Instancing, Lightwave, and FPrime

[Greyward]

Hello all, I've been lurking here for a while and have been finding your discussions most interesting and useful.

I'm currently using Lightwave 7.5 and Fprime 2.1. I know, I know, ancient stuff. However, given the software I have, whats the best way to do instancing? My competitors, using 3sd and vray, manage fantastically detailed landscaping; mostly through having a >ton< of plants. Its a technique I'd like to duplicate, and from what I've seen instancing plays a key part in what they do.

How can I do instancing in LW? What are my alternatives, plugins-wise? Other than KRay, which I'm still not sold on (sorry, Pavlov). Maybe once I can try 1.7.
Is it possible for FPrime to work with any of the instancing alternatives? I don't think I can mentally handle 7.5's radiosity renderer. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Leo

[bloontz]

I think your only choice is HDInstance from Happy Digital. Doesn't currently work with FPrime. Has its limitations but is easy to use and does a great job.

[vsele]

Hello all, I've been lurking here for a while and have been finding your discussions most interesting and useful.

I'm currently using Lightwave 7.5 and Fprime 2.1. I know, I know, ancient stuff. However, given the software I have, whats the best way to do instancing? My competitors, using 3sd and vray, manage fantastically detailed landscaping; mostly through having a >ton< of plants. Its a technique I'd like to duplicate, and from what I've seen instancing plays a key part in what they do.

How can I do instancing in LW? What are my alternatives, plugins-wise? Other than KRay, which I'm still not sold on (sorry, Pavlov). Maybe once I can try 1.7.
Is it possible for FPrime to work with any of the instancing alternatives? I don't think I can mentally handle 7.5's radiosity renderer. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Leo

Kray 1.7 is really great in instancing but dunno if you can use it with LW 7.5....you have to ask directly to Gregorz or Jure or Pavlov:)

[wavk]

there is no real instancing in lw.


mlon

[Pavlov]

Greyward - for prudence i repeat i'm not economically involed by any mean in kray sales - what doesnt fit your needs in Kray exactly ? Maybe i could give some info.
By now Kray is the most powerful instancing system you can get on LW, even though NT stated that native instancing will come in 9.x cycle.

Bye
Paolo

[Dodgy]

HD instance from www.happy-digital.com is good for this.

[MooseDog]

another option, using native tools, is research how to map sprites to hypervoxels. granted, it's not 3d geometry you're spreading about, but may work for your purposes.

[Greyward]

I guess I'll try HD Instance. Maybe I can check overall illumination with lightwave, and check the foliage with no GI, then for the final render use (groan) 7.5's GI overnight.

Pavlov: Sorry if it seemed I was implying anything. I just meant that I'm aware that kray 1.7 does instancing but I'm unwilling to go for Kray yet. We're a very small art department, I'm the only CG artist and budget is pretty tight. I've tried using the kray 1.6 demo and at every turn and despite every effort on my part I keep running into the octree depth and other problems right from the get-go. Supposedly a lot of this is fixed in 1.7, fine, but I can't >try< 1.7 with my scenes, and so I can't spend the $ on something that might just sit there unusable for a while til I can figure it out. Once the kray 1.7 demo is out I'll give it a try. If I can do good work with it and show my boss, then its a likely purchase.

No personal dig on you, I just know you're a big fan of kray and very active around here. On the contrary, I think your work is very good and some settings you posted for skylight a while back in another post are now my standard starting point for GI. I'm actualy personally sold on kray, but the only way to sell it to my boss is to show results.

VERY good to hear that we'll be getting instancing in the 9.x cycle. Upgrading LW is just a matter of time; I'll probably do so once 9.2 comes out of beta (The LW license is mine, btw, not the company's). I'll probably upgrade to fprime 3 at the same time, too.

[Iain]

Depending upon the size of the foliage models, point clone plus does a great job in modeler.

I've never used it for landscaping but it calculated these pebbles almost instantaneously and they were 500 polygons each. I did it thinking it wouldn't work and I'd have to use low poly objects but it was effortless and FPrime didn't flinch at the poly count.

[vpii]

Another alternative close to what Iain mentioned but on the layout side is a free Lscript named Random Allocator. You can find it on flay.com Works just like point clone but in layout. I like it because you have a little more control in keyframe, replacing and rendering one pass in Fprime. Attached example of 500 clones for the long grass.

[Erwin Zwart]

I'm actualy personally sold on kray, but the only way to sell it to my boss is to show results.

All understandable, but how did you convince your boss to buy FPrime for you as there is no demo of that in existence?
Apart from that, I use FPrime3 and kray1.7 for all my GI work and looking into 9.2 GI to replace the old non-GI LW renders I still make.

[Larry_g1s]

How does the 32bit vs the 64bit version work together. Let's say I have two machines, one that is 32bit and one that is 64bit, which one should I get? If I got the 64bit version, can I load the scene in the 32bit machine no problem, etc.?

[Greyward]

Erwin: I didn't. >I< bought fprime for my LW license. Nobody had said a bad thing about fprime anywhere and I figured that it would be a huge boon for my "fun projects" as much as for arc-viz. So I crossed my fingers, prayed to God, and I tool a leap of faith. I haven't been disappointed. Fprime is just as useful when rendering that huge battlecruiser in deep space as it is when doing GI heavy arch-viz scenes.

Maybe I'll do the same with Kray eventually, but at the moment upgrading LW and fprime are the priority. And even that will have to be put off now that my cart needs major work :(

[vsele]

Maybe I'll do the same with Kray eventually, but at the moment upgrading LW and fprime are the priority. And even that will have to be put off now that my cart needs major work :(

If you are upgrading Fpime to have the node surface support right, otherwise don't and save your money....:D

[roger1972]

If you are upgrading Fpime to have the node surface support right, otherwise don't and save your money....:D

Fprime 3 is worth it if you use nodes or LW64. or lw 9.2 and want to use the new cameras.... we don't use lw32 more after fprime3 came out... (and thank Odin for that)