How's it going ...
- Thread starter Angry Alex
- Start date
Swizl
0
Blender has had thousands of people contribute to it's creation over the years. C3d is a (mostly) a one man operation. So Martin has to prioritize what he works on. There are some features I'd love to see too, but I understand he can only do so much with his time.
In all honesty though, I juggle several 3d apps depending on what I need. I still do the majority of my work in C3d, as it's so flexible and easy to use. But I now bring it into Modo for finishing.
Each person here that has been using C3d for a long time (me about 10 years) has their own wish list. Network rendering isn't high on my list, but a dope sheet and sub-surface scattering are. I do a lot of mechanical animations that need to stay synchronized when I'm editing the animation. A lot of the materials that I need to render are typically transparent with a frosted appearance. I've been able to get a relatively good approximation in C3d, but I never can fully get that milky look that SSS would give. I know Martin has been working on adding that to the renderer as well as other features. So eventually I will probably move back to the native renderer when that happens. I'd also like an interactive rendering viewport, but we'll see if that ever gets added or not.
In all honesty though, I juggle several 3d apps depending on what I need. I still do the majority of my work in C3d, as it's so flexible and easy to use. But I now bring it into Modo for finishing.
Each person here that has been using C3d for a long time (me about 10 years) has their own wish list. Network rendering isn't high on my list, but a dope sheet and sub-surface scattering are. I do a lot of mechanical animations that need to stay synchronized when I'm editing the animation. A lot of the materials that I need to render are typically transparent with a frosted appearance. I've been able to get a relatively good approximation in C3d, but I never can fully get that milky look that SSS would give. I know Martin has been working on adding that to the renderer as well as other features. So eventually I will probably move back to the native renderer when that happens. I'd also like an interactive rendering viewport, but we'll see if that ever gets added or not.
I happily use both C3D & Blender in my workflow at the moment. I find Blender does some exporting & UV mapping which suit my current needs more than C3D. But C3D has definitely been essential in helping me overcome the steep learning curve a newbie faces when starting out in 3D animation. I can probably see myself gravitating more towards Blender in some respect as my 3D modelling matures, purely because of the bigger community, more online videos, add-ons that Blender can offer. But i agree entirely with Swizl, I’m loyal to C3D because it is so easy to use.
The 3D mac community is also fortunate to have C3D, its a solid package for the price. When I compare it to say other lower priced professional 3D software like SketchUp Pro at $695. C3D just kills it for value IMHO C3D @ $99
Let’s face it, no point having another Blender. C3D has to differentiate... and its less features - but easy to use approach is working.
Finally, I find it unbelievable that Martin has built this entire program by himself. I would never had thought it even possible that one person could write such a feature rich 3D software. SketchUp even had the benefit of Google ownership for several years and didn’t progress as much as C3D has in the same time.
The 3D mac community is also fortunate to have C3D, its a solid package for the price. When I compare it to say other lower priced professional 3D software like SketchUp Pro at $695. C3D just kills it for value IMHO C3D @ $99
Let’s face it, no point having another Blender. C3D has to differentiate... and its less features - but easy to use approach is working.
Finally, I find it unbelievable that Martin has built this entire program by himself. I would never had thought it even possible that one person could write such a feature rich 3D software. SketchUp even had the benefit of Google ownership for several years and didn’t progress as much as C3D has in the same time.
I totally agree with you guys, one person has to prioritize. I don't now if you also agree, that one person is not able to keep up with the needs of the future. I don't want to bother the developer, I am pretty sure he's doing what he can and hope that I don't do it saying: I wish C3D will switch in a more professional direction. I really appreciate the nice atmosphere of the community here and the understanding for the good and diligent work of the developer (yes is really unbelievable one person did such a great job), but I personally believe that C3D could be so much more as it is.
For me (an absolut beginner in 3D) C3D is just fantastic. It is very clear, intuitive and as you said "easy to use". There ist this great forum and a lot of helpful users. I am doing animations for engineering tutorials and I get exactly what I want and got good control about the parameters. C3D is very logical, in the most cases you get what you expect and it is precise and clean again. Thats the main reason why I didn't invest time yet to learn another software even if I checked already the trial versions of almost every 3D Tool at the market (almost!!!). Nothing compares to the easy and logic Cheetah.
When it comes to rendering the fun is over. For my animations I go deeper and deeper in the rendering settings, always on the edge to what is acceptable. To keep up with the requirements of the world out there I need to render in full HD resolution. I do a max. sample of 4 x 4 and I mostly drop shadows (see the picture for my typical settings). I am running on the biggest i Mac pro available and it takes days to render my movies. Taking into account the number of animations I still have to render in the next weeks and month I am forced to find a solution, otherwise I won't be able to keep up with my plans. Buying 4 i-Mac minis (6 core), give every Mac a license and a shared folder and then we could butter the bread with butter. Not such a fancy thing ... should be possible.
C3D has the best chances to start a rocket in the future, it's foundation is fantastic, it's unique since it the only "only Macintosh" 3D-software and long missing "state of the art" features like for instance "network rendering" should be available pretty soon. I don't wanna act as the fancy guy here but I wouldn't care if Cheetah3D would cost 499 bugs or even more? It's worth a lot more ...
So my question remains: If network rendering is on the list since 2006 and marked as attractive, is waiting still an option?
Please excuse me if I say: The world won't wait and I am sure, one person won't make it. Time is the most precious variable in future formulas, get the stuff rendered quick and easy with on-board tools is a basic requirement in my view.
AND YES: We don't need a second Blender of course, cause there is already one. What we need, is the strongest Cheetah3D that we can get.
best Alex
PS.: I got to learn now blender, watching the blender guru's tutorials, loosing at least a month of learning aother software that I don't like half as much as C3D due to the lack of network rendering, a state of the art feature, available on Modo, Blender, 3dsMax, Maya and so on ... and yes SSS would be nice as well ...
For me (an absolut beginner in 3D) C3D is just fantastic. It is very clear, intuitive and as you said "easy to use". There ist this great forum and a lot of helpful users. I am doing animations for engineering tutorials and I get exactly what I want and got good control about the parameters. C3D is very logical, in the most cases you get what you expect and it is precise and clean again. Thats the main reason why I didn't invest time yet to learn another software even if I checked already the trial versions of almost every 3D Tool at the market (almost!!!). Nothing compares to the easy and logic Cheetah.
When it comes to rendering the fun is over. For my animations I go deeper and deeper in the rendering settings, always on the edge to what is acceptable. To keep up with the requirements of the world out there I need to render in full HD resolution. I do a max. sample of 4 x 4 and I mostly drop shadows (see the picture for my typical settings). I am running on the biggest i Mac pro available and it takes days to render my movies. Taking into account the number of animations I still have to render in the next weeks and month I am forced to find a solution, otherwise I won't be able to keep up with my plans. Buying 4 i-Mac minis (6 core), give every Mac a license and a shared folder and then we could butter the bread with butter. Not such a fancy thing ... should be possible.
C3D has the best chances to start a rocket in the future, it's foundation is fantastic, it's unique since it the only "only Macintosh" 3D-software and long missing "state of the art" features like for instance "network rendering" should be available pretty soon. I don't wanna act as the fancy guy here but I wouldn't care if Cheetah3D would cost 499 bugs or even more? It's worth a lot more ...
So my question remains: If network rendering is on the list since 2006 and marked as attractive, is waiting still an option?
Please excuse me if I say: The world won't wait and I am sure, one person won't make it. Time is the most precious variable in future formulas, get the stuff rendered quick and easy with on-board tools is a basic requirement in my view.
AND YES: We don't need a second Blender of course, cause there is already one. What we need, is the strongest Cheetah3D that we can get.
best Alex
PS.: I got to learn now blender, watching the blender guru's tutorials, loosing at least a month of learning aother software that I don't like half as much as C3D due to the lack of network rendering, a state of the art feature, available on Modo, Blender, 3dsMax, Maya and so on ... and yes SSS would be nice as well ...
Attachments
Swizl
0
I can understand about the render times. Some of my animations have taken half a day to render for a just a 30 second HD setup. Some apps network renderers only run on a local intranet anyway. Meaning that you would have to have the hardware (multiple computers) to make it worth using. Modo has an unlimited rendering client where how ever many computers you have you could run them each as a render node. I think probably what you are wanting though is where machines across the net could be used as a render node, much like the SETI program operates. I think some people talked about sending files to a Render Farm before, but pretty much none that I know of offer native C3d file rendering.
You can see some of my animations here: https://vimeo.com/stage5 Nothing that will win an award, but they're all for the company I work for. So I never had tight deadlines on rendering them. One other thing that’s no fun is to screw something up in the animation and not realize it until after spending 12 hours rendering the whole thing. I think anyone doing animation in any 3d app has run into that before though.
I can't remember fully, but I vaguely remember Martin giving a reason for not proceeding with a network rendering option. It would have been a while back though. So, I don't think it would hurt to put in another request in the wish list since it's been so long.
One problem I've run in to moving my files from C3d to another app is the materials usually get totally chewed up and then I either have to fix them or recreate them anyway. UV mapped and diffuse materials seem to do relatively well, but procedural materials won't come across at all.
There are some 3rd party stand alone renderers, but the majority of them use Nvidia's CUDA (Octane, Corona, Red Shift). Possibly when Apple's Metal2 is farther along, there will be more options for stock AMD GPU's that Apple uses. GPU rendering can be multiple times faster than CPU rendering, but it does take dedicated hardware/software. You'd also be back in the same boat of moving your file from C3d to the rendering app. Most of which have their own material systems also. What would be better would be some type of rendering/material plugin bridge to another renderer, but I'm not sure how keen Martin would be to add that type of option either.
I understand your frustration, but it's one of the things we have to work around for now.
If you were on a tight deadline, you could possibly post on here and see if you could split up your animations and have different people render partials for you and then you could piece them together after. It would be nice to actually have a section of the forum devoted to "jobs" like this. Which might also be an alternate solution.
I have a MacPro5,1 that I upgraded with a GTX 1080 FE 8GB and also dual X5690 Xeon's. During the week while at work, I'm not using it. So I could help render some of what you need if you get into a time crunch.
You can see some of my animations here: https://vimeo.com/stage5 Nothing that will win an award, but they're all for the company I work for. So I never had tight deadlines on rendering them. One other thing that’s no fun is to screw something up in the animation and not realize it until after spending 12 hours rendering the whole thing. I think anyone doing animation in any 3d app has run into that before though.
I can't remember fully, but I vaguely remember Martin giving a reason for not proceeding with a network rendering option. It would have been a while back though. So, I don't think it would hurt to put in another request in the wish list since it's been so long.
One problem I've run in to moving my files from C3d to another app is the materials usually get totally chewed up and then I either have to fix them or recreate them anyway. UV mapped and diffuse materials seem to do relatively well, but procedural materials won't come across at all.
There are some 3rd party stand alone renderers, but the majority of them use Nvidia's CUDA (Octane, Corona, Red Shift). Possibly when Apple's Metal2 is farther along, there will be more options for stock AMD GPU's that Apple uses. GPU rendering can be multiple times faster than CPU rendering, but it does take dedicated hardware/software. You'd also be back in the same boat of moving your file from C3d to the rendering app. Most of which have their own material systems also. What would be better would be some type of rendering/material plugin bridge to another renderer, but I'm not sure how keen Martin would be to add that type of option either.
I understand your frustration, but it's one of the things we have to work around for now.
If you were on a tight deadline, you could possibly post on here and see if you could split up your animations and have different people render partials for you and then you could piece them together after. It would be nice to actually have a section of the forum devoted to "jobs" like this. Which might also be an alternate solution.
I have a MacPro5,1 that I upgraded with a GTX 1080 FE 8GB and also dual X5690 Xeon's. During the week while at work, I'm not using it. So I could help render some of what you need if you get into a time crunch.
Last edited:
Yes, that's what I am talking about. Having a couple of muli-core machines with a common folder, they even don't have to be in the same network. DropBox would work as well. The software has to organize placeholders for the frame in progress and the next machine takes over the very next frame. Pretty easy thing, that's how it works in Blender. In practice we could share a folder, everybody would hit the render button and all machines would fight together.
That's as simple as effective. GPU rendering ist not what I am begging for. Of course it will help in a couple of years but what helps now is to share the power of unused macs.
An external farm rendering option doesn't exist, no company offers such a service cause they mainly run on industrial PC's and not on Macs and of course our software doesn't support it.
The jobs section is a good idea, this would help as well. The "piece them together" option is probably very ineffective since C3D doesn't render in a linear way. The more complex parts will take longer and you cant' handle it precisely enough. In practice one Mac is dying and another is on vacation long before the entire rendering ist over. Thats a lot of wasted time.
So the "Shared-Folder-Rendering" Option would allow us simply to create a shared folder for all members of the forum. Everybody can upload his projects and the community helps to burn the numbers down. Of course we should agree by accapting a forum agreement that every project and the results of the rendering process remain in the ownership of the guy who uploaded the file. I know here are 100 % fair-minded people but it's definitely a fact the matters. And everybody would be able to establish an own little rendering farm with several Macs for instance the new minis.
Thank you for your offer. I just finished my rendering marathon and the next big flood will hit in the middle of January till the end of February, so if you don't mind, I will come back to you and your kind offer. But for now I really check other options and try to prepare a powerful solution. Blender could be the way ...
Thank you!
That's as simple as effective. GPU rendering ist not what I am begging for. Of course it will help in a couple of years but what helps now is to share the power of unused macs.
An external farm rendering option doesn't exist, no company offers such a service cause they mainly run on industrial PC's and not on Macs and of course our software doesn't support it.
The jobs section is a good idea, this would help as well. The "piece them together" option is probably very ineffective since C3D doesn't render in a linear way. The more complex parts will take longer and you cant' handle it precisely enough. In practice one Mac is dying and another is on vacation long before the entire rendering ist over. Thats a lot of wasted time.
So the "Shared-Folder-Rendering" Option would allow us simply to create a shared folder for all members of the forum. Everybody can upload his projects and the community helps to burn the numbers down. Of course we should agree by accapting a forum agreement that every project and the results of the rendering process remain in the ownership of the guy who uploaded the file. I know here are 100 % fair-minded people but it's definitely a fact the matters. And everybody would be able to establish an own little rendering farm with several Macs for instance the new minis.
Thank you for your offer. I just finished my rendering marathon and the next big flood will hit in the middle of January till the end of February, so if you don't mind, I will come back to you and your kind offer. But for now I really check other options and try to prepare a powerful solution. Blender could be the way ...
Thank you!
Swizl
0
Sorry, I realized the part about several Mac Mini's after I posted.
It would be nice to have some basic way of doing what you describe. I think someone here created an automator script to try and cover the gap with rendering a sequence of files. Of course one could manually render a partial scene on each machine, but it is more of a p.i.a. and prone to more errors. This is what I've done before was create all the separate takes in one file. Then duplicate the file and render each take on the separate machines. Then I combined each render together with QuickTime. I can't remember, but I think the demo is fully functioning other than the save function being disabled. So several machines could render without each needing a serial number. Although the price of a few C3d serial numbers is a pittance compared to several thousands for hardware. Plus Martin occasionally sells the app at a discount. I think with the advent of DropBox now (which didn’t' exist back in 2006 when I think this first came up) could make it easier. Of course I'm no programmer and know just enough about programming to know that something that seems simple, usually isn't.
Anyway, glad you already finished your renders. Good luck with the search for a full solution to your needs. Feel free to PM me if you ever think you might need some extra C3d rendering help.
It would be nice to have some basic way of doing what you describe. I think someone here created an automator script to try and cover the gap with rendering a sequence of files. Of course one could manually render a partial scene on each machine, but it is more of a p.i.a. and prone to more errors. This is what I've done before was create all the separate takes in one file. Then duplicate the file and render each take on the separate machines. Then I combined each render together with QuickTime. I can't remember, but I think the demo is fully functioning other than the save function being disabled. So several machines could render without each needing a serial number. Although the price of a few C3d serial numbers is a pittance compared to several thousands for hardware. Plus Martin occasionally sells the app at a discount. I think with the advent of DropBox now (which didn’t' exist back in 2006 when I think this first came up) could make it easier. Of course I'm no programmer and know just enough about programming to know that something that seems simple, usually isn't.
Anyway, glad you already finished your renders. Good luck with the search for a full solution to your needs. Feel free to PM me if you ever think you might need some extra C3d rendering help.
Thank you !!!
Alex,
With the new AR frameworks available, you don't need to render as often these days. Just build the model, add PBR, add animations and you can place your object where ever you go (it is in your pocket). You can scale it, rotate and film it in HD right from your mobile.
newton cradle working on my desk.
a house construction walk through at my local park.
At a minimum I would never spend days and days wasting my time with a complex rendering scene, if you only need to create the central object and use AR to deploy it in a suitable environment which supports the user case.
Obviously rendering is still required for professional work. But I think AR offers exciting new possibilities which were not available to folks a few years ago. It is still early days and as the AR frameworks you will see more and more amazing stuff.
With the new AR frameworks available, you don't need to render as often these days. Just build the model, add PBR, add animations and you can place your object where ever you go (it is in your pocket). You can scale it, rotate and film it in HD right from your mobile.
newton cradle working on my desk.
a house construction walk through at my local park.
At a minimum I would never spend days and days wasting my time with a complex rendering scene, if you only need to create the central object and use AR to deploy it in a suitable environment which supports the user case.
Obviously rendering is still required for professional work. But I think AR offers exciting new possibilities which were not available to folks a few years ago. It is still early days and as the AR frameworks you will see more and more amazing stuff.
Thank you, another helpful hint, even in 99 % of all cases this want work for me.
KurtF
0
ElectricImage is the only other software I have even a passing familiarity with. They use a secondary, very light footprint software to render out their scenes. Called "Camera", the renderer is called by their main software "Animator" for work in progress tests, etc. Users can also install multiple instances of Camera to computers on their network and have them work in tandem. Yet another light weight program is their Network Render Manager, which handles assigning render jobs to each computer in the system. When loaded with a job (either a single frame, a single sequence of an animation, or multiple animation sequences) those scene files are sent out to the various computers on the network. Rendered frames are then retrieved by the Network Manager and loaded into that job's folder. You can even configure network rendering for very high resolution single images, by having each computer render a stripe - vertical strip - of what will be the finished image. The Network Manager then retrieves and stitches the strips together. Just like a print que for your inkjet machine, managing of render jobs is fairly easy.
Now Martin has just come off of a long period of development of the Falcon renderer. I'd say he knows it inside and out. This may be a very good time to figure out a way to allow for multiple computers to be networked together for a Cheetah 3D render farm. I for one, would love to see a solution similar to that used by ElectricImage.
Now Martin has just come off of a long period of development of the Falcon renderer. I'd say he knows it inside and out. This may be a very good time to figure out a way to allow for multiple computers to be networked together for a Cheetah 3D render farm. I for one, would love to see a solution similar to that used by ElectricImage.
Me too!
pegot
0
Hey Angry Alex, I agree that the webGL and AR options are now really attractive, especially for things like product showcasing. I myself have been studying workflow for getting glTF PBR objects into PowerPoint. Also the new Evee renderer in Blender 2.8 can be really fast and helpful if one still wants a video output.
FYI - I have been spending “days and days” trying to get a PBR component into a glTF player looking the way I want. Problem is that the workflow for this can sometimes be more involved than a traditional render, which is a lot more forgiving with imperfect geometry. And I’m finding that I am constantly testing in Falcon, or Cycles, or Octane Render anyway as I know I will most likely be doing video animations too.