Something to share…
Here are the project statistics for our recent BBC job, unfortunatly I can’t share the images (NDA n’ all).
We had 10 days to model about 2 SqKM of Manchester city centre with new plans coming through from the Architects for most of those 10 days suffice to say, it was one of those projects. We never got the texturing or lighting nailed so even if I could, I probably wouldn’t post the images 
Ian
Modeling what sounds like fifty city blocks in 10 days–how did you even begin to correctly model such a large number of buildings?
(I know there’s something called OGLE that lets you pull 3D data out of Google Earth–did you use that?)
Please advise.
GM
There were some large areas of empty space thankfully! 
I think it was 19 or 20 towers + a bridge that we modelled, I’ll absolve myself of any credit in that department, three others did that with blistering pace in FormZ going from a master-plan.
I spent all my time in EI texturing/ lighting/ rendering and adding extra details to the buildings like lights and furniture. I also did a day to night conversion and some post.
Many 14+ hour days were done!
Ian
30 million polys… sheesh… the thread should be more aptly named: Hey Maya, choke on this. Ian… you’d make a horrible Previs artist… 
So 30,000,000 polys, over 100 lights. . . . That would take Camera what – 2, maybe 2 1/2 minutes at HD res?
It makes you realize why there are a lot of Maya rendering TDs out there! Maybe Camera and mentalray, Renderman, vRay and Brazil should have a quality/speed showdown?
Sure, we all know Camera would win but by how much?
You’d be surprised though. Some of those proprietary renderers aren’t as sluggish as you think. Maya’s internal renderer on the other hand… ugh… what a dog. Mental Ray, though pretty is slooow too. (At least in my opinion)
I dunno Brian… at least I’d make you look good
When I did a phong render of those 30 million polys I seem to remember it coming out (5000 pixels wide) inside 5 minutes… I also seem to remember choking on that fact and being ever so proud of our EI
I think i should change my signature to “Work hard, render fast, leave a 30 million polygon corpse.”
Ian
Lance Evans told me that he was doing some tests with Turtle that were giving Camera a run for its money.
The problem is, its so difficult to measure performance with renderers. So many ways of doing things…how do you really make for a fair comparison?
Well, sometimes (and often) “disadvantages” are only continuations of “advantages” (and vice versa)
>>…we’ve rested on Camera’s laurels too long…<<
IMHO it’s better always to remember this 200% true sentence
I’m not sure “run for its money.” is the best choice of words
1 render-farm licence of Turtle (without GUI) costs a lot more then the whole EIAS package with unlimited render-farm licences.
http://www.illuminatelabs.com/
The gallery is worth a look to see what we’re missing though (a two edged remark if ever there was one!)
Ian
Yeah, I just looked at their gallery. I didn’t see how Turtle handles Maya’s fur, tubes, subsurface scattering and particle effects. For $995 Renderman for Maya can handle that stuff (possibly a little slower). But the photoreal hard surface stuff is very convincing.
Camera is still a very impressive renderer IMO.
I guess “turtle” is meant to be a pun, judging from the rabbit logo. Or maybe it’s an acronym for “Totally Unique Rendering Technology and Lighting Engine”? Just guessing.
I’ve used both turtle and Renderman for Maya, no question about it. RMfM is leaps and bounds better.
I’m still trying to learn EI but camera seems pretty darn sweet too.
Hey Brian…
Still hoping to hear about your experiences with the program. Would like to know what you like and don’t like about the program.
Oh… I know how much you like shaders. I’ve been helping out the Igors (the authors of several shaders on Konkeptoine’s site) with some of their manuals and all I can say is, their next round of shaders are pretty sweet. Very handy stuff indeed.
Hey hey, well I’m finishing up some application work (java programmer in transition here) so I have to admit, I haven’t devoted the time I really need to. So far, the interface is a bit of a departure from what I’m used to but it’s pretty easy to figure out. I like that. Once I finish this job I’ll be back to EI school full time =).
I do love shaders and I’ve already decided there are a bunch of shaders I want. Now where to start! I know I’m supposed to wait until I need a shader to buy it but what fun is that?! Ha!
I still check this forum every day though. I’m happy with my EI so far I can say that.
So, one of the images we did for the Beeb made it into the Manchester Evening News last night, we removed the BBC branding at the clients request.
Look at all that furniture
Ian
Oh, and GM, the area of the site modelled was 1 million sq ft!
yeah and look flat.
EI can render huge scenes but only in Phong.
try to render that same scene with raytrace stuff in it, then we will see.
The other renderers you guys mentioned are mostly pure raytracer and can render much bigger raytrace scene than EI can.
they may not render big phong scenes as well as EI, but not a lot of people use phong anymore.
I’d venture to say that EI’s raytracer (6.5 version, btw) is as fast if not faster than other ray-tracers out there. In addition, Camera is a mixed mode renderer which means that anything that’s not using ray-traced reflections, transparencies, shadows, or ray-trace-specific shaders is going to run in Phong anyway.