The raster version of your shadow example is going to look horrible in comparison to the raytraced version. Close to the shadow casting object, the shadow should be sharper than far away. With raster you get an ugly uniformly blurred shadow no matter what the distance is.
His post was the first one on this thread that actually seemed to have some sense in it.
The rest of the posts are from amateurs who think that fiddling with POV ray back in the 90's qualifies them as an expert.
Parent is correct. There is nothing new at all about this technique. It could have been done on your standard desktop computer easily 10 years ago.
The article makes it seem like there is some new technology "finally" enabling people to make crowds with a handful of people.
The guys who did this are obviously relatively good at what they do but from a groundbreaking point of view there is nothing there that VFX people haven't seen a million times before.
Thats an unfortunate choice of example there. After Mother Theresa died, her personal letters were published and they revealed that despite dedicating her whole life to god, she actually didn't believe her prayers had any power at all. She knew no-one was listening.
The professional user base for Blender is fairly large, it is just a different target market. ie. hobbiests, occasional users etc. There is nothing wrong with that, it's a valid market. It's not the main commercial market though.
The fluid dynamics was a number of full years of developer time. You've clearly never developed any significant feature for a 3D application. I said "Most" You picked probably the most complicated and difficult example. For your information, while I am a 3D artist, not a professional coder, I have implemented a cloth solver and several modeling tools amongst other things.
All of the features listed are used in production environments, the feature animation movie Plumiferos made use of pretty much every feature including fluids, cloth, the particle system, etc. I could probably build a house with a leatherman and a rock given enough time.
the post is by ZaonDude who is famous (among 3D artists) for comparison of high end 3D renderer quality. How about a 3D artist who actually makes 3D rather than going around comparing apps?
Comparison lists like this are very misleading. The devil is in the details. It's not about how many buzzword columns an app can check, it's about whether the app has had a userbase that has thrashed the software through years and years of real production work and had the software evolve into a powerful tool.
It's very easy to add a feature in a 3D app. Most interested hobbiest weekend coders could whip up most functions found in any given 3D app. Whether that feature is production ready is another story.
Going by the list it would seem that something like Blender of C4D is on a par with Maya and Max. They're not. They don't have the huge in-depth expert user communities and the benefit of thousands of users pushing them to the limit day in and day out.
If you're choosing a 3D app, talk to some real 3D artists who have been in the industry for years and depend on their 3D application system for their living. Don't compare checkbox lists.
Slashdot Mirror
The raster version of your shadow example is going to look horrible in comparison to the raytraced version. Close to the shadow casting object, the shadow should be sharper than far away. With raster you get an ugly uniformly blurred shadow no matter what the distance is.
His post was the first one on this thread that actually seemed to have some sense in it. The rest of the posts are from amateurs who think that fiddling with POV ray back in the 90's qualifies them as an expert.
I second this. I have two - one at work and one at home.
Parent is correct. There is nothing new at all about this technique. It could have been done on your standard desktop computer easily 10 years ago. The article makes it seem like there is some new technology "finally" enabling people to make crowds with a handful of people. The guys who did this are obviously relatively good at what they do but from a groundbreaking point of view there is nothing there that VFX people haven't seen a million times before.
Thats an unfortunate choice of example there. After Mother Theresa died, her personal letters were published and they revealed that despite dedicating her whole life to god, she actually didn't believe her prayers had any power at all. She knew no-one was listening.
Fair enough. You've answered my criticisms fairly.
I wish the project well and look forward to seeing where the future takes it.
The fluid dynamics was a number of full years of developer time. You've clearly never developed any significant feature for a 3D application. I said "Most" You picked probably the most complicated and difficult example. For your information, while I am a 3D artist, not a professional coder, I have implemented a cloth solver and several modeling tools amongst other things.
All of the features listed are used in production environments, the feature animation movie Plumiferos made use of pretty much every feature including fluids, cloth, the particle system, etc. I could probably build a house with a leatherman and a rock given enough time.
the post is by ZaonDude who is famous (among 3D artists) for comparison of high end 3D renderer quality. How about a 3D artist who actually makes 3D rather than going around comparing apps?
Comparison lists like this are very misleading. The devil is in the details. It's not about how many buzzword columns an app can check, it's about whether the app has had a userbase that has thrashed the software through years and years of real production work and had the software evolve into a powerful tool. It's very easy to add a feature in a 3D app. Most interested hobbiest weekend coders could whip up most functions found in any given 3D app. Whether that feature is production ready is another story. Going by the list it would seem that something like Blender of C4D is on a par with Maya and Max. They're not. They don't have the huge in-depth expert user communities and the benefit of thousands of users pushing them to the limit day in and day out. If you're choosing a 3D app, talk to some real 3D artists who have been in the industry for years and depend on their 3D application system for their living. Don't compare checkbox lists.