their last movie ( a little hard to follow the story :)
By Blender Foundation

Hi Shaun,

> While the rendering may be capable, it seems there are issues importing MoI OBJ
> files. If you get over that hurtle the best renderer may be a free one…

Actually the issue is that Blender doesn't do very well with importing OBJ files from any CAD program, not just something specific to MoI in particular.

The problem is that they just ignore the "vertex normals" information in the OBJ file - that data in the OBJ file is not read in, and there are also various other problems with vertex normal handling in Blender as well like even if they are read in they get discarded at render time.

See here for some previous discussions on this:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5083.6
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4515.3
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4272.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4409.79


The omission of vertex normals import makes it pretty difficult to get high quality renders of CAD data in Blender. Every other rendering program that I'm aware of does not have this particular problem, but it has been an issue with Blender for a really long time now.

So if you need to render CAD-generated polygon data such as the data exported from MoI, Blender does not really work particularly well for that right now because of this particular limitation in it. You can get the raw polygon data into it but when the polys are shaded you will likely have various kinds of shading artifacts that sort of "leak" some resemblance of the polygon structure into the rendered result. Those kinds of artifacts do not happen at all when the vertex normal data that's included in the OBJ file is used for doing the shading, so you really want to use a renderer that is able to import and use that data instead of ignoring it.

- Michael

You can make blender work it you don't mind doing a little hand work. The way I have done it in the past is export it as a NGON without welding the mesh. this removes the problems around the joins (as it isn't joining) but there are usually still some problems on rounded areas but If you go around the mesh and remove the small triangles you can get nice looking meshes out of it. it's not ideal as it would be nice if you could just do an import and be done but it is free And I have had to work out making MAX work nicely with MOI as well so....

Val

Hi Val, yes but at least with Max the problems you are running into there have been solved in more recent releases than the one you're using.

- Michael

My point was more that there is always a bit of tweaking when you go from platform to platform.

An example of a direct import of an OBJ from MOI to Blender is the attached image. I didn't anything other than remove the material it comes in with and add one that shows off flaws. I think it looks pretty good.

Hi Val,

> My point was more that there is always a bit of tweaking when you
> go from platform to platform.

But for a lot of programs there is no tweaking at all required - in most other rendering programs where vertex normals come through properly it usually totally avoids all of the types of glitches that you were describing needing to do workarounds for.


> An example of a direct import of an OBJ from MOI to Blender is the attached image.

That does look pretty good - you can have a lot more leeway on getting imperfect shading if you're not really zoomed in very close to any one particular part of the model.

- Michael

I just repost this problem to the Blender team
Wait and see :)

AHH bad news from the Blender Team!
No new work about "vertex normal" in Bender! :(

Hi Pilou,

> AHH bad news from the Blender Team!
> No new work about "vertex normal" in Bender! :(

Too bad.... It's a pretty big area where Blender is really far behind everything else.

- Michael

Is anyone using Arion 2 for rendering?
I am particularly interested in architectural capabilities and ease of use.
cheers,
eric

Hi m-dynamics,

>I just bought Arion for a discounted price as a Fryrender customer
>Arion use all GPU and CPU's of your hardware (hybrid)
>It deliver unbiased results or,if you want,you can save rendering-time switching to -draft-mode( a faster solution close to >unbiased)

I recently saw that RandomControl now offers also a learning edition of Arion 2. My questions, if you don't mind, are does Arion's license allow you to install it on two machines, because i would like to set-up my scenes on my iMac (Win XP) and later render them on my Notebook (Win 7), which outperforms GPU wise my iMac.

Can the preview rendering mode, which i saw on a youtube demo, be turned of, like working in Maxwell Studio, prior rendering?

And last but not least does Arion 2 comes with a (good) material library?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Regards
Stefan

I'd like to know a bit more about the standalone Arion 2 too :)

Stefan:
I recently saw that RandomControl now offers also a learning edition of Arion 2.
My questions, if you don't mind, are does Arion's license allow you to install it on two machines,
because i would like to set-up my scenes on my iMac (Win XP) and later render them on my Notebook (Win 7), which outperforms GPU wise my iMac.

I don't know exactly their pricing & licensing,better to contact them to clarify your doubts
anyway Learning Edition allow you to use all GPU's of your system
Network rendering NOT allowed
max resolution:1920x1080
------------

Stefan:
Can the preview rendering mode, which i saw on a youtube demo, be turned of, like working in Maxwell Studio, prior rendering

Arion is a real-time application,this mean that just after you loaded the scene render starts immediately.
You can't quit the render,save the framebuffer and resume later for more computation(like Maxwell and Fryrender)
The preview mode is what you get,just choose output size and format so it's a WYSIWYG application
Setting camera focus and position,assign materials,all done in the preview window

You can choose which devices will be involved for computation,which videocards and how many Cpu's cores
Being a CUDA-BASED application you must have an NVIDIA card,if you have an ATI you can use only CPU(than you loose all speed benefits fo hybrid calculation)
They suggest to use two videocards:one for computation,other for UI and navigation.That's the main thing!
Normally you got just one videocard,this one must handle UI+navigation and also all computation that Arion require
this mean a general slowdown or a freeze in all UI operations(open a new window,navigate on Internet while Arion working,change a material,moving the camera,etc)
you can switch Arion in PAUSE and do all you need,or change your scene settings,but sometime changes you made are not updated in the preview window
this depends by your videocard and the amount of video-memory(I'm experimenting this with my GTX 460 -1Gb video RAM)
if you plan to manage heavy scenes or render at high resolution you must have a videocard with at least 2Gb video RAM and the highest number of CUDA-CORES
be careful when watching demos on Youtube:you see Arion performing in real-time but they don't tell what hardware they are using...
--------------

Stefan:And last but not least does Arion 2 comes with a (good) material library?

Materal library comes in 12 sections:

AUTOMOTIVE:6 carpaint materials
CLOTH:2 satin materials +3velvet
DIFFUSE: 7 colors
EMITTERS:14 emitters (D50-D65-tungsten-studiolamp-flash-white-candle) IES are supported
FROSTED:5 variations of frosted and smoked glass
GEMSTONES:11 different gems(amethyst,aquamarine.topaz,etc.)
LAMBERTIAN:7 colors
LIQUID:6 (bordeaux wine,water,oil,ice,etc)
METAL:5(aluminium,copper,gold,mirror,silver)
PLASTIC:19(rubber,plastic,marble)
SSS:12 (beewax,rigatone pasta,acrylic etc.)
TRANSPARENT:12(dispersion diamond,transparent plastic,smoked glass,etc.)

They have improved materials behaviour from Fryrender to Arion and i can say that you got top quality
Metals are not the best area (it's the most difficult stuff to replicate in all render engines,unbiased or not)
Architecture and interiors are best fields for Arion,sun also works good for outside scenes
Best of all if you are a Max OR XSI user,so you can manage all setting inside them using LIVE plug-ins
i get benefits using my old FRY-C4D plug-in to manage the scene than export all and open in ARION
i think that is slightly difficult have the standalone version and manage all settings inside arion after importing as OBJ
in that case you can't have full control like with the plug-in..no doubts you must have a strong videocard

hope this help little more

M

Thank you very much, m-dynamics,
for your thoroughly explanation. It's very helpful for me and much appreciated!
It would be cool if Random Control could release a demo version,
so that one can try out by itself, to see the performance on a given machine.

Hopefully Maxwell 3.0 will bring GPU rendering to the table too...

Thanks again for your help!

Best regards
Stefan

..your welcome Stefan...
few months ago they gave a demo -version and some ready-to-use scenes for testing,suddendly changed a lot of things:
quit Fryrender,no more support for all plug-ins(MAYA-C4D MODO-SKETCH UP-RHINO-LIGHTWAVE etc..)new pricing and licensing
Fryrender is still on the top with Maxwell,give faster results but belongs to a small company
this means an heavy work for the programmer to update all plug-ins to the last releases(like in C4D,they changed all from 11.5 to 12)
if i remember correctly,i have read on their forum in the past,programmer that worked on the plug-ins left the company
then,probably, they decided to continue development Arion without supporting all plug-ins, just MAX and XSI
they give - Arion sdk -for sale if someone want to develope a Live plug-in(i hope that this happens in future)
you can imagine how fast will be in the next future render with newest CPU and GPU's getting an unbiased quality
so you also will render animations to that quality,but no live plug-in,no animation
maybe you would consider which application give these features,before buying(if you need that features)

M

To bad that they cancelled the demo. It would help me a lot to have a demo to decide if i should buy or not.
Well, maybe they do it again in the future (hopefully).

Regards
Stefan

There is also Marmoset Toolbag: http://www.marmoset.co/

Here's a link to a preview of new GPU render coming with the next public Thea version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZUKi8tlycs&feature=player_embedded