Fryrender - Latest Physically Based Render Engine

[Arnel Aguel]

Just heard a while ago and visited their site www.fryrender.com and the renderer looks very cool and easy to set up. Rendered images look similar to maxwell output but much cleaner and faster according to the users in the forum. This is still in the beta stage but looks very promising renderer.

The only setback as of the moment is that there is no demo to download and play with before purchasing. You can only play with it now if you pre-order it. Nonetheless they promised to have a demo version soon.

[GuyR]

I think you'll see a number of physically based rendering solutions coming out over the next few years. Don't know if I would agree the quality is at Maxwells level yet.

Here's another lovely one written by one very clever fellow in Wellington, New Zealand

Guy

[Andre Baros]

I already did the "buy it in beta" with Maxwell and looking back, the sample gallery at that time was much better than what Fry has right now. Then again, lots of V-ray people where talking trash about Maxwell when it came out and I would say that today Maxwell is on par with V-ray in it's niche.

It'll be interesting to see how Fry turns out, Indigo too, but at this point I'm too invested in Maxwell to switch unless the competition is MUCH better.

The biggest improvements for me have to be inside Revit to make a real difference.

It should be interesting to see what comes of all this...

[GuyR]

The biggest improvements for me have to be inside Revit to make a real difference.

Amen......

[luigi]

Is it me, or do I see imperfections in the antialiasing of shadow lines? It's definately though a good renderer...

[greg.mcdowell]

One thing for sure... it's priced right! Maxwell is the same price but only good for 4 CPU's, this is good for 10!

Did I read that right? Sounds too good to be true.

I am really intrigued by this technology (whomever makes it). We waste more time doing test renders than most people realize. If there were a way to assign materials, place lights (real-world lights of course) hit render and, with enough time of course, get a killer rendering I'd be all over it! Of course getting TPB to understand is another issue.

What I really like is how you can plan ahead for rendering time (just like you plan ahead for plotting) and spend all your time on the model instead of tweaking materials, lights and render settings.

If you haven't tried one of the trials yet I recommend giving them a whirl.

[GuyR]

We waste more time doing test renders than most people realize. If there were a way to assign materials, place lights (real-world lights of course) hit render and, with enough time of course, get a killer rendering I'd be all over it!

Maxwell gets pretty damn close to this workflow. The biggest issues IMO currently are the Revit->Maxwell conversion and the need for serious hardware for rendering of large image sizes.

One feature particularly useful for architectural rendering and something I've not seen in any other package is the multilight capability. From one render you can create muiltple images.

http://www.maxwellrender.com/img/gal.../rcmlight2.mov

Pretty damn cool....

Guy

[greg.mcdowell]

Correct me if I'm wrong (please!) but the multi-light thing is limited to how much memory you have and your image/file size isn't it?

In other words, can you "really" use it for Architectural images where there could easily be 20-30 lights (or more) in a given scene (not to mention the sunlight)?

If I'm mistaken (and I really hope I am) then that would be wicked cool! Two renderings (or more) for the price of one! We usually do both a day and night view so that would be really useful.

[GuyR]

Greg,

I have rarely rendered above about 2400x2000 and I have 2GB RAM. I'm not sure how memory scales for 20,50,100,200 lights etc. Probably one for NextLimit if you were looking at purchasing.

In my experience for serious rendering with Maxwell you really need to have a network of powerful PC's to get acceptable rendering times for complex scenes. Which of course you will have if you are running Revit in a typical office environment With a demo version now the best thing to do is try it out on some of your projects.

HTH,

Guy

[Andre Baros]

I've pushed multi light up to 23 lights in a test scene though I've only used in in production with up to 6 so far. There are several people on the forum using multi-light with over 40 lights. The trick I've learned there is to group lights before you run them as multi lights. For example, if you have 20 can's in the ceiling that are on the same switch or dimmer in real life, group them before you assign a light material and they will be treated as a single light for multi light purposes. This way you can take care of a whole scene with maybe 5 or 6 groups of lights plus an HRDI environment, even though the actual scene may have hundreds of fixtures.

While I'm not thrilled with the extra step form Revit>Max>Maxwell, now that I've invested the time and money in the three I'm not changing until Revit changes. Also, since Maxwell has a stand alone material editor, all the materials I'm making now will be usable with Maxwell regardless of which of it's plug-in's I use.

I have to add again that the Maxwell workflow is amazing, I'll try to find some time to post more Revit to Maxwell stuff.