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Thea for FormZ - Call for Beta Testers


jonmoore

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Hi JM,

 

Thanks for posting the link.  If we understand correctly, there should be an official announcement here soon, but unfortunately an issue with the forum delayed that.   Sign up and give it a try!

 

Excellent news. If the Thea team can make the integration is smooth as it is in some other other DCC packages on the market it will be a huge boon to FormZ rendering workflows. And the first of many more third party options too (hopefully). :)

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Thanks for the post JM. Headed over there immediately to apply. Would love to try Thea while I am keeping my fingers crossed for those "many more third party options"... (Heaves a heavy sigh dreaming of Renderman)... :rolleyes:

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It seems I wasn't fast enough posting the news here [ and I was "polling" the forums to see when they will be back again ;) ]. Anyway, I posted here in the forum, where you can find more info.

 

Manolis (our FormZ plugin dev) has done a great job very quickly and it is only the beginning. We already love already the mood & feedback from the FormZ community but also AutodesSys support which has been beyond excellency.

 

Best wishes

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It seems I wasn't fast enough posting the news here [ and I was "polling" the forums to see when they will be back again ;) ]. Anyway, I posted here in the forum, where you can find more info.

 

Manolis (our FormZ plugin dev) has done a great job very quickly and it is only the beginning. We already love already the mood & feedback from the FormZ community but also AutodesSys support which has been beyond excellency.

 

Best wishes

 

When I spotted the good news on your forums I got a little trigger happy. :)

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Hello from me as well. 

 

I am the developer of the plugin and I would like to say that I am really excited to work on this integration.   :)

I strongly believe that with your help we will be able to deliver a great product for the FormZ users.

 

Kind Regards,

Manolis 

 

 

 

 

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I am not familiar with Thea rendering engine. Have been a fmz user for over 20 years & last engine I used was Electric Image. Used a demo of Maxwell but found it slowed down my work flow & also effected my Renderzone textures when I wanted to do a rendering in Formz.

Can a forum member or tech familiar with Theta please let me know what positive rendering outcome could be expected via using Renderzone with Global Illumination or even Radiosity?

How about the rendering time using Thea Render vs Render Zone?

 

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I am not familiar with Thea rendering engine. Have been a fmz user for over 20 years & last engine I used was Electric Image. Used a demo of Maxwell but found it slowed down my work flow & also effected my Renderzone textures when I wanted to do a rendering in Formz.

Can a forum member or tech familiar with Theta please let me know what positive rendering outcome could be expected via using Renderzone with Global Illumination or even Radiosity?

How about the rendering time using Thea Render vs Render Zone?

 

The major strength of Thea is it's GPU and hybrid CPU/GPU modes. These will get you great results in a fraction of the time of RenderZone. However Thea can also be used in various pure CPU only modes too that function in a very similar manner to Maxwell. There are many FormZ users that already own the  Maxwell/FormZ plugin so they will feel at home straight in Thea. 

 

The feature/benefit that I would say sums up Thea the most is flexibility. It's also exceptionally good value compared to most some of the more specialist third party rendering options. Those specialist options edge Thea with regards to quality (IMHO) but nobody provides such a rich variety of options as Thea. And the quality is still very high - you only need to look at the Thea gallery to see what's being achieved by Thea customers.

 

https://www.thearender.com/site/index.php/gallery/best-of-thea

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Their gallery looked impressive... if the time is as good as you indicated that is even better... & if I can render using all 24 processors on my computer (fmz optimizes at 6) it is a home run.

 jonmoore Thanks

 

There's one caveat on the GPU side of things and that's that it requires an Nvidia Cuda capable GPU. Behind the scenes the Thea team are working on OpenCL/AMD support but this is unlikely to be released any time soon. This is the same for the majority of GPU solutions so it's the same challenge for AMD GPU owners wherever they look. On the CPU side of things you'll be able to use all 24 cores/threads and they scale in a pretty much linear fashion. Network rendering is also easy to set up and can be cross platform too so if you have any old hardware lying around you'll speed things up even further.

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Their gallery looked impressive... if the time is as good as you indicated that is even better... & if I can render using all 24 processors on my computer (fmz optimizes at 6) it is a home run.

Yes, you will be able to use all 24 processors on your computer, whatever the engine used.

 

For those with Nvidia GPU, they will be able to put that hardware in use (through CUDA) - in addition to the CPU - when using Thea Presto engine. [Note, behind the scenes, we are also preparing support for AMD GPUs through OpenCL.]

 

Best wishes

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This is exciting news!

 

I have been away from professional use of formZ for four(!)years, but have continued to use version 6.7.3 on an aspect of a personal project that has been consuming all my time. I expect to return to professional use in less than a year, and of course I will then update to the latest version.

 

During my time away I've been checking the formZ forum virtually every day, mostly in the hope of seeing some good news about rendering  options. While there have been a few teasers along the way that have all vaporized, this news about Thea Render actually seems like it will result in something tangible that I will want to use.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@ DennisA:

 

You asked about render time: I'm using Thea for about 2 years together with FormZ  - i imported my files as 3ds to Thea.

 

In the Attachement you can see 2 Renderings done in about 9 min. with presto (GPU/CPU) - original size 3200x2400 and 3200 x 1600

 

My System:

I7 4930k 3.40GhZ
32 MB RAM DD3
GForce Titan Black
fully water cooled

post-30-0-00804400-1446473207_thumb.jpg

post-30-0-88440200-1446473335_thumb.jpg

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