|
|
| LIGHTSCAPE
vs VIZ4 Now for the comparison that many are wondering about - Lightscape vs. VIZ 4. In my conversations with other beta and alpha users and in my own experiences, it is pretty clear that you are not going to be rendering any faster in VIZ 4. While the radiosity processing is considerably faster, the renderer in VIZ 4, although much faster than that of both the current MAX and VIZ renderers, is still orders of magnitude slower than lightscape. So you may be asking yourself, why then would I even consider moving to VIZ 4? If you put aside all of the extra workflow enhancements and additions ported from MAX 4, you have really only to consider two things: Do you want the ability to create and render complex materials and lighting effects, or can you live with just the basics? If you are itching for area lights, self-illuminating materials like neon, and complex glass materials, then VIZ 4 might well be worth the sacrifice. But, if you content with the results you are getting now in Lightscape and can not afford any additional render time then you may be wise to sit this release out. To be fair I would be remise if I did not mention that, although your render times may be long, there are some scenes that simply will not render in Lightscape. In several users cases they were able to get those same scenes to render in VIZ4 without too much trouble.
As far as image quality, you will be able to get some pretty comparable results to that of Lightscape, but due to the inherently different technologies used, you will probably not be able to match colors and lighting exactly. Meaning that two identical scenes rendered in VIZ 4 and Lightscape will not look exactly the same if held side by side. This should only be of concern if you go back to old renderings frequently to perform updates and wish to use VIZ to perform those updates. Leaving all rendering issues aside it also important to note that this new release provides virtually no support for existing Lightscape assets. While they have implemented both an LS an LP importer, the amount of data that can be brought across is limited. With no support for true blocks, imported LP files are imported much like an AutoCAD DWG, in that you must group your imported entities by layer, material or material within a layer. Not too useful in my opinion. The LP importer is also limited in that it can not bring across IOR information, glass materials, materials with blending, any bump or intensity mapping or blocks. For those of you that have established lightscape block or materials libraries, I'm afraid this release will provide little in the way to use these resources. For now users can only hope that these tools will be implemented in a future release. CONCLUSION There is no debating that this is a very impressive upgrade and depending upon your needs you may or may not want to upgrade just yet. If you are an existing VIZ user and have been lighting your scenes traditionally, I think you will find VIZ 4 to be an extremely attractive upgrade. If your radiosity attempts do end up taking too long, you can always fall back on your traditional methods, and still be able to take advantage of the numerous features and workflow enhancements that have been added. If you are a power Lightscape user, I don't think I would be ready to jump ship just yet. There is too much to give up for too little return. Unless you require the ability to render out something specific that Lightscape can not do or you simply found Lightscape to difficult to learn, then I would hold out until the tools are developed to support your existing assets. 
If you would like to post comments or questions about this review, please visit our forum |
|
|||
