X5 Vs Thea...

[Sledge]

Thanks for the info Jintu.

Nice work on your part again.

I must say that looking at X5 (particularly the change in the RT) seems to be the closest I have come to considering the move to upgrade.

Now if a few more customer jobs came along, it would keep me enthused.

[Chiefer]

X4 is also as fast.

[Chad Cardin]

Jintu,

Thanks for the additional ideas and advice, as always.

Rod,

You know Ive never been a chief cheerleader but can call out the truth when I see it. Im really happy with the changes chief made in x4 and x5. At the beginning I was very hesitant to upgrade because I want to see fireworks if Im upgrading, with these changes I did see fireworks with the RT but all the other things are small but they use to be irritating small things they cleaned up so that was nice.

My advice to you would be, wait until chief has another upgrade sale towards the end of the lifecycle of x5 or wait to see if they have sales at the end of the year. I never pay full price for anything!

[Chiefer]

My advice to you would be, wait until chief has another upgrade sale towards the end of the lifecycle of x5 or wait to see if they have sales at the end of the year. I never pay full price for anything!

Best advice!

Wish I waited a little while when I purchased x4. Anyway, the free upgrade is still tops.

[dr0591]

Hi everyone --

I hadn't seen this thread before -- it's been interesting to read through it.

Chad, your kitchen is looking good. But the flowers outside your house are all floating about 12 inches above ground!

I've been playing with X5 Phoebe a bit, and Jintu's settings he shared earlier in this thread were very helpful. The X5 raytracer is definitely much faster than X4, and the "passes" approach is also much less frustrating than the old "squares" method.

I thought you might be interested in seeing a test I ran of Phoebe vs. Thea. This is a scene from a project I'm working on (a library/office adjoining a home theater room). There are a few minor differences in the scenes, with the two most notable being the sun angle and the leather on the desk chair. But other than that, they are the same.

Image 1) the biased Thea version (Final Gathering) -- 3 minutes 7 seconds.
Image 2) the unbiased Thea version, 191 passes, 11 hours.
Image 3) the Phoebe X5 raytraced version -- 191 passes, 4 hours 10 min.

[I had to set up the Thea version to run overnight, so I let the Phoebe version run for the same number of passes for a good comparison. Interesting that it took less than half the time.]

So, what do you think? What differences do you see? The thing that jumps out at me is Phoebe's seeming inability to consistently render good metal textures. The polished aluminum on the desk chair looks good, but look at the office fan housing, which is brushed nickel. In the Phoebe rendering, it looks black. Why the inconsistency?

I'm not sure whether Phoebe is a biased or unbiased renderer, but since it's now running passes, that tends to make me think it's unbiased. So it should be able to do decent metals. But even the quickie biased Thea version has decent brushed nickel. Maybe I have something set wrong in Phoebe?

The good news: I'm very pleased with the quality of the Phoebe image, especially in light of the time it took. I really, really want to like Phoebe enough to give up Thea because it's so much more convenient.

But the bad news is: Despite the hassle of having to export from Chief to Thea, I still can't envision switching over at this point, at least not for my final versions where the client expects super high quality.

In Thea, I have so much more control over both lighting and materials, and both of those are crucial to getting a realistic (not just nice-looking) raytrace. Thea's Material Lab can be intimidating at first, but once you learn what all those controls do, it becomes second nature and then you can't imagine giving up the ability to fine-tune anything and everything.

Sorry for the long post, but I got curious about the differences and wanted to run my own test, and thought some of you would be interested.

[Sledge]

Thanks for the info Kath.

I also noticed a distinct lack of definition in the adjoining room in the Phoebe RT. As you indicate that the setup is essentially the same, I would gather that with X5 one would have to also then buggerise around with lighting in that room. Is this the correct assumption?

[dr0591]

Yes, if I were running this for real in Phoebe, rather than as a straight comparison, I would tweak the lighting in the theater room, and adjust the material properties of the leather seats in both rooms. Also try to work on the desktop material. That's supposed to be honed black marble, but it just looks blah to me -- in BOTH versions.

I don't know how to fix Phoebe's brushed nickel problem. Any suggestions on that would be welcome.

The lights don't transfer exactly from Chief to Thea, so it's possible that I have the lighting level set higher in the Thea theater room than it was in the Chief version. They're not on similar scales, so it's hard to compare the two.

[Chad Cardin]

Thanks Kathleen!

See your the expert in raytracing, these are just my first few, so I was actually laughing when you mentioned the flowers because I didnt even see that detail, Im going to have to go back and look at that. See your use to seeing all these details in raytraces, I have to pick up that talent quickly!

As for your pics you posted I like #2 the best. How would it compare if you used only X5, only phoebe and only thea? Im not sure if thats impossible due to incompatibility for textures but I would be interested how they each look, like you did with this comparison.

Thanks for adding value to the thread, your expertise on the raytracing brings a good analysis of several programs.

[Chad Cardin]

Kathleen,

Now Im wanting to find these stupid flowers haha! The only one I could find with outside flowers was my first one I posted on page 1, is this the one your talking about? I went in the plan assuming thats the one and I put the flowers over a bed of dirt that was over the grass. The flowers did say they were at 0. Maybe its the affect of the garage angling out?? Maybe Im not even on the same pic as your describing. Let me know though because I really want to correct this, so I dont look like a tool when showing my pics!

[Chiefer]

Hi everyone --

I hadn't seen this thread before -- it's been interesting to read through it.

Chad, your kitchen is looking good. But the flowers outside your house are all floating about 12 inches above ground!

I've been playing with X5 Phoebe a bit, and Jintu's settings he shared earlier in this thread were very helpful. The X5 raytracer is definitely much faster than X4, and the "passes" approach is also much less frustrating than the old "squares" method.

I thought you might be interested in seeing a test I ran of Phoebe vs. Thea. This is a scene from a project I'm working on (a library/office adjoining a home theater room). There are a few minor differences in the scenes, with the two most notable being the sun angle and the leather on the desk chair. But other than that, they are the same.

Image 1) the biased Thea version (Final Gathering) -- 3 minutes 7 seconds.
Image 2) the unbiased Thea version, 191 passes, 11 hours.
Image 3) the Phoebe X5 raytraced version -- 191 passes, 4 hours 10 min.

[I had to set up the Thea version to run overnight, so I let the Phoebe version run for the same number of passes for a good comparison. Interesting that it took less than half the time.]

So, what do you think? What differences do you see? The thing that jumps out at me is Phoebe's seeming inability to consistently render good metal textures. The polished aluminum on the desk chair looks good, but look at the office fan housing, which is brushed nickel. In the Phoebe rendering, it looks black. Why the inconsistency?

I'm not sure whether Phoebe is a biased or unbiased renderer, but since it's now running passes, that tends to make me think it's unbiased. So it should be able to do decent metals. But even the quickie biased Thea version has decent brushed nickel. Maybe I have something set wrong in Phoebe?

The good news: I'm very pleased with the quality of the Phoebe image, especially in light of the time it took. I really, really want to like Phoebe enough to give up Thea because it's so much more convenient.

But the bad news is: Despite the hassle of having to export from Chief to Thea, I still can't envision switching over at this point, at least not for my final versions where the client expects super high quality.

In Thea, I have so much more control over both lighting and materials, and both of those are crucial to getting a realistic (not just nice-looking) raytrace. Thea's Material Lab can be intimidating at first, but once you learn what all those controls do, it becomes second nature and then you can't imagine giving up the ability to fine-tune anything and everything.

Sorry for the long post, but I got curious about the differences and wanted to run my own test, and thought some of you would be interested.

Hi Dr. K, Very educating view of the two Raytracers. You should repost this in your blog. Good learning material.

Phoebe seemed unbiased because it also seemed to be path tracing but it is not. Photon Mapping is a biased ray tracer.

Phoebe still needs a lot of improvement but I'm quite happy with the way I want my renders appear with the current raytracer. Getting what you want with any raytracers needs time. Below is a resized example why I like Phoebe. I saved this in BMP for higher quality and resave as jpeg for compression.

[dgavin]

Kathleen,

Interesting. Thanks for doing that. It seems that on a straight up comparison without messing around that THea is producing a better result. But with a little fussing Phoebe might be able to get pretty close to what Thea is producing. So, given a particular scene would a Phoebe expert be able to match the output of a Thea expert on final results? Maybe a challenge is in order?

[Chiefer]

Kathleen,

Interesting. Thanks for doing that. Maybe a challenge is in order?

I think we can do a challenge. One common scene.

[Sledge]

Below is a resized example why I like Phoebe. I saved this in BMP for higher quality and resave as jpeg for compression

Jintu,

that scene you posted is as good as any I have seen in the various RT threads. If I was a client and you gave that to me as a design prospect, I wouldn't be bitchin about the results. Nice work!!!

[Chiefer]

Jintu,

that scene you posted is as good as any I have seen in the various RT threads. If I was a client and you gave that to me as a design prospect, I wouldn't be bitchin about the results. Nice work!!!

Thank you. May I add that if ever I post this in the Vray forum few would notice that the rendering is not actually vray.

[jonathank]

I think we can do a challenge. One common scene.

I'm game...