Is anyone here familiar with Indigo renderer (indigorenderer.com)? How does it compare to Maxwell or Arnold, for instance (regarding quality, speed, etc)?
Thanks!
Philip
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i used Indigo for many yearsā¦ the quality is superbā¦ equal to if not better than Maxwell or other non-biased renderersā¦ with Indigo4, itās now openCL based āpureā GPGPU rendering so the speed has gone way up.
the problem is, i used to use Indigo through SketchUpā¦ when i started using Rhino, i would export the models to SketchUp (via .3ds) then texture in SketchUp then use the Skindigo exporter to get to Indigoā¦ eventually, i quit using SketchUp altogether which means i no longer had a way into Indigo.
Indigo needs an exporter from a software package and there is not one for Rhinoā¦ you canāt use Indigo as a stand alone renderer to open, say, .OBJ into a studio type environment.
iām now using fusion360 as my renderer since itās fairly easy to get Rhino files in thereā¦ itās also easy to apply materials/textures in Fusion (especially when using their 3D textures)ā¦ the speed is great since they have a cloud based rendering option so, even from my laptop, i can get a completed render in under 10 minutesā¦
so i can render quickly in Fusionā¦ i can set up the scene and materials quickly in Fusionā¦ but as far as photorealistic quality goes, itās a serious decline from what i was getting with Indigo.
anyway-- without someone making an exporter to use with Rhino, it canāt be used with Rhino unless you go through another software package (Cinema4D, Max, Blender, SketchUp).
which, for me, is a bummer since i bought an Indigo license way back when it first became a commercial productā¦ i was one of the first 100 buyers which entitled me to a lifetime licenseā¦ a license i havenāt used for a couple of years now
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Thank you Jeff for the info! Good to hear that the quality is goodā¦ but thisā¦
ā¦is sad. I really thought that you could do just that: export the model as .obj and use Indigo as a stand alone studio renderer. Oh wellā¦ I have never even touched Blender. I wonder if this would be a good reason to do soā¦
Anyway, thanks and a Happy New Year! 
Philip
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It is always a good moment to touch Blender ^.^
Hqppy new year (:
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this is the last project i used Indigo forā¦ Feb2016
there were a few more images in the proposal and now that i think back on it, the thing sold instantly upon seeing the renders with no price haggling etcā¦
(also thinking back on itā¦ itās the first project i used Grasshopper forā¦ not that it was necessary (though it did help with dialing in the proportions)ā¦ just that Grasshopper was new to Mac at that point and i wanted to learn it 
)
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Hmmm, I have to think about that. If I decide to do so I might be back with a lot of Blender related questions - and you will probably be sorry you ever said somethingā¦ 
Happy New Year to you too!
Philip
Nice! 
Thanks for sharing!
Yes, a nice picture usually have an impact.
I have to think about using Blender as a ātranslator.ā Perhaps it wouldnāt be to difficultā¦
Philip
i installed Blender onceā¦ launched it onceā¦ and deleted it once 
(it was a long time ago so maybe itās better now but Blender and myself did not jive at that time)
off topic but here are the images i used to render all those recordsā¦ it took me a long time to find some that would work so iāll post them in order to save someone the trouble if they find themselves needing similar
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Thanks! Very kind of you
Philip
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Oh dearā¦ That doesnāt sound so good. But perhaps if you would only need to use the Indigo plug-in it would be much easier, noā¦?
Philip
You always can drop by the office to pick my brain on both Blender and the Raytraced modeā¦
Ah yes, weāre in the same townā¦ Thank you! I might do that some day
Philip
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Iāve been sort of working on a Rhino -> Indigo exporter, and there is some basic functionality, but I need to get off my ass and flesh it out a bit more to be properly usable.
Take a look here:
https://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13106
If I get some more free time, I need to give it a makeover and then I could chuck the code on Github or something.
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NICE, thanks for sharing those.
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Nathan, I was thinking of waiting for Rhino 6 to come out before looking into an integrated Indigo plug-in, using their SDK. Are there examples for this? I suppose thatād be the best way to go?
Yes, the Raytraced code shows how to do this with RhinoCommon, and you can indeed do so with C++ as well (the RhinoCommon code essentially wraps the C++Realtime SDK). For C++ you can check https://github.com/mcneel/rhino-developer-samples/tree/6/cpp/SampleRealtimeRenderer
You should get Rhino BETA, so you can get started.
Maxwell tops Indigo in quality and ease of use. Arnold tops Maxwell in quality and ease of use.
For industrial designers, Maxwell is most cost-efficient in my view. But then, Iām a solid Solid Angle fan ; )
no plugin for rhino, why can i use it?
Debatable and I guess it depends on specific use-cases.
You can at least have objects with basic colors, and use the sun / sky system with the current state of the RhIndigo plug-in, if you check out the link above. If it seems like there is enough interest, then I might get some more motivation to push it along