3D Design
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Artifice 3D Design Community Discussion |
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Posted by Alex Smith on November 26, 1997 at 18:20:25:
In Reply to: light renderers posted by Rick Abe on November 26, 1997 at 00:54:28:
Rick, I'll jump in here with some thoughts.
Ranking by general ease of use, the order would be DesignWorkshop, then Infini-D, then Radiance. Also ranking in terms of general rendering power, the order (right now*) would be same - DW then ID then Radiance.
Going into a little more detail, you'll find that the built-in rendering of DesignWorkshop professional, using QuickDraw 3D and LightWorks, is pretty substantial. For some examples, look at the second section of the Artifice Gallery (in this web site). The Patagonia store, for instance, shows what can be done right in DW.
With Infini-D, what you'd get over and above the DW rendering would be some special effects, like true mirror reflections, that aren't in DW yet. And Infini-D also has a much, much more complete set of animation controls than DW. But unless you need those particular effects, going into ID will probably not pay you back for the extra effort involved.
If you take the extra step up to Radiance, what you get above these other two renderers is a much more sophisticated, much more accurate rendering of bounced lighting effects. In many architectural interiors, especially with daylighting, bounced light is the dominant illumination, so rendering it well can really take your visualization to a higher level.
Also, for what it does, Radiance is a very fast, very robust renderer that can handle huge projects with ease.
In the end I guess it really depends on what you want to render, to what level of accuracy.