X5 Vs Thea...

[Sledge]

Hi Chad,

That's a good question, it would be interesting if the advancements in X5 RT would diminish the need to port to an external program.

[ivancyr]

I'm certainly no expert....I've played with X5 for all but two weeks....but I'll say that I'm fairly impressed with the new rendering engine and its simplicity. As one mentioned on a previous thread somewhere regarding Kerythea; they had 2 PHD's and found that rendering engine beyond scope of understanding without excessive time lost to simple fundamentals.

The attached is 16 passes of the X5 RayTrace with the photon mapping turned off and the rest turned on and left at default settings. I believe it completed in just over 30mins....using a HP dual quad core at 2.3GHz.

Thea provides more options, I'm still working on getting grass to look real using an export out of CA and rendered in another engine so I can make a golf course. So far....I've made "product" that I'd never attach my name to!

Ivan

[dgavin]

Well, with Thea you have to learn a new program. I had played with it some in the past, getting some lessons from Pat. It was a lot better than POV RAY.
At this point though I am pretty happy with X5 ray traces. You still need to learn how to get your materials and lighting straight but at least it is within the same program.
Attached is a ray trace without photons, 10 passes. I think it took about 30 minutes.

[sutcac]

I know the photon mapping takes a lot longer, but is the only way X5 starts to approach the kind of realism you can get in Thea. I have just started poking around in it, but so far I am impressed and will continue to explore with it. I have a restaurant project I intend to do some high quality ray traces of in the coming weeks and will really put it through its paces.