New to Cheetah3D... but just how good is it?

New to Cheetah3D... but just how good is it?

Hello - I'm new to 3D and also to Cheetah3D. I've downloaded the demo and I'm having a play at the moment... but I'm looking for some advice from fans and regular users before I decide to buy.

Firstly, I want to use Cheetah3D to create photo realistic visuals of exhibition display stands (simple pole and panel shell schemes and pop-up systems) incorporating my 2D graphics. I would like to know how much control there is of spot lighting. For example; would Cheetah allow me to place spot lights on the stands and control the output/direction and also the ambient lighting and cast shadows?

I also want to produce high resolution still images A2 size (and A3) at 300dpi and I would like to know what are Cheetah's limits in terms of the final rendered images.

I guess what I really would like to know is, is Cheetah the right software for me. I've looked at Cinema 4D, but it looks like a sledge hammer to crack a nut, on the basis of what I need. I like the fact that Cheetah is capable and that it appears to be much more user friendly.

Any pointers/advice gratefully received.

Cheers
Roy

sledgehammers do make cracking nuts pretty easy.:wink:

Sorry, couldn't resist.

It should work fine - not sure about those resolution sizes myself. If you need IES lights though no go.

Cheetah's maximum output size is currently 4096x4096. So you could get about 180dpi on an A2 print, which would be ok for most purposes.

I've done some prints at larger than A2, generally they look fine at resolutions down to 150dpi, depending on the image.

As for the lighting etc, you can control lights, shadows, reflections and radiosity in Cheetah. Take a look at the Gallery section of the www.cheetah3d.com website...

I would imagine that if 4096x4096 is a deal-breaker for you, Martin will increase it ;-)

Hi Roy,

I picked up Cheetah in order to model furniture and place it in architectural SketchUp models that I render together in MaxwellRender.

In the course of my questions on this forum I have found that instead of all three softwares I could do it all with Cheetah3D. At the moment I won't make that switch because I have too much time and money invested in the other 2, but it is an "if only I knew" situation.

There are some great modelers and renderers on this forum - check out luke bochinelli and frank beckman in particular (not to take anything away from many others - podperson and fused certainly come to mind).

I think you'll find C3D far more than adequate for you needs! Best 3D app for the price I've seen... For just over $100 you get a modeler, renderer and animator that rival the really expensive alternatives!

Here is a thread that might be of interest: http://www.cheetah3d.de/forum/showthread.php?t=2678&page=2&highlight=macitect
Both Frank's and Luke's renders were done without any info (dimension etc) from me!

hope that's helpful.
cheers,
macitect

EDIT: OK, go ahead and add Innerdreamrecords to my little list of C3D users to check out... ;-)

Because this is about Archviz kinda I'll add my 2 cents. I think for most clients Cheetah is fine, there is a difference in Vray, Modo, Maxwell etc. and some Architects I know see it very clearly that said some don't.

This image was used in the CG Architect gallery as were a few others i did in Cheetah.

Luke, Frank, and Innerdream all do a lot of arch viz and similar stuff, so they're definitely the guys to look at.

In general, if a tool is any good, it's up to the artist to produce good work. In general, the quickest way to tell if an art program is any good is to look at work done with it. This won't tell you if it's *easy* to create good stuff with it but it will tell you if it's *possible* and if there are folks out there using it to produce great work.

There's one major exception. A lot of Photoshop wannabe's (such as Pixelmator, cough) have some great screenshots, and so on, but you can't tell much from that. Anyone can open up a fantastic photo in a pixel pushing app.

An art program with no great stuff in the gallery either sucks, or has no good artists using it. And if there's no good artists using it, and it doesn't suck, well by golly it's a freak of nature.

From the C3D gallery:





Enough said.