3rd party renderers... help a noob choose! ;-)

[loki74]

Okay so I'm interested in getting a 3rd party renderer. I have some questions:

Will I be able to use the normal LW surface editor/surfaces? I don't like the idea of having to make all my materials in a third pary plugin, and would they show up in OpenGL?

Also, will I be able to use normal LW camera objects? I really don't like the idea of having to animate my camera in a third party plugin GUI.

Finally... what are the other downsides of using a 3rd party renderer?

Right now I am considering between Maxwell, or Fprime. I'm guessing the answers to the above questions would vary from package to package.

[ACLOBO]

I am curious..... As you proclaim that you are a noob, why would you want to mess around with third party renderers until you master lightwave's renderer. As a noob, I am guessing that this perfectly fine renderer would be able to do all you want and more as I am guessing that you are not making anything terribly complex. So, why the interest in a third party before you master lightwave?

:stumped:

-Adrian

ps. I own Fprime and think it is great. However, it doesn't always render faster than lightwave in every instance.

[vegabros]

Lightwave 9 renderer is supposed to by faster, so let's see :) I'd buy FPrime because of the preview ability. It's the best way to setup a scene, and when you are ready to render, you can hit render in LW or Fprime and wait with confidence :D

I'm new to LW and I'm loving it! You don't need to know anything to use FPrime, seems like all you have to do is hit "FPrime" and see the preview (or render it).

Now, understand that because of certain limitations in LW's SDK, FPrime does not render or preview volumetrics or sasquatch hair/grass.

One thing that erks me about LW's renderer is it's progress method... instead of a scanline coming down showing the final image line by line, you see blotches of the image appearing.

- Leo

[tischbein3]

I'm not very experienced in this, so please see this as a more "relativised" answer.



Okay so I'm interested in getting a 3rd party renderer. I have some questions:


Will I be able to use the normal LW surface editor/surfaces? I don't like the idea of having to make all my materials in a third pary plugin, and would they show up in OpenGL?

Also, will I be able to use normal LW camera objects? I really don't like the idea of having to animate my camera in a third party plugin GUI.


There a lot of threads, concerning lw supportive third party "out of the box" render solutions here, so I recomend to do a forum search for some details on the effectiveness and limitations.


Troubles like resurfacing or rebuilding/editing the scene will occur
quite often when you do use other 3D applications wich are not explically build for LW support, and use a converter to import the stuff.

[hdesbois]

Hi,
It's true that you can do a lot of things with LW native renderer. Any external renderer has some limitations (for instance, an external renderer, you won't render volumetrics, and most external renderers won't use procedurals or gradients). You choice depends on what you need to render, and on why you need to switch to another renderer.
I'd say Fprime is an excellent companion to LW, not only as a renderer, but as a setup tool. You can use procedurals and gradients, and you can render HV (without preview, though).
Now, if you use a lot of radiosity with indirect lighting, Maxwell does a great job, if you can wait 24h+ for your images. I know this seems insane, but you get really cool images without too much tweaking. You'll use the LW camera, but you'll have to setup Maxwell lights.
Here are some tests of mine with Maxwell :

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/9637/miel38jp.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/7510/testnew0gm.jpg

http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/8822/sponza20096rt.jpg

The first two are personal models, the last one is a test render of Marko Dabrovic's sponza atrium model

HD

[HarverdGrad]

If you don't own FPRime... I highly recommend it.
If you do own FPrime and still want to spend $$$ on another Renderer- I recommend XSI Foundation. It's got a fantastic Renderer, and Version 5 has really nice Subsurface Scattering + FastSkin. It's just cool. Download the 30 day demo & see for yourself :)
I also own Maxwell Renderer but I think XSI is the better value.
All my opinion of course and not meant to insult anyone.

[hdesbois]

XSI seems excellent value for money. How is the LW/XSI pipeline?
HD