OT Blender and Indigo

As general interest for rendering folks here is a link to an image recent
done with a test version of Indigo - similar stuff to Maxwell but free.
Development is coming along well.
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3240/default10tw5.jpg
Blender 2.42 and Yafray 0.9 have been released over the last week and
development continues at a fair clip.
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Home.2.0.html
I expect that a few more renderers will have better integration for 2.43 and
more compositing and node tools are in the works too.
Guess I will have to put some decent effort into making a few non
participating entries for Robs contest. Yeah I promise better materials....
)
Maybe we should have mini animation contests too?
BTW Pleasing to see PW 07 has some real improvements.
later )

 

neil - thanks for the update . Maxwell is getting much better now and
the render times have improved alot with the latest release. However
its Achilles heal is still the rendering of decals, plus the fiddly
nature of applying textures using the SW plugin and Maxwell Studio.
Its not very intuative for the non Computer Graphics experts ;-) ( of
whom I am one)

How is this acheived with the Indigo/Blender combo?

Jonathan

 

Hi Jonathon
Well getting decals done in Indigo is fiddly too.
Basically you map to UV coordinates in Blender and then use a Python script
to produce an XML file and image. These then are used in Indigo with manual
mods to the XML if needed.
At the moment you need to be a bit of a wild-eyed experimenter to use it )
so its even less practical for the non geek inclined... and of course
Blender is criticised for being difficult to learn anyway....and you need to
export as VMRL from SW in the first place.Yeah so a bit messy really.

It is a pity Maxwell doesn't have the integration with SW it could. I heard
that some of the necessary data can't be linked? I wonder if this is SW
being obstructive...

I will post some Indigo progress again in a while for general interest.
later -
neil

BTW Indigo has supported networked processing for a while and in the latest
test version has multithreaded support as well. You really need some decent
pc hp to get things done like this in a reasonable amount of time but the
results can be quite realistic ) and I guess that's what we are all
chasing.
....and you guessed it Indigo is developed by a Kiwi.

 

Great image Neil. It would be cool to see more. It's always nice to
know what else is out there.

I've thought of doing some Maxwell renderings of the PW contest models
but I just haven't had time to learn how to use Maxwell.