Everything is debatable - apart from the four fundamental forces of nature and mathematical proofs ; )
Would this be for both Win and Mac?
Philip
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Can you be a bit more specificā¦? 
Yes, Arnold is way to expensive for meā¦
Philip
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- Works like a real camera (short learning curve), 2. Multilight feature puts an end to re-rendering if lighting or shadows are off, 3. good Rhino plug-in.
Best is to get the free trial-versions of 4-5 renderers and assess them regarding functionality and cost-per-image over a month or so, depending on your design officeās budgetary/time structure.
What is āexpensiveā depends entirely on how much you can bill your clients for the rendering aspect as part of the overall design project. If a client pays too little, I wonāt use Arnold but Maxwell or even just ok-shaded screenshots. Different strokes for different folks ; )
Yeah, these are all nice things that I like about Maxwell alsoā¦ butā¦ I was under the impression that Indigo have the same features (just by taking a look at their website): physical camera model and light layers (= multilight). Itās just the plug-in thatās missingā¦ Indigo also seems to be working with both nVidia and AMD cards. Maxwell doesnāt work with AMD (= no GPU rendering on Mac).
Yep, we donāt have those kinds of clients here 
No Arnold subscription for us.
Philip
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Exactly, Indigoās light layers are the same as Multilight, and the camera model is the same - super easy to use. The shading in Indigo is particularly nice. Not sure how it stacks up technically against Maxwellās, but it has always delivered for me.
Cheers, thanks for the links. I will get the BETA once Iām back from the holidays.
How are you handling the node-based material creation in Rhino? Is there a generic node-based interface for plug-ins / renderers, or have you made one specifically for Cycles? Indigo materials can work much the same way, with blends and layers and suchā¦
Emā¦ not sure. Any McNeel folks want to advise about this? I guess it would have to be developed in parallel for Rhino Mac? I donāt have a Mac and am not really excited about the ball-ache of learning to develop for itā¦
There arenāt node-based materials in Rhino, but I created a Grasshopper plug-in GhShaderNodes that I use to prototype node graphs for Cycles. Right now it is kinda tied to Cycles (or rather the .NET wrapper CSycles), but if youāre interested in co-operating we could make it so that the same nodes could work for several engines, at least Cycles and Indigo. There are two steps to take here: 1* rewrite in C# (which is already planned - currently the code is in F#), 2* create a way for registring alternative back-ends such like Indigo. With number two done we would have one plug-in that could be used by any back-end.
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Iād be happy to help in any way that I can, but am also wary of the gap between your l33t skillz and mine 
Let me find some time to look through the examples you linked to, hopefully I can get a better handle on it and then see.
The common node graph would probably be great for many other renderers.
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Aye, that we should target for. Unfortunately I have been a lazy bum, and took the easy way out not thinking about the rest of the world. But that can be fixed.(:
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Yes please TIA 
Philip
I donāt know how you will be doing the integration, but if youāre going to use .NET, then it shouldnāt be too hard, especially if youāre going to use Indigo from a prebuilt library or app both on Windows and MacOS. For the UI part (panels etc) youād then be using the preferred Eto.Forms we are using ourselves for cross-platformness.
I think it makes most sense to start with the Windows plug-in, and theb revisit the code when we get a Rhino for Mac V6 out sometime in the future.
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ā¦ 
āFutureā sounds so far awayā¦ 
Philip
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Just think of it as having the cake now, but getting to eat it (much) later.
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I think it is more like layered cake than the moon. The cake you are allowed to eat also this millenium. But it is much closer than the moonā¦
how should we think about it if the majority of users in this thread showing interest in a Rhino->Indigo exporter are on Mac?
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nope, not my collection.
i donāt even have a CD collection anymore much less vinyl.
i went to subscription based streaming service about 4-5 years ago (started with Beatsā¦ which eventually became Apple Music)ā¦
less than a year into going that route, i liquidated all of my physical music storage
(though i still have all of that collection digitized and on hard drivesā¦ i rarely play it that way)
Right!
Philip
I was actually ātalkingā to a guy at the Indigo forum - and he told me they would have a beta version of a Rhino exporter available in a couple of weeksā¦ I wonder. Sounds to good to be true. Weāll have to wait and seeā¦
Philip
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All three implement some sort of variant of the Metropolis algorithm, which is the beeās knees for complex light scenarios (such as the images you shows). It means Indigo can smash those in a much shorter amount of time than others that just use path tracing or bidir PT. Lux is also awesome, though I found it a bit weird and not quite as fast as Indigo, but it implements some really cool features AND is open source
Iāll ask the Glare guys and see if there is anything official plannedā¦ Iād be happy to throw myself at it, but these things take time and commitment, both of which are in short supply at the moment 
@nathanletwory Iāve been looking over the code for CSycles, and it seems the wrapping would be the most tedious part of it. Just wondering if that means it would have to be wrapped twice (once for PC, once for Mac) or is there a way to do it once? Iāve always stayed away from cross-platform .NET stuffā¦ maybe itās timeā¦ Iāll keep looking, but it also seems that I need the BETA to look into it properly, which Iāll only get to this weekend at the earliest.
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