Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

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HulkaPig
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Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

Post by HulkaPig »

EDIT: whops, i think i shouldnt have post this in "tutorials" section, sorry gonna fix it asap.

Hi there, im not good with english but ill give my best :p

Which 3d software is the easiest, less complicated and/or gives the best results?? (debatable i know)

I went to deviant and saw a comparisson made by Lovestruck2, he points to 3dsmax as his favorite, next to Blender Cycles and finally keyshot, i really love how 3dsMax and mental ray i think? creates a soft, smooth skin texture but it sucks with the hair, then Cycles did awesome job with the hair and shadows, finally keyshot uhhmm, something nice, more close to cycles than 3dsmax. Also i┬┤ve seen too many deviants using 3ds with Doa girls mostly and almost all go to 3dsmax with mental/v-ray thingy.

Image

I tried Blender internal, it's easy and thats it, theres few things i can think about.

Blender Cycles (blender 2.6x)
i have like 14 hours of experience with Cycles and still gets complicated at some point, the main problem is the nodes feature and assign the textures, shaders and all the conection to specific meshes/material w/e.
I think i already understood the essence of Cycles, the way it works but takes 2 much time specially when you have a model with 50 texture images and meshes for the front hair, back hair, side hair, shirt, skirt, shoes, socks, hands, upper & lower body, nails, eyes... setting and customize each thing takes ages.

Rearrange all that stuff its possible but takes twice or more time, joining meshes, assing textures, materials and else in blender, like a meshmodding and OMFG.

Plus the "real time" rendering set to 25+ samples is slooow, i dont have a CPU/GPU strong enough to increase the samples and check every detail, the camera focus/position, angles etc, thats a Must with cycles. Less samples wont give a clear or decent shot to check details and that happened with a model yesterday, i failed with bumps and specular posing a Rexil model (500 samples) and when the render finished the girl had a weird texture in the face, i didnt notice that coz the real time rendering with cycles was set to 15 or something, Texture view/mode doesnt show those details.

Finally im AMD/ATI, and Cycles seems to work better, optimized for Nvidia & cuda thingy. :/ :cry: Gonna try the last versi├│n 2.73a and check overall performance.

Keyshot
Nothing, i know nothing, i guess i should try it

3DS Max
As keyshot, never tried with 3dsMax but tons of awesome pics in deviants encourage anyone to go for 3dsmax.


So... should i try keyshot & 3dsmax? are those easier or more complicated? which takes less time to setup and beggin with the rendering process?
The thing i hate with 3ds is the installation, too much !"$%&@ installs, folders everywhere, hidden folders, registry entries, things here and there and was a pain in the !"#%@ unnistalling, i did it coz hard drive space issues.
Whats with Sketchup & Daz? anyway thx 4 ur time and answers gonna post some crappy samples later.
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Re: Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

Post by Dazzy »

I use blender cycles, it's not as hard as it seems, once you figure out the basics of nodes and the setups it gets alot easier.
I also used keyshot before and thats the easiest program from the ones you have listed, although it generally doesn't give as good quality renders compared to 3DS Max or Blender.
3DS Max is the most complicated in my opinion, i have never been able to get a render working properly in that lol.
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HulkaPig
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Re: Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

Post by HulkaPig »

So 3ds is not that easy uh? ty dazzy that info helps too much specially with someone like me, im doing lots of stuff like meshmodding, changing UV layouts and create new textures, also rendering with SFM & trying animation (and so far that seems wayyyy easier than rendering) and blablabla so investing time with new software and something not so easy to learn well, a waste of time when i could focus on 1-2 things.

Anyway lets wait and see more opinions.

ps: went stalker mode and saw your activity, plus found out ur DA and holy !"#% ur old school, someone like you with all that record having problems with 3ds means i shouldnt even touch it :XD:
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Re: Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

Post by RoxasKennedy »

I don't think 3DSMax is that hard.

If you want to at least try 3DSMax, I suggest going to WolfShadow117's profile, and looking up some 3DSMax tutorials for material setup. I think the same person also uploaded a sample scene so you can mess around with that as well.

I worked mostly with Blender, but at one point I did tons of work in Cinema4D. I think it's similar to 3DSMax in some ways, but I found it easier to setup a scene and lighting thanks to the materials that come with it.

And recently I started using Marmoset Toolbag. It's a fairly simple program with less options, but it gives out some outstanding results.
I believe it's only good if you want to render one character; a more complex scene would probably crash the program.
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Re: Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

Post by Love2Raid »

I'm not very experienced at rendering, but I can tell you that you will have to spend a lot of time tweaking material settings and smoothing parts in ANY program, if you want good results. I would not go with Keyshot, if I were you, because that program doesn't let you edit the meshes.

I also think that you can create amazing things with both Cycles and 3ds Max, if only you know how (which I don't :feel: ). So it all comes down to things like the user interface etc. Just try 3ds Max and see if you find it easier to work with than Blender.
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Re: Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

Post by HulkaPig »

Edit: Just realized this post was too long and i wasnt talking about the subject at all, pure blender cycles blablabla (this reply had 2 much blender cycles questions, not the place) so im moving all to "Vonman" blender cycles topic viewtopic.php?f=8&t=135

Hmm... Must practice more before getting into 3dsmax or something else, if i can't fix this details (blender cycles issues) i shouldnt touch more-less complicated software. Cinema4d & Marmoset Toolbag uh? didn't know about moar software for models rendering, gonna check em on youtube & pics, im taking notes of everything :D
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Re: Easiest 3dsoft for rendering?

Post by HulkaPig »

Sorry for bumpin this but i've found something interesting about rendering with Blender, searching a solution to enable GPU instead CPU for AMD users, a guy in youtube made a video tutorial showing how to change blenders cycles to gpu for amd cards but then he wrote an update suggesting "LuxRender" since the method for AMD cards with cycles has glitches or something.

some info: http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/blender_2_5

download: http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/standalone#windows

instructions for installation: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxBlend_ ... structions

Wiki with tips and info: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/New_User_Tips_and_Tricks

Faqs: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Frequentl ... _Questions

I just installed this thing and so far seems nice (actually i dont know what im doing), i can move around open things, check facebook (having blender cycles using all the CPU power makes ur comp kinda laggy) and my CPU cores have medium load, the GPU just 49┬░C and cores to 94-97% while making this (pic below) 8 minutes render and still goes on.

btw this scene has 1 plane with light emission, jessi rabbit with assigned textures and one camera, nothing else.

Image

i dont have a great computer, neither knowledge with blender cycles but you guys could give it a try, maybe luxrender in hands of experienced people can show potential or different results compared with cycles.
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