So - about 2 years ago. . . I had a summer of rendering out a huge project. . . lots of water animation. I used realflow and did that HACK of having to force the frame ticker onto the next frame to load in the next water mesh. .. . what a nightmare.
Anyway - the client pops over . . . they want a load of new animations doing !!! Brilliant!!!
'Of course,' I say to the client, 'I won't have to use that hack again - it's been two years, they were a young company, but it's been a whole two years. . . I'm sure they'll have it all fixed by now - people were moaning a lot about it even back then.'
But I'm not so sure. . . is it fixed? does it work now? I bet the motion blur is too complex to get done - I think that's a whole different ballgame. . . but surely refreshing the model upload each frame. . . that's fixed isn't it? Do I still have to import a string of separate meshes? or can I just keep it all in 3ds max? Is phoenix FD 3 supported? The releases make it look like it is. . but at what level? are there any kind of tutorials or a pdf explaining how to integrate with it? do I use the vray version and add a modifier? or the defscanline version?
I mean my basic conversation with clients/other artists/strangers for 3 years has been. . .
"No I don't use vray - I use Octane Render'
"Octane what?"
"Yeh - it's an unbiased GPU renderer. .. great results. .. absolutely nobody supports it. .. no model suppliers, no plugins. .. it's completely on it's own. . quite a struggle to work with really."
"Really? Is it that bad?"
"The results are great if you stick with it - but not for interiors - it's awful for interiors. .. honestly I try and put clients off having interior renders it's that bad"
"No way!?!??"
"Yeah - and get this - I spent years building up a library - we're talking GIGABYTES - hundreds, if not thousands, of converted models, because you have to convert them - manually as well - their automatic converters are absolute drivel .. . . plants, people, cars, furniture.. . . and they CHANGE the renderer so it all becomes useless.. . just renders GREY!!!! Can you believe it?!?"
"So you wouldn't recommend it then?"
"Absolutely not - trying to think of reasons to not move over to something else to be honest. . .. they promise to improve it - but they just add loads of pointless stuff that only a few percent of people need or want. I think they're just using octane render money to fund other stuff that excites them more.. . . you know. .. hollywood movie stuff or streaming. .. "
"Don't they have teams working on it?"
"One guy for the 3ds max plugin. . ."
"ONE?!?!?!"
"Yeah - he buggered off and made a different company - they might even be suing him I think. . . then there's been a couple of other guys.. .. sure they're good at what they do. .. but yeah - just one at a time apparently. .. . there I was thinking 3ds max was THE architectural visualisation software."
etc.
So - maybe it's time for VRAY RT. .. anybody got any opinions on RT with phoenix fd - I mean they're the same company .. . got to work well together?
Cheers,
Marc.