[Radiance-general] Sunlight through glass

[Jack de Valpine]

Hi Pierre-Felix,

You are too right money does talk and the needs of the clients that we 
all find tend to dictate the market. I have always found that a big 
challenge is customer education, educating the customer about what is 
possible, why and what the value-add is. With respect to talking about 
the pros and cons of specific technologies, I find it best to pick the 
appropriate place, project and client.

Regards,

-Jack de Valpine

PS, do you have any sense for what will happen to Maya/Max/Viz with the 
Autodesks acquisition of Alias?

Pierre-Felix Breton wrote:

>And I think we are still interested about it!
>
>But money talks and we need to satisfy both worlds  (nice images and
>physically based rendering to some extents).  But I agree with most of what
>Jack has been said here..
>
>Regards,
>
>Pierre-Félix Breton
>----------------------------------------------------
>(speaking as a 3ds max product specialist here - having participated in the
>Lightscape 3.2 -->viz radiosity work...)
>  
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: radiance-general-bounces at radiance-online.org
>[mailto:radiance-general-bounces at radiance-online.org] On Behalf Of Jack de
>Valpine
>Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 9:23 AM
>To: Radiance general discussion
>Subject: Re: [Radiance-general] Sunlight through glass
>
>
>Hi Giullio and others following this thread,
>
><RANT MODE>
>It seems to me that this is a problem with proprietary shrink wrap software
>renderers. Who really knows what is going on under the hood, whose word
>should be taken for the validity of the physical model, what validations
>have occurred?!
>
>Users see the product marketing materials that talk about Global
>Illumination and "physical accuracy," and they believe the hype! That seems
>to me to be pretty dangerous if you are going to be using the tool to
>somehow "validate" design issues!
>
>I know that there are systems that have implemented GI to varying degrees
>and sophistication. But the problem is you probably have to be an uber
>expert to use them and/or code up custom material/lighting shaders. Still
>though the question is what validation has occurred. I think that most
>commercial renderers and users of said systems are really not that
>interested in physical validity, they are most interested in the
>outcome/appearance of the final image. It does not really matter how it get
>there.
>
>It seems to me that the one commercial product that showed some hope in its
>original (pre-acquisition) form was Lightscape. However, Rob Guglielmetti
>has explored and written pretty extensively on this topic seemingly with
>only partial satisfaction (my apologies to Rob G. for such a cursory
>summary, he did some really excellent work on this). Note I also believe
>that the original developers of Lightscape were truly interested in enabling
>people to use a tool with a reasonable and practical level of physical
>validity.
></RANT MODE>
>
>Best,
>
>-Jack
>
>giulio antonutto wrote: 
>About MR history and current situation (
>http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10185).
>Well the whole thing started a while ago when the promised and sold the
>certainty to get a finished software for a certain time (last September).
>This did not happened (they are still speaking of final candidate version
>RC0.5 and so on).
>The software is not yet finished (it is not version 1.0).
>Not yet implemented on all the platform where was supposed to run (on Mac is
>still beta although they promised something in the next ‘24’ hours) and
>doesn’t support all the plug-ins for 3d application that are indicated on
>the web page.
>This doesn’t sound so appealing to me as well and I would understand
>somebody delusion about the matter.
>
>Having said that, I also need to add that I requested (as other friends did)
>details about the physical accuracy of the renderer.
>I never got an answer.
>Is it itself an answer?
>G.
>
>PS these are my personal opinions. 
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-- 
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction