CompuServe Messages

Hello Nick and all, As an electronic publisher spending most of the time trying to find ways to distribute the English version of the publication, I thought I should drop in here and say Hello. A little bit late maybe…. I have produced a thorough comparison between trueSpace and Visual Reality and some comments from that could maybe be useful here until the material is released. >>> In addition, as a scan line renderer, we offer far better control of texture mapping characteristics That is very true. I found that Renderize managed to squeeze out a lot of those bump and texture maps that were used. Actually the quality of the renderings done in Renderize is quite unique. It is hard to describe, but the images get some quality that usually is not found in raytraced images. What is also worth mentioning is the very, very useful and elegant VR feature allowing 2D images to EASILY be used as (pseudo) 3D objects. Renderize does a very good job with shiny metal surfaces, not all behind trueSpace in quality, but I have not yet been able to get close to that Glass a good raytracer like trueSpace can produce. I guess the lack of refraction options in a scanline rendering software makes this a hard one to solve. >>> because you're talking about rendering times that are anywhere from 10x to 100x faster Don't agree at all. That is to say: within the limits of my testing with small projects. Can't comment on really large projects. Admittedly Renderize is a VERY fast rendering engine, but so is trueSpace as a raytracer. Even if THE RENDERING TIMES in Renderize may be much faster than trueSpace you have to include the time it takes to create the reflection maps. If you have 2 or 3 shiny and reflective objects the performance advantage of Renderize is lost creating the reflection maps. It is quite funny and not at all common: I have never had such a difficulty to pick out which package to recommend as when I reviewed VR and trueSpace. This is a far cry from the more easily exchangeable mainstream business packages! Both programs have extremely strong features, but I would hate to just choose one of them since they are so extremely different as well.! You can find a little preview of the VR/trueSpace article/chapter in DIP1a1 and DIP1b1.EXE – a free DiP sample – that is uploaded to GRAPHSUPPORT (non-gif library) and other forums as well. Best regards Thomas Lindstrom – DiP – Sweden The Digital ComPuter Magazine (Everybody's Guide to Digital Publishing & Digital Pictures)