Diver

Hi, Just got Final Render today. I got the Stage 0 version first to give it a shot. I have NOT been able to create any solid result with GI. I just made a box with a sphere in it and one omni light. I just wanted to get SOME result before I tried to apply it to a real model. I applied FR materials, BUT the shadow is solid black and it appears I am not gettin any reflected light. PLEASE HELP.
This should be simple.. or if you guys know where a tutorial might be?

Maxer

Diver,
Welcome to the Final Render club, first let me say that you have picked a very good renderer and just stick with it. One thing about Final Render is it has a very high learning curve; it has taken me about 3 months of continuous experimentation to figure out the program. I'm not an expert by any means but I have a basic understanding of how most of the program functions. Unfortunately there are very few tutorials that deal with Final Render and how to get good results out of it. I don't have stage 0, I've got stage 1 so right off the bat your going to be at a disadvantage since you can't take advantage of any of the new updates. I've posted all of the tutorial links that I have for Final Render, unfortunately most of them deal with HDRI lighting, but it's better than nothing. You should have gotten some video tutorials and scene files with your copy of Final Render; I would watch them and read through the manual.
As for your test scene, do you have GI turned on, and what are your settings?


http://www.3dluvr.com/content/article/85
http://www.deathfall.com/article.php?sid=314
http://www.freelance3d.de/finalframe.htm

Brian Cassil

Well, well, another FR user. There are just a couple of us on CGA but we will try to help you out however we can. That said, the help you get here will probably be better than what you will get on the final-render forum. In fact that is my biggest complaint about final-render: the lousy support. It's compounded since just as Devin mentioned, it does have a high learning curve. However, once you get the feel for what is good sample placement, and how to balance and control your RH-rays the GI is pretty quick. I've come to accept (and even appreciate) that cebas will not sacrifice user contol of the renderer for anything. Even if that means you have to weed through seemingly unnessesary jargon to get to the contols you want.

Maxer

Brian is right about not getting much support from Cebas, their site only gets a few new posts every day so there's not much interaction. They also don't really care to make their products user friendley for new users.

KiboOst

Maxer, support is very good on http://www.cebas.de/forums/cebas/, users get fast answers.

Anyway I've wrote a few articles for new users, hope it can help :
http://www.kicrea.com/articles/index_us.php3
http://www.kicrea.com/articles/plugi...hten_03_us.php

Kib

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mbr

I don't think the forums are great, but not bad. I've gotten pretty quick response to the posts I've put up over the last week - not more than a day. I do wish they would revise their forum and have suggested it (and other changes) several times.

Are there more responsive forums? Besides this one? I've looked at VRays, and while there were a ton of posts, not many of them were helpful, same goes for evermotion.org - mostly 'great image' etc. We are going to evaluate VRay, MR, Brazil, and fR soon and support is critical.


Diver - look over Nicolas's writings, they are superb! (Thanks!) and should get you going. But using fR Stage 0, it's all very different. I'd go through the video tutorials and see if you like it, if so, buy fR Stage 1.

Glad to see there are a few of us fR users here! We'll have to stick together ;-)

Maxer

My experience on the Cebas forum has been that there are usually a hand full of dedicated users that answer questions. These guys’s are very knowledgeable and helpful when you have specific questions. The difficulty with this is when you are a new user you don't really know what questions to ask. The GI controls are extremely intimidating, and it's hard to figure out how all of these settings interact with each other.

mbr

Devin,

Gotcha. It is tricky and I hate posting things I am not sure if it's my naivete or something wrong. The help I've gotten has been very good, though, like yesterday I thought the crasing was caused by Architectural Materials and Jon Seagull posted a script to change them all to fR materials. That will be a life saver as much of the furniture I am using is made with Arch Mats.

Just an example. I would be interested in learning if there are people here that have experience with other boards, and if they are more responsive?

KiboOst

I think the best support is on cebas board. fR is mainly used in studios, not a lot by freelancers, and not much spend time on forums. The more work, the less time, you know how it goes.
Kib

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mtutaj

Tally one more for a user of FInal render.

I have to say the kib's tutorials helped me out alot as well when I first got started. it gives you a good starting point and then you can tweak from there.


Mike