<< 5. Has a human-friendly interface
it is not about blender.

:)

Some time ago I switched to KeyShot. Such an amazing piece of software. Now it's my preferred renderer.

are you kidding, guys? I wrote at least 4 times about Keyshot! does anyone read my posts? my ass...

Sorry Pilou, I didn't notice that you had already mentioned Blender. Well, it doesn't hurt to mention it twice.

Next to Blender's Cycles, my other favorite renderer is Keyshot, mentioned many times in this discussion already. I agree that the full version is too costly, but I've got the very affordable ZBrush-connected license. I use it mainly to render ZBrush creations, but sometimes I use ZBrush as a bridge between MoI Obj export and Keyshot.

@ Mseven Absolutly no problem!
A french Friend of me Pitiwasou has made these 3 cool plugins for Blender :)
https://cgcookiemarkets.com/all-products/speedflow/
https://github.com/pitiwazou/Scripts-Blender/blob/Older-Scripts/Wazou_RMB_Pie_Menu
http://www.pitiwazou.com/asset-management/

Altair Acquires Solid Iris Technologies



https://thearender.com/site/index.php/news/press-release/238-altair-acquires-solid-iris-technologies.html


Thea has been a great solution for me with its stunning unbiased engine realism and ease of use.
Plus it (currently) costs the same as Moi.

An acquisition always spells uncertainty for any software platform.
When Trimble acquired SketchUp its strengths went more in the direction of the civil engineering crowd but it's still around and a powerful, easy to use solution, so it wasn't a bad thing ultimately. However, has anyone else noticed that the pro version's price, once at around $500, is now $700? Maybe that's due to normal inflation - maybe I should talk to my boss.

Let's hope that any new development in Thea only enhances its current strengths for simplicity and spectacular renders.

Hi Mike K4ICY (MAJIKMIKE),

I'm glad to see you're back here !!

I still remember your awesome Moi tutorials! The best (not video) tuts I've ever seen IMHO :)

I agree with you about the acquisition of Solid Iris Technologies.

I hope that this "marriage" will bring new enhancements of that fantastic renderer.

For some time i'm using TheaRender (standalone and with Rhino plugin) and i must say that it's a super product!

Nice day,

- Marco (mkdm)

"However, has anyone else noticed that the pro version's price, once at around $500, is now $700?"

WHAT????

That is capitalism rules! :)

the price remains the same according to Thea website

He's talking about Sketchup Pro ;-) That's ~700 now.

I don't think anybody knows what the acquisition will bring for Thea. I have no clue about Altair, never heard of them, but I'm very wary about acquisitions in general.
In the end, only time will tell. But investors normally want to see their money back or have their own agenda regarding supported software - I saw that Altair has also bought Solid Thinking which was very crappy when I bought a license many years ago and is supposed to be better these days (I probably can't update anymore ... ;-) ).

Fingers crossed...

Cheers,

Tom

so, should I buy Thea as soon as possible or I can wait? If they raise the price it would be better to buy Maxwell (they just switched to GPU)
anyway - raise the price is not a good way to see their money soon. there are a lot of alternatives for 800-1000 euro, so for now Thea is a good solution only for its low price.

Hi glmr,

> so for now Thea is a good solution only for its low price

I'm sorry but I don't agree with you. :)

I almost daily use Thea and i can say that its speed and render quality are amazing!

If you want very good quality and excellent speed, its Presto CPU+GPU biased engine is awesome,
while if you want ultra realistic rendering at lower speed, its Unbiased engines are very close to the best high-end products of the market,
certainly much better then the famous KeyShot!

It's unbelievable that currently it costs under 300$!!

Nice day.

- Marco (mkdm)

No argument there.

For me, it was the modest price and stunning realism of the unbiased engine - not to mention the simple UI.

As far as the long-term effects of the acquisition, it worry that there will be a time someday when I go to install Thea on a new PC only to find that their server no longer validates my license.

Well, at least there is competition out there.

How does Thea for Rhino compare with Octane? I have Octane and like it.
eric

I personally also think it's currently among the best renderers out there - it's my personal favourite for years.

It's hard to know what will happen, but Altair at least is not Apple, Autodesk or Microsoft who are known to butcher perfectly fine software for parts.
They use Thea as renderer in their Solid Thinking CAD software, so it's unlikely it will die anytime soon.
The unknowns are, what direction it will take, whether prices stay reasonable and how host integration will develop in the future.

The integration in Rhino already is awesome and I personally would still recommend it highly. The standalone also works pretty well.
With the multiple render kernels it is usable in a very broad range of uses.
And things like bucket rendering on GPU let you render even huge stills - and there is always CPU fallback.

It also seems that the next bigger update is around the corner.

There always is a certain amount of unpredictability in everything and even more so after an acquisition, so it's hard to make solid recommendations at this point, but from a quality and price point, you can't go wrong with Thea IMO and so far Ioannis was more than fair with the users..

Cheers,

Tom

I personally think Thea is better than Octane, but feature by feature it may be a draw.
I have Octane for Lightwave and while it's well integrated, I hardly use it.
Octane 3 has hair, volumes and some other stuff like that, which Thea hasn't (yet).
Thea has GPU & CPU at the same time for quite a while already and it really flies while Octane only announced it so far AFAIK.
I like the material system in Thea better and while I normally am a total node-addict, I find the nodes in Octane rather limited and clumsy.
Thea feels more versatile to me and has a clearer workflow IMO.
ATM, a network rendernode for Thea is 49.- Euro and two are included in the initial purchase - Octane is much more expensive there.
Theas network setup is the most brilliant and fast I've ever encountered in 20 years of CG. Once set up (5 minutes per node max) you simple enable network rendering in Thea and all machines contribute very efficiently.
But if you have Octane already and like it, it may not be as interesting as if you would start from scratch.

Cheers,

Tom

I thought I'd post a neat little example of Thea Render's "Relight" feature.
(Sorry, it doesn't include the pie.)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ue8j0w0az18peyu/Relight_Example.psd



Take the image into Photoshop and adjust or toggle the visibility of each layer to see how the image is affected.
Each layer is set to Screen mode.
In Thea, the separate Relight lighting channels produced are inherently HDR, so this Photoshop example is just a hack preview for fun.
If you use the Relight feature in Thea, you may enjoy the benefit from being able to adjust each lighting element in a room scene at will post-rendering, though you better have plenty of PC memory on hand.

Love to see so much Keyshot renders here. KS is my renderer of choice, too. For a year or so I only use KS for my rendering needs any more. No other software.

KS again... my ass...