Thea Render v1.0

[Fran_ois Chatelain]

Hi everyone,
a quick reminder for those who might be interested, the beta testing period of Thea Render is about to end, and version 1.0 will be released on the 21st of February.
So now is your last chance to take advantage of the low price offer while still in beta.

http://www.thearender.com

Cheers
Francois

PS: note that I'm in no way affiliated with them, but I do immensely enjoy using their software. Like I do ArchiCAD 😉

[Fran_ois Chatelain]

Yo Carsten,
alive and kicking as you can see. How about yourself? All good?
I still use EI every now and then, but not much since I've started using Thea 😉
Plus, EI changed hands in July last year and not much is being said about the next version (9).
I must say I was very impressed with Thea from day one, and the community is very friendly and helpful.
Just download the demo and take it for a whirl, you'll see by yourself...

Cheers mate!
Francois

[Anonymous]

Hi François & Dwight,

I am also impressed with what I see (results and capabilities) but obviously I can't answer very important question:

what is the process of bringing (large) model from ArchiCAD, populating that model with entourage (high poly), than doing design changes and repeating that process time after time? Right now I am using Artlantis 3 and achieving reasonable results. Can you compare those two renderers in regard to the logistics.

Also I guess in dark room there is a capacity of doing batch file for rendering execution?

Thanks for this notice!

[Dwight]

Hello, Andy!!!

Import is manageable. - delete the old and then add the new....

I would manage this with layers, building the scene with imported 3Ds entourage and isolating actual Archicad design elements for simplified deletion.

[Fran_ois Chatelain]

Hi Andy,
since there's no plugin for ArchiCAD at the moment, the worflow between Thea and AC is different form the one between Artlantis and AC.
That said, replacing a model in Thea is not as painful as it seems. Material assignment is a breeze, and having layers to store your various models is quite efficient too.
Then in regard of adding props to your models, the instancing tool is very valuable. And high poly count isn't a problem, I've rendered scenes with over 100mil polys.
Now in terms of rendering, Thea sports 2 different rendering engines, one unbiased (think Maxwell), the longer you render, the better the result. The second engine is biased and allows for endless tweaking and optimisation depending on the type of scene to render. Both engines allow you to create and save presets for later use.
As for batch rendering, it's possible now via some sort of scripting, but I'm fairly confident it will find it's way to the UI in the very near future.
But given you get two render nodes when buying a license, nothing prevents you to have dedicated rendering machines on your network.
Finally, looking at Thea's roadmap, you'll find out that GPU rendering is not far off 😉
Hope this somehow answers your questions.

Cheers
Francois

[Fran_ois Chatelain]

Dwight wrote:
Hello, Andy!!!
Import is manageable. - delete the old and then add the new....

Hi Dwight,
I'm still to check whether replacing the old model with the new one will automatically assign the matching material.
For the time being I only export the amended parts of the model when possible, and manually delete the superseded ones.

Cheers
Francois

[Anonymous]

Hi François & Dwight,

I am also impressed with what I see (results and capabilities) but obviously I can't answer very important question:

what is the process of bringing (large) model from ArchiCAD, populating that model with entourage (high poly), than doing design changes and repeating that process time after time? Right now I am using Artlantis 3 and achieving reasonable results. Can you compare those two renderers in regard to the logistics.

Also I guess in dark room there is a capacity of doing batch file for rendering execution?

Thanks for this notice!

[Dwight]

There's fifty minutes you'll never get back.

[Anonymous]

François wrote:
Yo Carsten,
alive and kicking as you can see. How about yourself? All good?
I still use EI every now and then, but not much since I've started using Thea 😉
Plus, EI changed hands in July last year and not much is being said about the next version (9).
I must say I was very impressed with Thea from day one, and the community is very friendly and helpful.
Just download the demo and take it for a whirl, you'll see by yourself...

Cheers mate!
Francois

Hey Francois, good to hear you are doing well. Bet from all these Swiss dishes like, Raclete and cheese fondue you are round and fat ! lol

Where are you working now?

If I get time this week will download the demo and check it out.

Yes here all good family is doing well, as for business check out my site.

Cheers Carsten

[Fran_ois Chatelain]

Hi Carsten,
glad to hear everybody's fine.
Mate, you should just get Thea at the current price, it's money well spent, especially with the 2 additional render nodes, and free upgrades up to version 2.0.

Cheers
Francois

[Anonymous]

Hi François & Dwight,

I can see that at this moment we still have chores ahead of us in order to understand how to exactly bridge two environments, but at this price I feel no investment risk for this intriguing software.

Guys thanks for those answers and I hope that down the road we may have some renderings of our work to show off (although I never did that before).

Regards, Andy