Oi Maya! Render this!

#46

I’m not so sure about that. Most ‘Pros’ I have ever talked to only use the more advanced features of rendering engines when it is absolutely necessary. They are very good at cheating on the rest of the scene to maximize the render speed.

Being only phong for many years in some ways has made EI users stronger in this aspect. The falling knife in Mission Impossible comes to mind… phong.

I guess now that computers are becoming faster and cheaper, this starts to become less of an issue. But anyone who does animation knows that if you can shave a few seconds per frame off thousands of frames, it adds up.

-Steve

#47

I take exception to the adjective “Flat”. Ever since I started working in 3D, I’ve noticed that most renderers have a distinctive (and imho, unrealistic) look to them. For example, everything that comes out of Lightwave looks plastic. I was always able to look at something and tell what renderer did it. But not Camera. Camera always had a natural look to it. I can even tell in side-by-side stuff. Case in point: Star Wars. In Phantom Menace, I can totally tell which elements were Renderman and which were EI. For my money, the Renderman stuff doesn’t look quite natural. Not bad, mind you, but not quite real.

#48

I agree Blair. Though I think I would modify what you said just a bit, in that most renderers have kind of a ‘look’ that most users (who haven’t learned the ‘deep dark secrets’) get when they render.

For example, I agree that Lightwave stuff looks more plastic like. C4D renders look kind of overly sharp, but in a odd sort of way. I kind of call it ‘harsh’. 3DS Max, until it got 3rd party render engines, looked kind of ‘cartoony’, or just unrealistic.

That said, I would also see stuff done in any of those apps that just blew me away at times. So, a good user can seem to work around these things in any of these apps.

What has always impressed me about EIAS, is that even users without this depth of knowledge can get a nice looking image out of Camera. EI’s defaults seemed to be very well tuned for most projects or something. This makes a higher percentage of work coming out of EI look more realistic from the start.

But I totally agree… calling EI renders ‘flat’ is just a silly cheap shot type content, unless it was just a poor choice of terms and I’m just not understanding. Maybe ‘soft’? Default EI renders can sometimes look a bit ‘soft’ compared to renders out of other 3D engines, but I always thought that was a positive thing (great AA) that made them look more realistic. :wink:

-Steve

#49

I think one of the keys to the beautiful renders in EI animations is the default oversampled antialiasing. But when you average the antialiasing for print (Adaptive min 255, max 255), Camera looks quite a bit like C4D’s rendering. Not that that’s a bad thing – and for print it really helps to bring out the details.

I agree that it’s easier to create fantastic images right from the start from EI. Textures don’t swim, frames don’t jitter and when I load the scene with 8,000,000 polygons it’s like Camera just laughs and says, “What, that’s it? This is a cakewalk.”

I’m learning Maya now. And while there are some great features, setting render globals is still trickier than it needs to be. The render globals in Maya are pretty much the same as Power Animator had twelve years ago.

The one feature I wish Camera had is exporting render passes for animations to Shake and After Effects. Kind of like Fast Pass but for animation. (So, if any programers are listening . . . .)

#50

Hi Guys,

A simple test which I did against one of my friends in Brazil which owns Vetor Zero (the biggest FX house in Brazil) and a Turtle lover. (Maya) and one of the Turtle beta users… his work is in the Turtle’s gallery.
www.vetorzero.com.br
The fastest render with turtle using GI without loosing quality (7 minutes) against EIAS (2 minutes).
The worst quality in Turtle (1m 34s) against EIAS (1m 12secs)… and our worst EIAS render is really better than Turtle.
Hmmm I love Camera.

:))

Tomas Egger

#51

Hey,

I know,

These images are old… but I dont think its too flat.

http://www.cgchannel.com/gallery/viewprofil.jsp?artID=1869

Thanksssss

Tomas Egger

:))

#52

Hi Tomas,

The first EI render has a lot of aliasing in it compared with Turtle’s render, which looks fine to me. I think it would serve as a better comparison to match the antialiasing quality in Camera to the antialiasing quality in Turtle. Then do another speed test.

It’s still pretty impressive!

#53

Hey Harry,

I sent to my friend and told him which antialiases I used, I asked him to match my antialiases and he did the render, he told me about EIAS antialiases is realllly good and sharpen.

7 min (turtle) against 2 min (EIAS)… make me smille always

:))

Tomas Egger

#54

Hi Tomas,

Maybe it was just the view that was throwing me off. That’s quite a bit of difference in render speed! :eek:

#55

I’m going to have to agree with Harry B here, the EIAS render does look a bit off, specially at the top of the back window.
I’m not even sure if that’s the anti-aliasing settings. 4x4 should be enough for a non-textured image. Maybe EIAS isn’t too happy with the quality of the mesh or maybe 200 rays is a bit on the low side, after all, who says 200 rays in Turtle are the same as 200 rays in EIAS? They’re different algorithms…

#56

the plastic look is caused by inexperienced users who use the specular settings instead of fresnel gradients. so its not the program renderer, its the user who is making the error. including those that assume the renderer is inferior in comparison to others :slight_smile:

#57

I’d have to say that nearly every renderer has a particular look to it. However, the differences between renderers are getting less and less with every iteration of their host program. That being said though, I would still have to say that certain renderers excel over others when conducting specific tasks. Renderman, imo, does have a particular look to it. As does LW, EIAS, and Maya. Some like it, others do not.

#58

hmmm. if you say so. :slight_smile:

#59

I’ve been working in this industry for years. Worked at several different vfx houses. Trust me, renderers have a specific look. There’s plenty you can do to help compensate for the different weaknesses of a renderer, but ultimately, you’ll have to deal with them in one way or another. Typical points of contention are:

Anti Aliasing
Motion Blur
Metals
Occlusion
Volumetrics

and so on.

When I was at Digital Domain working on Stealth, we evaluated a number of renderers against renderman for the surface of the aircraft. We went with Renderman, not because it looked better, but because it was well established in DD’s pipeline. We actually found more realistic looks for what we needed with Vray, but at the time Vray was only attached to Max and the cost involved to switch just was too much. It was not only faster, but the metals looked considerably more convincing.

#60

Hey Brian you worked on Steath ?, i enjoyed that movie very much :), didn’t get great reviews but i dig the cool FX :thumbsup:

Reuben

#61

Yah…fun movie to work on… although the writing was not very good. Previs supervisor. You can see some of the previs on my website in the demo reel section.

#62

its a rental :wink:

gotta love russian planes though.

also, when you tested all those renderers for stealth, I presume you had experts who were intimatelly familiar with the workings of all renderers in question? im curious as to what kind of testing you did to determine which one looked the best. Doesnt really prove your point one way or another regardless of the number of years you have had in the field. 5 years of experience rendering with renderman doesnt mean you can jump on something like vray and crank out perfection overnight. I wont argue the fact that some renderers have strength and weaknesses, what im saying is, your render shouldnt be a product of the software but the product of your vision. The software just has to be coaxed to produce what you want. Or beaten severely :slight_smile:

#63

We had a dedicated lighting and rendering team working round the clock on finding the best solution. Ultimately the team broke up into two parts. A renderman team and a vray team. Both teams included personnel who were familiar with their respective softwares and were seasoned rendering professionals.

We evaluated a number of factors when making the decision. Render quality, anti alias quality, 3D motion blur, speed, cost factors, ease of use, parameter controls, occlusion capabilities, reflection blurring, lighting controls…you name it, it was scrutinized. The general consensus was Vray fit our needs better with greater speed and lighting controls over Renderman. However, DD concluded that a migration to Max and Vray was too cost prohibited given the schedule we were under.

Generally I agree with your statement: “Your render shouldnt be a product of the software but the product of your vision.” Creatively you are correct…but in real world situations, this isn’t always true. Definitive factors and differences between renderers can result in the need to select one renderer over another that doesn’t have a thing to do with your vision. If we stepped back a decade it would be considerably easier to detect the differences between renderers…today, its much more difficult…but that doesn’t mean that all of the approaches to rendering are the same. Results vary…and specific requirements must be addressed. Besides, if this was true… we’d all use the internal Maya renderer…
ugh… who wants that?

#64

lol @ maya renderer, although i have to admit, i have had my share of fun with it.

#65

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