After playing around, and I mean playing around, with Thea, I found it to be a good rendering app…I really like the quality of output. I’m not so much a big fan of the interface though I’m just not that used to it. I never was a fan of Arion4Rhino’s interface either and hardly ever used it there. I love the standalone though.
I think I will wait until the Standalone has been released before I put any more attention on Thea. I did like the render but there was one feature which is essential to my work which was missing. I do 3D logo, design and product illustration. For my work I have to precisely dial in my reflection maps. I need to be able to interactively rotate up and down to find that perfect sweet spot where the surface/product comes to life. Numerical rotation is insufficient interactive control to do this without constant trial and error. I hope it gets added soon.
For me, GPU rendering is all about creative interactivity. Numerical typing is not that.
@velopl is 100% right here hdrls is exactly the tool which fulfills your needs and that’s not engine case - besides there is ! _EditLightByHighlight if you have never used it try. IMHO engine has to calculate quickly and properly all other stuff is up to the user…
Sorry, I have to disagree. While I like HDRI Studio and have earlier versions, the price increase they decided on for recent versions made the app far too unappealing to me. Yes, I can afford to buy it but not interested in supporting them any further. Not for the little bit of extra functionality it provides.
Rhino’s native render, Brazil, Arion, V-Ray, Octane all for Rhino have an interactive realtime approach to environment mapping (rotation). It’s no different than having an interactive texture placement function.
And the rendering engine is ‘very’ relevant to my line of work.
I’m sorry to upset you this wasn’t my intention. I’m not saying that rendering engine is not relevant what I’m saying is that ability to “sweet spot” lights might be more important in your case (and not only yours) than rendering engine itself by reading what’s your priority (and always should be as light is 90% of the job in rendering and photography)… Don’t want to mention quality of model itself impacting the finish result but unfortunately I can’t argue with you when it comes to usefulness of this “little bit of extra functionality it provides” vs price… This is very subjective and can’t comment on that.
Each person’s use and priorities will be different…for me realtime rotation of reflection mapping is essential. HDRI Studio is useful but never took the place of a simple rotate in realtime gizmo.
If you’re looking to just rotate your environment in real time, use interactive render mode (Right click in viewport name and select Thea Render) and adjust rotation in image based lighting
I’m curious to see what sort of improvements are in the standalone studio. Thea has been really great for me, but the interface is a little clunky. Regardless I prefer it to doing renders inside of Rhino.
I was very aware of the ability to rotate. The issue I brought up was not that it didn’t update in real time but that it was not interactive. One needs to type in the numbers instead of dragging a slider or scrolling a gizmo. Typing in numbers requires far to much trial and error and not the way I like to work.
Now, if you were able to drag or slide the numerical values without typing in new numbers then it’s my user error but I tried and tried and no success.
This might seem like a very small thing…and it is ‘if’ your day to day work didn’t depend on the added functionality and creativity this feature affords me.
I spent the last day working in Octane moving, rotating along Y and X axis to get the exact look I was after in real time and interactively. No stopping to type in a number and then seeing if it worked…and then another number to see if that worked…and then typing in yet another number to see if that got me where I wanted to take the illumination but most importantly the reflectivity. I just grabbed the slider and watched the objects change before my eyes as I dragged it back and forth dialing in the precise look I was after.
@velopl indeed i remember now it was mentioned earlier i think idea just got lost when Christos took Dimitris place and Solid Iris was aquired by Altair - there was so many things going on that it just flew - i’ll drop this on beta internal.
Thea Stand Alone is due in 2019, really looking forward to it. Results are great I agree.
Speaking of putting highlights exactly where you want, take a look at KeyShot. You’d be able to click a point in geometry to have KeyShot throw a highlight on. So the HDRI will change, not the other way around!
KeyShot has a direct link to Rhinoceros for quick updating.
