Any plans to fix RAYTRACED mode or is it now where its gonna stay?

Let me help you out. 'sall good: Actually, its pretty simple.
You take a deep breath, actually take a moment to READ the approximately one paragraph worth of input, pause again, THINK about what you’ve read, and respond with a substantive, well thought out answer. Prevents all the drama. As for NEON, I have HIGH HOPES (oh rats, the dreaded caps-lock key again. RATS ;=) ! ) that the replacement (Raytraced) will soon work as well. NEON was FAST (uh-oh) accurate and really very useful. I’m CONFIDENT the replacement will be too, as it matures. To require a thousand-dollar video card to mitigate the issue, however, is really no solution. SO- I PERSONALLY am making the move to -6 (another EXCELLENT [of RATS - AGAIN !] McNeel offering ! ) and then when I need FAST high quality animations, I simply drop back to -5, where I have NEON as an option. Its not as FAST as RENDERED-mode Viewport, which in MANY ways is just FANTASTIC) but its FAR faster than RAYTRACED and produces absolutely STUNNING results ! All the numbers are included in posts above, so any real questions are answered there. As NEON was a discrete product developed for use in RH-4/5, and NOT contracted to be brought forward, the developers decided to try to put together for us a more complete RTR solution. Again, I have HIGH hopes for their eventual SUCCESS ! All the best from (yes things really ARE bigger in … ) Texas ! - C.

Answer:
NEON, as far as I know, based on some fairly extensive and detailed conversations with developers, etc., unless there has been a change in policy or contract is NOT expected for -6.
Yes it WAS free to use.

  • RAYTRACED is the INTENDED replacement. It promises more accurate renders, and while its not NEARLY as fast, along with Ambient Occlusion now being offered, REALLY promises some wonderful potential !

Conclusion: As of the LAST time I tried Raytraced, if you want good, slower and never past SOME level of noise in the result, Raytraced can be an excellent option. I just downloaded the newest FULL Release (-6) and intend on putting through its paces. More as it develops … .

For ME, if I NEED something approaching that level, I just drop back to -5 where I have my NEON running …
Hope this helps ! All the BEST to you and yours, from Texas - C.

This is a big show stopper for schools. Neon was great, quick & simple, in a couple of minutes students had a great 3D render. V6 Ray trace takes a long time and is not viable for quite a few reasons

  • Classes last an hour and then the system is logged out … Loses work
  • 12 year olds in Neon got a quick wow factor on a render which is needed to promote enthusiasm
  • Schools cannot afford expensive video cards
  • Autocad gives software free (I think it is not a great package for learning) but the render is quick and great

I think Rhino is great but BUT these constraints are putting it out of the market to get the next generation on-board.

I have taken a students render of pikatu which took minute to render in Neon in V5, it is now up to minute 25 and cycle 316. I guess I’ll use Rhino but teach students fusion 360… Very Sad

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This is very true.
V6 is almost at SR4 and still can’t produce images larger than display resolution not mentioning hours wasted just to see that the output is just plain grey image.

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The smart move would be to have an intermediate Raytrace (Neon as such for a quick and dirty but acceptable render) before the full blown "im going to use all of your computer resources for x hrs to get a slightly better image.

I don’t want to be a person that looks like I want to rant so I have just rendered a students image in 5 & 6 (very complex image) but is the same image.

v5: 6.26 Minutes - Easily done in a class and student can print & put in portfolio
v6 56.29 minutes - no way the student could put that in the port folio

Attached Outputs

Rendered on what?

It would be interesting to try it out, can you share the v5 file?
Just so you know the technology behind Neon is abandoned software so it is not future proof. Therefore (IFAIK) McNeel had to replace it and chose the Cycles platform.

Wow! Missed this thread but some of the all caps stuff reminds me of this

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As mentioned before, writing in All Caps is generally considered as yelling at your conversation partners. I don’t like to be yelled at. Althought I am interested in the topic of this thread - struggleing with the transition from Neon to Cycles myself - I rather leave the room when there is so much yelling involved right from the start and as the general mode of conversation.
If you are interesed in getting answers and seeing progress on this matter, you should seriously consider not to use All Caps.

Ok, I spent about an hour remaking the stuff from scratch, while putting the kids to bed, and sat up a supersimple scene with only ONE rectangular light and a backdrop in V6 default HDRI environment. (To keep it as simple and realistic regarding to what a student should achieve as possible)

And this is the result in low res after a minute:

Edit: I use mainly custom materials since the default material types are too limiting in their adjustability.

Point is that V6’s Raytraced is a different animal, but it is a nice one. And quite fast even on my “older” GeForce 750m laptop.

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Not certain McNeel was “forced” to abandon an INTERNAL solution because SOME “FELT” it wasn’t future-proof. ANY internal solution that WORKS and doesn’t take an HOUR to “RTR” a 6-1/2 minute render (see DES post) is DISCRETELY future-proof.

Caustics terminated both Neon, their VR render hardware and Splutterfish terminated Braizil too, so it would no longer be developed and thus not a reliable bet. Still McNeel updated the Brazil render plugin so trusted users could benefit from their previous purchase.
Arguing that the software is still good to use is like arguing that Flash is still a good web programming language, but that too is terminated and I would never reccomend it to anybody, not even to those who are fluent in it, because it just isn’t future proof any more.

2014:

2015:

Sincerely interested:

What’'s your time between RHINO (not really interested in “Blender” numbers) keystrokes for a RAYTRACED viewport setting ? Did spending upwards of a thousand dollars for a new Video card for a “free” plugin, solve the time penalty ? What are your RHINO results regarding noise right up to the final pass at minutes - up to An hour - time-lag for an RTR replacement ?

HOPING we have SOME improvement in Raytraced mode.

Thanks -

C.

How reliable is a bet for “future proof” for a product that WORKS ?

How “nice” is the noise we see ?

What’s the overall to-finish RTR Time ?

Any chance for a -5 “NEON” example (with numbers) for comparison ?

Thanks -

-C.

Noice is a matter of samples of course so here is a large 250 sample image where I lowered the HDRI to 0.1 and moved the light (just for drama)

It took about 7 minutes to render. I don’t have V5 with Neon here so I can’t test that.


Open the file in a new tab to see it in 100% if the noice looks better to you.

and keep in mind that cycles will be developed further and the new Denoising feature will hopefully make it’s way into Rhino soon. (google it to see what it does) ((Oh, and it’s 23.02 here now so I am logging off)

PS! Rendering on my workstation with a GeForce 1070 is a lot! faster.

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Where can I get a pair of your rose colored glasses? I used Neon for rapid fire production purposes for several years, managing others using it too, and loved it, but I only considered it awesomely fast with the accompanying Caustic accelerator card, and it was absolutely not a bug-free experience, which was a bit frustrating as there have been no fixes since a developer build I got in February 2014. 2014! It’s dead let it go. To Imagination Technologies it was all just an R&D exercise for technology they want to put in phones.

I suppose school computers could be garbage that can’t make much use of a GPU renderer, but whatever your CPU might be it’s not possible at any price to by a single computer with enough CPU power to equal the upgrade from a $1000 GPU.

Generally ? Fear of caps deflects one from the SALIENT points. ANY substantive response to my points ? ANY ? Oh, and by the way, I’ve not posted a SINGLE POST that was ALL caps. Deflecting by obfuscation and misdirection doesn’t help get us to a workable resolution. Sincerely - do you have ANYTHING substantive to actually add to the conversation ? What’s YOUR experience using Raytraced ? I PERSONALLY like the potential, and am EAGER to see a success with Raytraced. ANY samples of results you’re willing to share ?

Hope so.

ALL the best -

-C.

wELl, YES, thE WAy WE tYpE should NOT dIscOUrAGE aNYOnE FroM reADing oR REpLyINg To POsTs, rIGHt? COMe on, shOW SOMe ToLerAncE aND looK PASt tHaT. wE Are aLl DIFfereNt AnD caN eXprEsS OuRSElvEs THe way We Want, nO matTER wHAT standArDS or RULES eXiSt. jUSt be YOuRSeLF eVERYoNE.

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