OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

[Micha_cg]

Hello,

I got a request of a client to render a project, but ... with Flamingo. I install my never used old license and ... oh, is this old engine slow ... unbeliveable. I take a low poly car at a studio ground with smooth background and a directional light, no GI and render it with Vray and Flamingo - 3.3s : 44s. Is this normal? :

-Micha

[Travis Serio_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

do you have soft shadows turned on in Flamingo? if you do and you have a high sample rate then yes, you'll be there all day. Also flamingo has some speed issues with busted geometry like naked edges that can really slow it down.

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

No soft shadow, very low poly model, lowest AA with jagged edges. If I use AA 16, than it need 2min:36s. :'(

[Travis Serio_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

what size is the render? Also, we found the P4's and higher provide slightly better render times than the AMD chips. (just in case you wondered)

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

~800x600 at an E6600@2.9GHz 3GB RAM

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

I try to get a decent result and setup a 8 point light dome with soft shadows. Here the results:

Vray - 78s


Flamingo - 6120s (1h42min)


So, we could say, if I would try to get the same quality per Flamingo, than it would be 100 times slower than Vray. I thought, the old raytrace would be fast at my new machine, but ... .

I ask Facundo from the Flamingo forum and she test my scene - no faster rendering and Flamingo 2 will base on the same engine.

[Gijs]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

Why do you need to render it in Flamingo? Isn't it the end result that matters most?

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

A big german company bought Rhino+Flamingo one year befor and was searching somebody for help to render a current project with Flamingo. I thought: no problem, this old raytracer will be fast at my machine and I use a light dome, but ...

Do you know any reason why somebody should use Flamingo? It's a pity that the SR is not ready. I don't like to say: ... take Vray, it's easy to use, but if you like to use the colors from your Flamingo setup, than you must create small color texture patches.

I think, it could be quite easy to jump from Flamingo to Vray in non GI mode. The NonGI ambient light could be integrated and a short material tutorial written, how to get the Flamingo material with Vray. Only the procedural textures could be missing.

[joe_b]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

we should be releasing VfR4 in beta form in the coming weeks. Maybe you can delay their final decision making a bit.

[pukepunk]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

i have a simply scene with simply materials...

V ray with GI: 3m 52s

Flamingo photometric + radiosity: 12s + 32s = 44s

the realism is better in the second render... stranger...

i want upload here but i don't know how to do, my mail is pukepunk@hotmail.com

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

Now I'm curious.

If you like, you can post images here per free photohost link, for example per photobucket.com.

My test was to compare appel with appel, point light with point lights. But we can compare the overall look too. I'm curious for Flamingo DOF. This was my reason to jump to the free renderer BMRT many years befor.

If you like, download my tests scene from www.simulacrum.de/download/Rendertest_Ford.rar. My problem was, that my client like to render a scene equal to this. It's only an example, the project is a train with 3.000.000 polygons. Try to keep small details and fine Antialaising, no noise and soft lighting.

[joe_b]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

i want upload here but i don't know how to do, my mail is pukepunk@hotmail.com

You can just upload to http://www.imageshack.us and post the link with the img /img bbcodes around it.

[Travis Serio_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

I remember when you used BMRT and AIR. do you still use it at all? you had some great images on the Rhino forum back then. I personaly dont care for renderman based shaders, compiling them is so crude.

[Micha_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

As blood beginner I start with Flamingo, but after the DOF effect was not working and I have seen at the handbook, that it never will right work and the spped was horrible slow, I was looking for an alternativ renderer. BMRT was very interesting, with some nice features and for free. But the development was stoped and the speed was slow. Than I found AIR, good price for students, great support, nice feature list, better speed and good for CG experiments. But AIRs GI engine is a very simple one only, not so useable for interiors. AIR is a flexible engine for film industry based on renderman standard. I play a while with Maxwell beta, but speed and support was not enough for me. So, during I start an internship at an architecture office, I found VfR Beta and this was my big luck.
My plan is to use AIR for non photoreal illustration stuff based on ambient occlusion and outline rendering. The outlines of AIR are the best I have seen. Maybe VfR will support outlines once a day to, but it's not so important for me yet. I can use AIR outline/cartoon/shader stuff in combination with the photoreal and fast VfR. Last, a design client was looking for high quality outlines, this was the start of the comeback of AIR at my machine.

[Travis Serio_cg]

Re: OT: Flamingo ... I get grey hairs

Yes i loved the outlines of traced edges from your wellness area render. That is great feature for lots of interior renders. I have the latest WIP copy of Toucan from McNeel. The post DOF and ambient occlusion in that engine are very fast and very strong points for that engine. The rest of the WIP that I have is not very complete (no env objects, no infinite plane and so on) but I think it will be a nice companion to VFR eventually. Toucan really feels like what Flamingo 2.0 should have been. It will be very interesting to see what happens to rendering for Rhino now that the RDK has evolved and been released.