STRAT

Hi Guys

Does anyone use Rhino's renderer Flamingo?

if so, whats ur opinion on it? especially with regards to render speed?

radiosity and GI isn't important here, we're more interested in the normal raytracing capabilities.

STRAT

or put it another way, one of my collegues in work here uses Rhino to model in, but he needs to render his models.

he needs something which has a basic raytracer which allows materials, lights, shadows, reflections etc etc etc. something similar to Viz's.
Nothing complicated like radiosity or GI. We need a stand alone renderer. cheap as chips or free if possible.

Any ideas?

myron

yeap, i use accurender, which is basicly the same render engine as flamingo, it is a stanalone software and cheap. u can use radiosity or only raytracing and works in autocad enviroment.

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STRAT

and speed wise?

[edit]
and also im looking at the accurender website now. it seams to be integral with autocad. i cant find anywhere where it says it's stand alone :?
[edit]

Fran

Hi Stephen,

I think Flamingo is available as a demo.

__________________
- Fran
If you must reinvent the wheel, remember that it works best if it is, like, roundish.

bwilson

Hey Strat,

I modeled a forward shower mold plug in rhino for a yacht manufacturer that I used to work for and did some basic renderings in flamingo a few years ago. The shower constisted of some high gloss gel coat and glass. The render and raytrace results were pretty decent. I'll post some images tonight when I get home.

Ernest Burden

I think AccuRender is used with other programs, so I would think it is stand-alone. But here's what's interesting--both AccuRender and Flamingo are from McNeel and Co. Why would they need both if they were the same? One supposes they would not. So I would think that the newer Flamingo would work better with Rhino. The main question is, does AR import Rhino files native and render from the nurbs objects? I think Flamino must do this, although it may mesh them internally. And since Rhino is such a superior product to AutoCAD, I would suggest Flamingo.

They also have a sketch renderer called Penguin, I think, and a network client called Wildebeast (OK, I made that last bit up).

__________________
Ernest Burden III
AcmeDigital
architectural rendering

Fran

Accurender is not stand-alone at this point, it is an AutoCAD plug-in. Flamingo was made as a plug-in for Rhino. It doesn't render nurbs directly, it converts them to meshes first.

__________________
- Fran
If you must reinvent the wheel, remember that it works best if it is, like, roundish.

STRAT

cheers guys.

Fran - we d/l the flamingo demo, but weren't overly impressed with the results and speed.

Also, it's a shame you cant yet use AR as stand alone, as my collegue is a rhino user and cant use acad. AR does look allot faster and better than flamingo.

As i mentioned somewhere else, we're looking into the ADT viz renderer as the solution, as you dont need to use ADT for this, only have it installed.

Fran

Sounds like you've answered your questions about Flamingo, at least. Your friend might want to visit the AR3 newsgroup at news.mcneel.com to ask questions about Accurender compared to Flamingo. There is also a newsgroup for Flamingo.

__________________
- Fran
If you must reinvent the wheel, remember that it works best if it is, like, roundish.