Piranesi as a rendering program

[Anonymous]

I have recently gotten a new computer. We have used Piranesi 5.1 and have had good success with it. I know there is a 64 bit upgrade for Piranesi 2010, but I also know, from what I can tell, Piranesi is a dead product (no new versions coming out). I would like to keep using it, but am uneasy using a product that will not be advanced (new releases).

Does anyone still use Piranesi, and am I overreacting to it not being viable in the future? If not, what program do you use? I am not excited about the Cinerender inside Archicad mainly because I spent many, many hours adjusting setting on the Lightworks renderings. In Piranesi, I could bring in a file and have it finished in 30-45 minutes.

Any feedback will be helpful.

thanks

[Karl Ottenstein]

Because we're talking about Piranesi as a viable program and Informatix as a company, rather than how to use Piranesi with AC to create renders... I've moved this conversation to "Other Products" from the rendering forum...

First, Piranesi 6 Pro is the current version of the product, not Piranesi 2010. It was a free upgrade (as I recall) to 2010 owners. As you can read on the Informatix web site, the company was purchased by a Japanese firm a few years ago, but the UK office has remained open - with some of the old/original folks - to provide development and tech support.

I was just in touch with tech support this week, in fact, concerning a glitch running Piranesi 6 under OS X Yosemite, and I got an immediate response. A minor issue with the splash or license screens remaining on top of the workspace, for Mac folks who find this post - I was told that a fix will likely be released after the first service release to Yosemite (10.1).

You're on Windows 8.1, so the above doesn't affect you other than to let you know that support and maintenance is alive and well.

Personally, I'm not sure what new features one might want in Piranesi as far as future advancements. It's a paint program at its core, not something that uses evolving rendering technology.

The critical question in my mind is not whether Piranesi changes... but whether other software will continue to export Piranesi EPX files... without the epix file to provide material and depth information, using Piranesi would almost be more work than it is worth. At least today, you can still export from ArchiCAD, Artlantis, SketchUp, Revit, 3ds Max and C4D.

I don't know that it matters whether anyone here still uses Piranesi. If it achieves the look you want - then keep using it. 🙂 It is interesting, though, that we don't see much discussion anymore of getting 'painterly' renderings such as can be produced (by hand) with Piranesi. Everybody seems into photorealism. All personal taste. 😉

There are still Piranesi forums... but they see very little use now:
http://www.informatixsoftware.com/forums/

Just saw this post there about changes in the license technology which will affect your installation of Pir 5.1 on your Win 8.1 computer - you'll need to contact them for a new license file:
http://www.informatixsoftware.com/forums/showthread.php/6629-Piranesi-Activation-Servers

Cheers,
Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

PS I also just found this page where they indicate a fee of $300 to upgrade your 5.1 license to 6:
https://secure.informatix.jp/piranesi/index.html

[Anonymous]

thanks Karl,

Your post answered the questions, and thoughts, that we were thinking. Thank you for all the information.

[Karl Ottenstein]

You bet. I hope you and others might post some work in progress / etc in the rendering forum at some point if you continue to use Piranesi. As I said, I haven't seen anybody discuss or share non-photorealistic work in many years (other than Sketch rendering output).

One thing to consider with CineRender and Piranesi is to use the White Model render and to select fast settings that simply provide beautiful shadow detail on the white surfaces. Enabling Ambient Occlusion would be well worth it, for example.

When using this image within Piranesi, you can multiply whatever colors or textures you want onto the surfaces and retain the shadows more easily than fighting with the colors/textures exported from a full render.

[rjwilden]

Exported from archicad V18 as white model, and used watercolor with bucket tool.
Those who use Piranesi will know how much more you can do to this image without spending much time on it. Takes less than 5 min