Clarisse

[vlado]

...then you don't need to look at render farms any more.

I don't think that's entirely correct From what I could see in my tests, while it is fast to get a final image (and even faster to get a preview), it is not orders-of-magnitude faster compared to, say, V-Ray. And it will get slower as they add more stuff.

The interactivity of course is unbeatable as the renderer and the application share the same data and general framework.

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

My big thing is always render times if I'm working on an ad solo, so if I get a 2 minute frame time, 750 of those for a 30 second ad is still a lot of rendering for me - Clarisse could well be interesting from that point of view, or for people that don't want to learn a full 3d app - it'll be great for compositors who want to throw a load of random stuff into a scene and start playing. Won't stop us using vray on the current film though

[Alan Iglesias]

And the artist better be a dang genius. It's tough enough to get stellar in either texture painting, lighting/shading, comp etc. let alone in all? Maybe i just don't get it.

Hmmm, sorry if I wasn't clear enough. I meant to say that perhaps they are thinking that multiple artists, each specializing in their own diciplines, would use the same piece of software to complete a project all working in just the part of the software that is their specialty. So I agree that artists getting stellar at all these different things is unlikely.

If the software is, well, almost ridiculously complete and robust, the pipeline would be greatly simplified. Unlikely I know, but perhaps it is what they are thinking.

-Alan

[Christweil]

To my knowledge, the idea of Clarisse is absolutely not to do a 1-software-for-all. The matte painter will still do their matte painting in their software, the 3D models will still come from a 3D package, the animation can even come in backed as I think Alembic can be imported, 2D textures still has to be done somewhere, etc...
The point of this tool is to create a central place where all those different departments and artists can bring all their creations and then let the lighter/shader or whoever is in charge of this process works on the final comp from there while dealing with all elements. For those reasons they also highlight quite a lot the fact that the assets are tracked and updated with even notification about what is to be updated and the artist can select what he wants to take in or not. That's still a collaborative process but thanks to Clarisse it is supposed to be far easier and efficient.
Sure that it will evolved but even at this point it looks pretty cool and promising in my view.

[Alan Iglesias]

To my knowledge, the idea of Clarisse is absolutely not to do a 1-software-for-all....

Ah, thanks for your information and veiwpoints.

-Alan

[re:FORM]

Bump,
It's been a few years since this thread started and no doubt Clarisse has developed loads. It looks like a number of studios have also given it a try (The Mill, dNeg, Mikros, ILM), so there must be more of you that have used it in production. If so, it would be great to hear your thoughts on using it in production!

Latest features : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4WF...heYhG-&index=1
Sigraph presentations : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzb8...9_92BB-AnhpOgH

[joconnell]

Some smart things in there, shit looking renderer. The rule based selections and material assignments are nice and the scatterer has one or two interesting bits. ILM dropped it in the uk despite nicking a load of dneg employees who heavily use it.

[stevesideas]

I like the new open shader pattern generation. Would be nice to have a feature like that with Vray.

[re:FORM]

Hah, that's interesting. What did they revert to for lighting?

[FSGFX]

ILM is using Katana on most projects.

[joconnell]

Yeah, london is using maya, katana and arnold at the minute as it's mainly ex dneg and framestore heads. Clkarisse didn't work out for them. Ilm sf, vancouver and singapore are vray / renderman / arnold / whatever they damn well want

[re:FORM]

All through Maya/katana?
I've been using houdini recently and have enjoyed it's potential as a lighters tool. I used katana a while ago, but found it a little frustrating (rubbish gaffer/light-rig tools). Love the concept of it though, but the implementation I was using at the time wasn't too great (slow to load assets... probably not katanas fault).

Can't stand Maya so if having to choose an alternative lighting tool to Max or Maya I'm curious where people are heading (small to mid-sized studios). Maybe I should start another thread

[FSGFX]

latest maya rendersetup update isnt to bad...

[re:FORM]

Is that with a node based renderlayer system? I haven't tried that yet.

It wouldn't get past the fact you can't just copy and paste nodes between scenes as easily as you can in houdini without breaking some complex node hierarchy under the hood. It could just be my lack of maya proficiency but I've found other artists around me that agree on how much more robust and efficient houdini is for asset management and lighting.

[joconnell]

Can't stand Maya so if having to choose an alternative lighting tool to Max or Maya I'm curious where people are heading (small to mid-sized studios). Maybe I should start another thread

I'd imagine Katana would be hideously expensive for a small studio - makes lots of sense for a big house running out master recipes across 40 similar shots though.