Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 21, 2015 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 Wow. I thought I got a steal when I bought the Thea Studio + 3ds Max plugin for $340 about 18months ago. Because of the strength of the US dollar to the Euro, currently, their new sale (coinciding with their 1.5 release) puts the Thea Studio stand alone render (like Keyshot or Octane stand alone) at $213, and the Blender or Fusion plugin is free with that. The 3ds Max, C4D and Rhino plugin (with Thea Studio) bundles are just a bit more, at $268. In comparison, it's competitors, Octane, Arion, Furryball...all GPU based render engines...start around $600 for a plugin bundle. It also uses both the GPU and CPU simultaneously for the Presto engine...so, every bit of juice your PC has, is put to work on a given render. It also has Bucket Rendering for the Presto Engine, to aid in Out of Memory issues with Graphic cards. I have tried to get Andrew to work with them to create a live bridge, similar to how Keyshot and ZBrush have, recently...and they had a co-promotion with ZBrush's last release. Would be really cool to pipe the PBR materials from 3D Coat directly to the app > Render https://www.thearender.com/site/ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 21, 2015 Author Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 One thing I like about it is it stores materials you create in your host app (like Max or Blender), into Thea Studio's material library. This means you can use it in Max, Blender, C4D, Fusion or in the stand alone, all interchangeably. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor Michaelgdrs Posted July 21, 2015 Contributor Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 Thea render is one of the best renderers out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 21, 2015 Author Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 Thea render is one of the best renderers out there. IMHO, it's a much more affordable version of Octane Render + it uses the CPU as well as the GPU. Octane and Furryball is all GPU. If you run out of video RAM on your card, you're stuck like Chuck. But Thea will just use the CPU as a backup, and it uses Intel's Embree raytracing kernel (something VRay uses to accelerate it's CPU rendering). Cycles would be the only GPU renderer cheaper than Thea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor TimmyZDesign Posted July 21, 2015 Contributor Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 I looked at their website but couldn't find if Blender volumetrics (smoke and fire) could be rendered with Thea or Presto GPU. Would you happen to know? Also, is there support for Allegorithmic Substance? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 21, 2015 Author Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 21, 2015 I looked at their website but couldn't find if Blender volumetrics (smoke and fire) could be rendered with Thea or Presto GPU. Would you happen to know? Also, is there support for Allegorithmic Substance? I looked myself, and the volumetrics simulations in Blender doesn't seem to be supported. I've asked for that support in Max since I bought my license almost 2yrs ago. It seems they don't understand how important that functionality is in the Film/TV/ Advertising segment, and seem more focused on the Arch Vis market. I fussed about that on their forums about a year ago, and nothing came of it. Shame. Apart from that, it's a pretty stellar rendering option. Having said that, you can do some low-level volumetrics with it, like Volume Fog or Volumetric Light. They have a procedural 3D volume material, called "Medium." I don't know why they call it that. It makes no sense in English. Must be something lost in translation. Nonetheless, you apply that material to a mesh object in the scene, as a container for the volume. As for Substance support, one of the main features of 1.5 is their new Substance Material convertor. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor TimmyZDesign Posted July 22, 2015 Contributor Report Share Posted July 22, 2015 Thanks AbnRanger for your thorough response! I really appreciate it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Rebelismo Posted July 23, 2015 Member Report Share Posted July 23, 2015 Wow. I thought I got a steal when I bought the Thea Studio + 3ds Max plugin for $340 about 18months ago. Because of the strength of the US dollar to the Euro, currently, their new sale (coinciding with their 1.5 release) puts the Thea Studio stand alone render (like Keyshot or Octane stand alone) at $213, and the Blender or Fusion plugin is free with that. The 3ds Max, C4D and Rhino plugin (with Thea Studio) bundles are just a bit more, at $268. In comparison, it's competitors, Octane, Arion, Furryball...all GPU based render engines...start around $600 for a plugin bundle. It also uses both the GPU and CPU simultaneously for the Presto engine...so, every bit of juice your PC has, is put to work on a given render. It also has Bucket Rendering for the Presto Engine, to aid in Out of Memory issues with Graphic cards. I have tried to get Andrew to work with them to create a live bridge, similar to how Keyshot and ZBrush have, recently...and they had a co-promotion with ZBrush's last release. Would be really cool to pipe the PBR materials from 3D Coat directly to the app > Render https://www.thearender.com/site/ Thanks for posting! I'm going to try it out myself, but can you talk more about how it handles large sets? Is it fairly easy to bring things in, and work with really large scenes? There are so many different engines to try out, and they're all advancing rapidly. Once there is a pipeline in place, it takes a massive improvement in quality for one to switch. As a side note, the word "medium" makes sense in the rendering world. Sometimes they use it in the case of subsurface scattering, and I guess here they're talking about volumetrics. Also, have you read anything about this renderer supporting OpenVDB? Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 23, 2015 Author Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 23, 2015 Thanks for posting! I'm going to try it out myself, but can you talk more about how it handles large sets? Is it fairly easy to bring things in, and work with really large scenes? There are so many different engines to try out, and they're all advancing rapidly. Once there is a pipeline in place, it takes a massive improvement in quality for one to switch. As a side note, the word "medium" makes sense in the rendering world. Sometimes they use it in the case of subsurface scattering, and I guess here they're talking about volumetrics. Also, have you read anything about this renderer supporting OpenVDB? Thanks again! I haven't tried using the Stand Alone (Thea Studio) with a heavy scene, but some of their sample scenes have a lot of trees (instances) and using a medium to create a ground fog. It's focus has been largely, if not exclusively on Architecture Previz work, so it should be able to handle a fairly heavy scene. I used the 3ds Max plugin mostly, and it's much faster than VRay, I can tell you that much. And with the Presto engine (GPU only or GPU + CPU....CUDA & Intel Embree), which is unbiased, it's so easy to use that a child could do it. VRay, to go unbiased, you'd have to use the Brute Force (Monte Carlo) option, and that means BIG render times, usually. Using the Biased modes in VRay require a decent learning curve to get all the settings right, to optimize the render, and then you have to jump through some hoops to minimize GI flickering in animations. This is where Thea really shines with that GPU + CPU tech. The owner mentioned yesterday on the Thea forum, that they have Hair/Fur and OpenVDB on the road map...but I think it will take some vocal users from the Entertainment industry to speak up on the forum to push that effort along. Their current userbase is almost entirely Arch Viz folls, so they will probably continue to cater to them and their wants before those in the Entertainment Industry. I just wish it could render FumeFX in Max or Pyrocluster, but I doubt that will happen any time soon 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 24, 2015 Author Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 24, 2015 This was their 1.3 promo video: ...and another along the same time frame: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 24, 2015 Author Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 24, 2015 Thea, getting started in Blender tut: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Rebelismo Posted July 24, 2015 Member Report Share Posted July 24, 2015 I haven't tried using the Stand Alone (Thea Studio) with a heavy scene, but some of their sample scenes have a lot of trees (instances) and using a medium to create a ground fog. It's focus has been largely, if not exclusively on Architecture Previz work, so it should be able to handle a fairly heavy scene. I used the 3ds Max plugin mostly, and it's much faster than VRay, I can tell you that much. And with the Presto engine (GPU only or GPU + CPU....CUDA & Intel Embree), which is unbiased, it's so easy to use that a child could do it. VRay, to go unbiased, you'd have to use the Brute Force (Monte Carlo) option, and that means BIG render times, usually. Using the Biased modes in VRay require a decent learning curve to get all the settings right, to optimize the render, and then you have to jump through some hoops to minimize GI flickering in animations. This is where Thea really shines with that GPU + CPU tech. The owner mentioned yesterday on the Thea forum, that they have Hair/Fur and OpenVDB on the road map...but I think it will take some vocal users from the Entertainment industry to speak up on the forum to push that effort along. Their current userbase is almost entirely Arch Viz folls, so they will probably continue to cater to them and their wants before those in the Entertainment Industry. I just wish it could render FumeFX in Max or Pyrocluster, but I doubt that will happen any time soon You're right, I think this is very much aimed at ArchViz professionals. My favorite mode so far is the Presto Monte Carlo, because that has very nice color bouncing. Though I have noticed that this mode slows down tremendously when it comes to interiors (even with 3 gpus, and a dual xeon processor). I think once they implement OpenVDB, I will take a look at this renderer again, because it really does seem to be shaping up nicely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Aleksey Posted July 25, 2015 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 25, 2015 ive used it for a couple of jobs and works great. In my reel the honda jet is rendered with it, rendered really fast, and gave really nice results with pretty much zero set up. did some comping in post, but otherwise im really impressed. also recently rendered something for a personal project flames where comped in, but the background was thea. and rendered really quick. Just love how fast you get full renders from thea. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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