How can I plan for the 64 bit future?

[Mudvin]

Yeah, I don't have much regard for Renderman either. If you believe you need a shader language you are wrong. We don't need no stinkin' shader language over here in 3ds Max land. The material editor will do just fine, thanks.

This is very stupid sentence. You don't know what are you talking about.

[trixian]

Yeah, I don't have much regard for Renderman either. If you believe you need a shader language you are wrong. We don't need no stinkin' shader language over here in 3ds Max land. The material editor will do just fine, thanks.

This is very stupid sentence. You don't know what are you talking about.

I'm Pretty sure it was meant as a snide comment. I read it as a joke anyways

[J_Bug]

I also read it as a joke I laughed harder at Mudvins' comment though because I pictured this curled up grumpy old man saying it. Nana.... It's two sentences anyway

--Jon

[davidaleon]

Actually, it was no joke. If you guys want to fool around with command prompts, rib files, and SL, that's your business. I am totally against that sort of approach. I don't like it. Never have, never will. Personally, I don't give a damn how many folks in the L.A. film market subscribe to that theory. I reject the proposition.

One of the reasons why I love VRay is that none of this sort of rot is necessary. I am not a UNIXish kind-of-a-guy. I don't like opening command prompt sessions in order to render my scenes. I believe all of this stuff can be done with wonderful easy and perfect control inside a GUI. 3ds Max and VRay constitute perfect proof of my point.

I sent a PM to #### telling him to bugger off and die.

[dellis]

Vlado,

I really don't want to high jack this thread but is the stand alone going to be available for linux when it is done or is it this way only for development?

[RErender]

I have to say I am on the GUI side of the fence too, Obviously RenderMan is not crap, but editing text to get a render is very archaic and non artistic.

[Mudvin]

Actually, it was no joke. If you guys want to fool around with command prompts, rib files, and SL, that's your business. I am totally against that sort of approach. I don't like it. Never have, never will. Personally, I don't give a damn how many folks in the L.A. film market subscribe to that theory. I reject the proposition.

One of the reasons why I love VRay is that none of this sort of rot is necessary. I am not a UNIXish kind-of-a-guy. I don't like opening command prompt sessions in order to render my scenes. I believe all of this stuff can be done with wonderful easy and perfect control inside a GUI. 3ds Max and VRay constitute perfect proof of my point.

I sent a PM to #### telling him to bugger off and die.

Answered you in PM, and like to answer here:
In my recent work rendered in PRMan with MayaMan there was 6 images written per single frame without any rerenders, etc. It was colour, masks, unshaded images, etc passes. All rendered at once. 14x350frames. This could become real headache if i would render all this passes manually. And all this things was implemented as few line shaders, integrated into Maya shading networks via MManSLCodeNode.

You can hate these CLIs, RIBs, *nixes and such, but in real production it is often the only way to finish work is to heavily use them. It is why all production houses doesn't use commercial software(almost), preferring to write their own to manage their workflow/data/renders/storages/etc.
I has written more then 10000 lines of MEL code, and now when i doing something in Maya, often my colleagues ouchs: "wow, how did you do this so fast???".

PS: About GUI's....did you ever tried MayaMan with any of the freely available renderers? It's almost ideal software: integrates PRMan rendering into Maya almost flawlessy, so regular artists doesn't have to write shaders or edit some texts, but if you want, you can do it.

[davidaleon]

Well God bless you! You are a genius.

Now I shall return to my plans to buy VRay 1.093n and hopefully obtain a free upgrade to VRay 1.5

[Mudvin]

Hehe, unfortunately i'm not

[ihavenofish]

i am i swear... a cracker jacks box told me so.

first off, to the original discussion, i have at my disposal dual athlons, dual opterons, dual xeons, and a host of other machines. in my experiences the opteron systems blow away the xeons in rendering as a global whole.
i can also show you 2 identical systems (this goes way back) save cpu's, where my dual p2 350 consistently out performed my co-workers dual p3 450 in rendering.

the point being, that every machine, set up in every way, running specific parts of specific software will run faster/slower then another machine.

max, and concequently it's plugins have sse2 enhancements, but the amd cpu's take advantage of these as well. before you absolutely determine that one machine or another is best for you, you should at least get more than one source of benchmarking. it is VERY easy to skew results on purpose or accidentaly that so that they wont reflect what YOU are doing in real life. in practice, you should borrow machines from friends and test them with your own scenes.

now on the the silly renderman "debate"(?)
why exactly are you so adamantly protecting a software that you have not purchase yet vs another software that you have obviously never seen let alone used.

you have obviously confused shading languages with some sort of command prom... well, i dont know what the hell you have confused it with.
every renderer has a "shading language". max uses c++ in its raw form more or less. mental ray and the renderman standard (not to be confused with prman the renderer) have their own formats. there at least 2 available GUI based shader creation programs for renderman compliant shaders, and as stated, several max/maya to rib generation tools that are fully integrated into the 3d package. there are even vast repositories of pre made shaders free for download.

now, saying that "if you think you need a shading language, you are wrong, all you need is the mat editor in max" is indeed a very naive statement. thats the equivalent to saying dreamweaver is the only web creation tool necessary and html is stupid. they are of course one in the same. shading languages are mandatory, otherwise you would not have materials. (or maybe just one hard coded).
a more accesable shading language developped specifically for vray(or making vray renderman compliant) would be great. it would allow people to write new shaders and then YOU, without ever opening a command promp or sniffing a unix box, could use them in your daily work.

knowledge is power my friend. you may never personally ever need to directly use these features in daily life, but knowing they are there, and knowing how to make use of them certainly cannot hurt you. if software developers were to bow to the needs of one single user, it would truely be a sorry state of affairs.

... why is it my posts on this forum are always so damned long?

later

[percydaman]

I agree with your statement. There will always be those who have no problem handing over control to a program ie a material editor, and those who prefer to retain the utmost amount of control available. Each will choose his software accordingly.

[Da_elf]

im not entirely sure what mudvin was talking about by specifying that he did a few render passes all in one go by writeing some lines of code with mayaman. congratulations in getting that done. i just rendered diffuse, shadow, reflection, refraction, GI, normal map, z-buffer, atmospherics and background all in one go just by selecting from a list what i wanted rendered. nice and easy without having to write any code and all using vray.

[RErender]

oh no, the fanboys vs. the renderboys

Hear me brothers GUI is the future!

mmm, can't wait to interact with my holographic desktop and trash my keyboard.

[Mudvin]

I mean, that i'm outputting data i want, not predefined passes. There was a masks for dirt, stamping(on a skin), masks for background objects, masks for pages and a cover(old book object), unshaded images, ambient occlusion, z channel, etc. All in single frame render.
You know, with SL i am able even output single image per light, to composite them later, and quickly change scene lighting without any rerenders.

PS: And sure, i can write shaders for MR or Max with C++, but i prefer SL, because it simple and doesn't need any C compilers installed. Workflow is much faster with SL.

PPS: Plain GUI is not the future. GUI like in MacOS X - this is the future. This is GUI for all users, and still unix config files in /etc for administrators/power users. This is what i mean, when refered to Mayaman - good GUI for all, and deep customisation for ones, who need it.

[vlado]

I really don't want to high jack this thread but is the stand alone going to be available for linux when it is done or is it this way only for development?

Yep, it's going to be available for Linux as well. Also, as far as all this GUI/Non-GUI stuff goes - from a developer's point of view, it is easier to code this in a non-GUI way and add GUI on top of that; the other way round is generally more difficult.

Best regards,
Vlado