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Important dribble news
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Important dribble news // Roundtable
Post by SiW // Nov 22, 2007, 10:02pm
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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Well, I teased it too early and some of you have being going crazy wondering what my dribble announcement is, so here goes.
The bad news: Contrary to my initial announcement, there will no longer be a pro version of dribble with more advanced features.
The good news: The existing and planned features will be available to ALL dribble users, beginning with the next release.
Though not all of them will make it for 1.03, the previously pro-only abilities include:
- Rendering of individual channels (diffuse, specular, reflections, etc.) for later compositing
- Output of the RIB files for later rendering or rendering in other renderers
- Toon inking
- Assignment of any Renderman shader as a material
- Object instancing
In addition to the other upcoming additions like fur, object illumination, and so on. I wanted to include some examples of these features, but it's now 2am and I have to get to bed. I'll be posting more tests to the existing thread (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=4267) as I go along.
Obviously there is significant development involved here, and as I don't charge for updates the price of dribble will therefore increase to $50 - but I'll hold the price at $35 until December 12th, when I plan for the next release introducing the pro features. It also happens to be my birthday.
I want to thank the early adopters for making it possible to make these tools available to everyone. I know that a fair number of you were going to want to upgrade to pro, and now you don't have to. The rest of you should act quickly if you want to save a few bucks :) |
Post by splinters // Nov 22, 2007, 10:16pm
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splinters
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This is great news Simon. Do existing owners need to pay anything for the upgrade as it is so substantial?
Great that you are releasing it on your birthday, and glad I invested in this, and you, early...I am sure it has a great future.
:jumpy: |
Post by SiW // Nov 22, 2007, 11:30pm
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SiW
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Do existing owners need to pay anything for the upgrade as it is so substantial?
Nope, not at all. I did say you'd be rewarded for your early support, right? :) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Nov 23, 2007, 12:06am
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Jack Edwards
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Great news Simon. RIB export alone is easily worth $50. :)
Once you get all the kinks ironed out (and hopefully a 7.x version) I think you could easily charge $159 or so for the plug-in. |
Post by blakeo // Nov 23, 2007, 12:54am
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blakeo
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Wow - your up early / late Jack :D
I've been thinking about getting dribble lately, purely for the displacement mapping but it's now looking like an incredible package...
Very good of you to keep the price low for now SiW - I'll be acting quickly :) Nothing like a get-it-now-before-it-goes-up type offer to encourage support :D :D
And it's still a bargain at the higher price, especially for us Brits :banana:
B |
Post by splinters // Nov 23, 2007, 12:55am
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splinters
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Nope, not at all. I did say you'd be rewarded for your early support, right? :)
Excellent news but I will have to be strong....and wait until December...:D
12th is a week before my Birthday so this will make a great present.
Cheers for your hard work Simon and expect many more renders for your folio...:D |
Post by splinters // Nov 23, 2007, 1:04am
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C'mon guys. More buyers of Dribble means more investment in its future and more development.
So Buy now=cheap price, free upgrades and a brighter future for a great renderer...and all for less than £20.
Like Jack said...could easily ask a lot, lot more with RIB export....:rolleyes:
Bargain.
:jumpy: |
Post by Georg // Nov 23, 2007, 1:20am
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Georg
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Sounds like a deal I should not miss. What is the big thing with the RIB export? What can you do with it?
Georg |
Post by Jack Edwards // Nov 23, 2007, 1:22am
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LOL Blakeo, no matter how hard I try, I always seem to end up on Asian time... those late night projects just seem to turn into early morning projects all to quickly... ;)
I agree completely with Splinters here, Dribble at $30 is a no-brainer. Skip a few meals if you need to or try brown bagging it for a few days... :D |
Post by Steinie // Nov 23, 2007, 1:31am
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As an owner of Dribble and having an interest in it's long range future (the day we can use it in workSpace) I want the sales to increase as much as Simon or other users. There are 3 ways we can help Simon increase sales.
1) The best way to increase sales is use it and show others what it can do. When new owners of trueSpace see our renderings with it's cool new feature sets their interest in this product will increase. Nothing sells a product faster then "eye candy"
2) TS 4.1 had over 200 plug in/tsx developers and today almost all are gone. If you want cool features added to trueSpace (which we love) here is another way to insure Caligari's long term future.
3) Simon is cool and so is Dribble.
Georg:
What is the big thing with the RIB export? What can you do with it?
RIB Usage:
Storage of image scene descriptions for Pixar's RenderMan product.
Comments
Although RIB is proprietary, RenderMan is a capable product available on a number of platforms, so an energetic aftermarket has developed. Enough applications besides RenderMan now read and write RIB files, which has pushed the format into prominence as a de facto standard for high-end rendering. |
Post by Georg // Nov 23, 2007, 1:54am
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Georg
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Thanks, Steinie.
That makes sense.
georg |
Post by Jack Edwards // Nov 23, 2007, 2:01am
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RIB export means you can use Pixar's PRMan with TS:
https://renderman.pixar.com/products/pricelists/index.htm
It also means that you can use nVidia Gelato:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/gz_home.html
As well as a bunch of other RIB renders out there. For example, Aqsis and Pixie.
Basically it means you are no longer tied into 32-bit 3Delight. Infact we could use RIB files to interface the 64-bit version of 3Delight if wanted, which would solve the issue with 2GB maximum on render memory. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Nov 23, 2007, 2:05am
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Agree 100% Steinie.
For those unclear about Renderman, here's a website with a lot of info:
http://www.rendermanacademy.com/
Welcome to the big leagues, boys and girls! ;) :banana: |
Post by SiW // Nov 23, 2007, 6:54am
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SiW
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There are multiple benefits of outputting the RIB file(s) and not rendering directly. It's equivalent to a programmer having access to source code; it gives you a lot more flexibility. It's definitely a more hands-on approach, requiring you to learn more about Renderman and know how to render from the command line and that's why I had intended on making this a pro-user feature.
Simple benefits:
- You can render scenes and animations at a later date - e.g. batching them overnight - without having to have trueSpace open. This can improve stability and certainly reduces memory consumption.
- You can make use of tools that ship with various Renderman renderers. This can include network rendering, or re-rendering a section of the screen, and so on
If you're comfortable with editing the files (they can be output as ASCII) you have further options:
- make quick changes without having to open trueSpace, load your scene, have dribble export. Especially useful if you have to tweak lights or materials.
- experiment with renderer features (or even other renderers) that dribble might not yet support |
Post by SiW // Nov 23, 2007, 6:59am
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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Infact we could use RIB files to interface the 64-bit version of 3Delight if wanted, which would solve the issue with 2GB maximum on render memory.
This is true, however it will require some manual trickery I think. See, dribble still relies on 3Delight for writing out the RIB, so you'd need to have both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of 3Delight installed.
If I ever find a RIB client library that works as well as 3Delight's that I can use commercially, I can remove this restriction. I'm not too hopeful though, honestly - in the decade of dribble development I've used a variety of them and there's a reason I stuck with 3Delight. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Nov 23, 2007, 4:32pm
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Theres a lot of cool updates. I look forward to playing with them.:D |
Post by rjeff // Nov 23, 2007, 5:09pm
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well Jack which do you think is better? Renderman or Gelato? |
Post by Steinie // Nov 23, 2007, 5:54pm
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I'll let Jack answer but consider this:
to use Gelato you must have a NVIDIA GPU.
When you ask about Renderman think "Pixar" |
Post by SiW // Nov 23, 2007, 6:10pm
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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Also note that while there are some similarities, Gelato is not a RenderMan renderer. Using the "Ribelato" plugin it can read RIB, but I can't say for sure how compatible it is. I won't be targetting it directly, but once RIB output is released for dribble, interested parties can try it out with Gelato and let me know if there's anything I can do to improve the translation. |
Post by rj0 // Nov 23, 2007, 6:49pm
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...
3) Simon is cool and so is Dribble.
Definitely!
Thanks again, Simon! |
Post by Jack Edwards // Nov 23, 2007, 9:27pm
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Gelato was originally a renderman engine called BMRT before being purchased by nVidia. So it should have pretty good compliance.
Though it'd be even cooler if the gelato SDK was used to write a direct plugin for TS. :p |
Post by SiW // Nov 24, 2007, 7:17pm
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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Gelato was originally a renderman engine called BMRT before being purchased by nVidia
Well.. BMRT was a solo project by Larry Gritz, then of Pixar. He later left Pixar to form Exluna, and released Entropy, which lived a short life before Pixar sued both Exluna and Gritz himself for a variety of things, including alleged patent violations (Pixar holds several important patents on things like stochastic sampling i.e. shooting lots of rays at something and averaging). Some of the details are fuzzy (GRAPHICS PUN!) but I remember Larry denying the same method was used because they actually anticipated there being problems. Exluna was bought up by NVIDIA and that was that.
Thus because of the legal issues, I really doubt Gelato is a direct descendant of BMRT.
Incidentally, if it wasn't for BMRT, I doubt dribble would ever have been written. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Nov 25, 2007, 1:31am
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Ah thanks for the clarification, Simon. It seems so much of 3D history gets lost in the past... |
Post by splinters // Nov 25, 2007, 5:16am
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Do you have any more fur test images while we wait Simon? |
Post by SiW // Nov 25, 2007, 11:41am
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SiW
Total Posts: 298
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I don't I'm afraid, I've been too busy with other stuff. I think that to keep expectations in check you should expect this first version to be more of a fur rendererer, then we can work on actual styling. It'd be great if in the future I had access to the Workspace styling tools and we had a nice integrated package. |
Post by splinters // Nov 25, 2007, 12:05pm
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splinters
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Crikey, I actually forgot about the hair tools in workspace. Shame on me, and after all those renders as well!
Thanks for the update though Simon. As for expectations, I only expect whatever we get-nothing more. |
Post by Burnart // Nov 25, 2007, 12:11pm
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...... you should expect this first version to be more of a fur rendererer, then we can work on actual styling. It'd be great if in the future I had access to the Workspace styling tools and we had a nice integrated package.
Integration with Workspace - that's what I'm dreaming of! I have to say that even at $50 dollars dribble will be a cheap purhase - If you can do something about the speed of GI rendering & Workspace integration then I think you would be able to go up even more and still be an absolute bargain.
Good on you Simon, without any real news re the 7.6 upgrade dribble is where the action is. |
Post by splinters // Nov 25, 2007, 12:14pm
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Even though I am more comforable with model side, I do mess with workspace and I know it is the future of tS. Once all 'useful' tools are ported over or replaced/improved I will be there full time and I agree that dribble integration with workspace would be a great thing.
I just hope that we will be able to use LW as well as Vray from the workspace (and dribble of course).
As for the GI and caustics, I am afraid I still rely on Vray for speed there...:o |
Post by Burnart // Nov 25, 2007, 12:24pm
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As for the GI and caustics, I am afraid I still rely on Vray for speed there...:o
If I could afford it ....... the only times its been on special is when I'm already financially challenged for one reason or another. Anyway, even on special it seems like a lot of money. If I was deriving part of my income from this stuff I could justify it (and claim it on tax!) but as a simple hobbiest I'll just have to wail "Woe is me!";) |
Post by chamaeleon // Nov 25, 2007, 4:20pm
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Simon, just purchased Dribble, with the hope that it won't take too long to see RIB export. ;) I really, really would like to be able to try it out with Pixie. :) Am really curious how animations and stills would work out using its built-in distributed rendering. Did I say I can't wait to see RIB export, btw? |
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