Brazil vs Flamingo

Hello. I’m new to rendering so sorry if this question is obvious to you guys, but what is the difference between Brazil and Flamingo? If I understand correctly Brazil is more advanced and has more options?

I’m a jeweler and will probably only be rendering jewelry. Would one be better for jewelry rendering than the other?

Another unrelated thing I was wondering about, if anyone knows… I am trying
the demo version of Keyshot now, but where are the jewelry materials? The
selection is terrible and I haven’t been able to find anything decent
online.

Check out RandomControl’s Arion…it’s very good for jewelry.

http://www.randomcontrol.com/arion-for-rhinoceros

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Ratyoke,
I had a similar dilemma when I got ready to buy a separate rendering software for Rhino. As a jeweler I needed something that would give me as near real as possible. I checked both Flamingo and Brazil and to me I thought Brazil was right up my alley.

This said with any rendering software there is quite a learning curve to get the material “look” you are after. I think you should go to this link and take a look at what is there. There are many images posted by users that will show you just how wonderful this software is. Also at this link there are vast numbers of materials you can download for future use.

I am also a stone bead maker and have found that I can get some excellent results rendering beads to give me an idea of what a bead might look like in a particular stone. I am still learning how to work on materials so that they look right and find the Rhino tutorials help greatly.

My vote is for Brazil because of the software and also because it is a McNeel product so you can know that this software works great with Rhino.

All my best … Danny

Below a few images rendered in Brazil

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Maybe this will help:

Flamingo is a “mid range” renderer with a slant towards architecture. It is intended to be nearly photorealistic but not purely so. Typically the architect will use an actual image behind their proposed design and they want their work to be discernible from the image. It also has tools for trees, plants, etc. It is designed to be easy to use since the customer will not pay for a lot of rendering work. We automate the process and turn on features (like soft shadows, ambient occlusion, etc.), automatically so the designer does not have to become a rendering expert.

Brazil is intended for people that produce images as their final product. It is very complicated and very feature rich for images that go beyond photorealism. If you use images to sell a design like an architect does, then Brazil is the wrong tool. You’ll spend tons of time learning and using the tool, none of which your customer will pay for. This is the sort of tool a rendering firm by use to generate poster images for a Dale Chihuly blown glass exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.

Penguin is a cartoon/hand-sketch rendering tool when you want to generate a very preliminary image. Many times a clean CAD image looks too finalized for less sophisticated customers. A cartoon look rendering conveys the early design stage.

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Thanks John, that’s just the kind of answer I wanted.

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if there is a list of HARD FACTS comparting these three rendering engines.

Which technical features does Brazil have which Flamingo doesn’t.

I saw this post http://brazil.rhino3d.com/profiles/blogs/brazil-rs-feature-list from 2011 by @scottd - but I don’t think it’s accurate anymore with Flamingo NXT - or is it?

I get asked for recomendations all the time, and I don’t really know what to tell them.

Ideally I would love to have comparison chart on the features. (Also to compare them to other renderers like V-Ray, Maxwell, Arion, …) That would be very great.

Thanks
Karl

While lists might be good to have, in the end it almost always boils down to personal preference. Tell them to try the demo versions.

I don’t have a feature comparison chart to point you towards for these different plugins but I also get this question from time to time. I agree with @wim that personal preference is the main factor. If there is a specific rendering task or industry that the user is interested in I may have a general preference for them. For instance, if they work on lighting fixtures or headlight reflectors, I’d go with a non-biased engine like Maxwell which also has the multi-light feature for adjusting intensity after the rendering is completed. Of course, Octane or Arion would be excellent here as well or even nXt with the path tracer and the nxt image editor. Almost all of the available rendering plugins will have comparable features with variations in one detail or another. Have them post a sample image of what they hope to achieve and describe the hardware they have to render on and you’ll get lots of opinions.

Hi to all.
@ratyoke I’ve always been using Flamingo as render engine, as I don’t sell images but projects.
The nXt version is quite easy to use and gives me good results.
Have a nice we.
Gus

John, I copied this for our wiki page. This is the URL but I don’t think it is correct yet:

http://wiki.mcneel.com/start

@stevebaer What do I do to get a proper URL for this McNeel Wiki?
@scottd The heading is ‘Rendering Differences between Flamingo, Brazil, and Penguin’. Do you need to index it?

I moved the page to
http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/render_differences

Back when I cut my teeth in CAD, I had no idea about things like volumetric rendering, GPU assisted rendering, and all the other things people sling around nowadays.

I only knew that Flamingo v1.0 back then was a McNeel product and the consideration was that it’d integrate nicely with Rhino. The sample renders I saw seemed good enough so that’s what I went with. With Flamingo nXT now at v3.0, I haven’t yet found much reason to fork out another wad of money for something else. It’s still doing a decent job at conveying what I want to convey to my clients. The pics should show that it’s still a very capable rendering engine especially when using it’s HDR lighting and Focal Distance options.



Flamingo has been relatively simple to use, if a bit lacking in documentation and tutorials back when I started. John’s hint that Flamingo is aimed primarily at Architecture shows in how it’s default materials library largely consists of material folders labeled “Carbon Fiber, Carpet, Ceiling, Ceramic Tile, Concrete, Exterior, Fabrics, Glass, Marine, Masonry, Metals, Plastics, Porcelain, Roofing, etc, etc”

Jewelers who are using Flamingo nXT have likely put in the time to roll their own personal collection of Materials – which for Jewelry isn’t a horrifically long list. White Gold, Yellow Gold, Rose Gold, and the various gemstone-looking materials.

thanks, very helpful answer!