fresnel value.
If none of that makes any sense, I apologize. I’m in the throws of my yearly rhinovirus and am half-crazed by the effects of medication.
Which reminds me. There is one secret. Konkeptoine’s Glass shader does wonders for glass in EI.
Yes, EI’s caustics are the very best of any app I’ve ever tried - ease of use, speed and detail - this is one of those features where EI got it extremely ‘right’.
Having these fabulous glass making tools sure does make need for much, much faster soft raytraced shadows.
I have to say though, Modo’s real-time, inter-active rendering is sooo nice to use. Adictive.
I believe, though not completely certain, that the raytrace shader was incorporated into EI 6.5. I know the density property control is there. That’s a very useful and fun control…in the second tab for transparency and works, based, on model size.
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