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altivec for lightworks


ccroft

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I see that there's a new release of Lightworks that has been optimized for Altivec. It increases rendering speeds up to 1.5 times for scenes containing soft shadows and ray tracing.

Just wondering how long it will be before we can use the new version in Renderworks.

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After reading the new above I clicked my way to LightWorks site and found that their product line contain much more than Alltivec. Radiosity Rendering, sketch rendering and some new way of sharing resources like textures and materials call LWA. Are we going to see those functions in RenderWorks?

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quote:

Originally posted by Yovav:

After reading the new above I clicked my way to LightWorks site and found that their product line contain much more than Alltivec. Radiosity Rendering, sketch rendering and some new way of sharing resources like textures and materials call LWA. Are we going to see those functions in RenderWorks?

There was a similar thread on the VW mailing list last week, Several people have noticed that although C4D and RW use the same rendering engine, they have very different capabilities, what people need to understand is I think they all (RW, C4D, FormZ, 3DS) use the Lightwork engine, its just that they license different parts ( http://www.lightwork.com/lw_home.htm ). To get more rendering capability out of RW really wouldn't be too difficult (I think?) its just a matter of hitting a price point that NNA thinks will make the product profitable. Honestly, how many people would be willing to pay $600 to $1200 for RW. (I believe to just get the advanced rendering module to add to C4D is something like $600) I would, but I'd say most VW users don't need or want that kind of capability.

Anyway my 2 cents

[ 04-30-2003, 09:57 AM: Message edited by: MikeB ]

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I can't comment on when a new version of VW will be avialable or when one with the above features are available .. or what's in any new version of VW.

Please respect the fact that I just cannot comment on anything in future versions of VW today or any day for that matter.

When a version of VW is public - then I can comment on it.

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quote:

Originally posted by Dave Donley:

Hello Mike:

Maxon coded their own rendering engine.

They are really making inroads in the Hollywood scene, apparently. Some members of the company were here for a distributors meeting and showed a cool "reel" of Cinema4D stuff, including the titles from Spiderman (the webby-looking credits) and some scenes of Rome from Gladiator.

Thanks again, I've been considering adding C4D to my workflow. I've been looking on www.renderosity.com at the C4D gallery for awhile now, there are some outstanding renderings posted there. There's something about a well done C4D rendering that is almost hyper real, kind of reminds me of the super-realist painters, more real than reality. Anyway, I suppose if RW feature set dosen't change in the near future, C4D will be the next logical step for me.

Again, thanks for the info

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I think the Altivec support would benefit a lot more users than all the cool rendering affects would. At least if you got a Mac. Since Macs have had the power pc chip for so long now it is almost like "it's about time". Dual processor support would be also a good idea since Macs have had DP's for awhile too. Faster is always better. Vectorworks should be doing this for the basic program too! Does lightworks support some kind of upgrade path for renderworks such that you could buy lightworks separately if you wanted the bells and whistles?

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Myself, I'm interested in speed and am fine with the current feature set.

If I need higher-end rendering I can buy it now.

I think v-works/r-works is an excellent program for the cost.

The article I read on Architosh made it sound like altivec support for r-works would be like, drag and drop the new engine in.

I know that the nemetschek people can't answer my original question (the same as anyone who works for any software company), but I wonder if someone can speak to the difficulty of the change-over. How much recoding would it require?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

FWIW, Cinema4D and 3D Studio are completely unrelated to the LightWorks rendering engine. Maxon (who makes C4D) is not in the business of rendering libraries licensed to CAD vendors, as LightWorks is.

The comparable mainstream products that use LightWorks are formZ and Caligari trueSpace. There are other more expensive products that use LightWorks as well (Unigraphics) and many less well-known (in the US).

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quote:

Originally posted by Dave Donley:

FWIW, Cinema4D and 3D Studio are completely unrelated to the LightWorks rendering engine. Maxon (who makes C4D) is not in the business of rendering libraries licensed to CAD vendors, as LightWorks is.


Thanks for the clarification. Does that mean the Maxon has created its own rendering engine, or do they license it from someone other than Lightwork?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello Mike:

Maxon coded their own rendering engine.

They are really making inroads in the Hollywood scene, apparently. Some members of the company were here for a distributors meeting and showed a cool "reel" of Cinema4D stuff, including the titles from Spiderman (the webby-looking credits) and some scenes of Rome from Gladiator.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello ccroft:

The Altivec/Velocity Engine recoding done by LightWorks is all transparent to a user (programmer) of the library - there aren't any adjustments necessary on our side.

Our release schedules and theirs are timed differently, and that is the major factor rather than the code changes in this case.

We are very careful about revving the third party libraries or programmer tools that we use for a release. With big changes we have to make sure that enough testing can be done to uncover any side effects (bugs) that are inevitably introduced with these kinds of changes. Just like any software, you have to be careful about being the guinea pig on the "dot oh" releases.

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Just got this email from Lightworks FYI:

Dear Mr Magness

Thank you for your email enquiry about LightWorks.

For your information, LightWorks is a rendering engine which is only sold

directly to software developers for integration within their software

applications. LightWorks is not available as a stand alone product and can

only be used within LightWorks-based applications such as VectorWorks.

The Altivec support you mentioned has only just been released in LightWorks

and so this will be available in future software releases. Unfortunately we

are unable to provide specific information about our customers products and

so I cannot really answer your question about VectorWorks. I can tell you

that Altivec support should be included in a future release of VectorWorks,

but I suggest that you contact Nemetscheck (who produce VectorWorks) for

more details about when this might be available.

I am sorry that I cannot be of more help to you but please do not hesitate

to contact me again should you require any further information.

Alternatively, you might also be interested in our new LightWorks-User

website: www.lightworks-user.com

Thanks for your interest in LightWorks.

Best regards

Rona

Rona Treeby

Marketing Manager

LightWork Design

78 Clarkehouse Road, Sheffield, S10 2LJ, UK

Tel: +44 114 266 8404 Fax: +44 114 266 1383

Email: rona.treeby@lightworkdesign.com

Websites: www.lightworkdesign.com and www.lightworks-user.com

so I went to the user site but all the downloads etc use what is called "LWA enabled" files which I can guarantee Vwks does not use yet. cool stuff though. Any comments from Dave?

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Wow, I never thought that anyone was quite this interested in the topic.

Here is my understanding... draw your own conclusions from this, but remember I?m not "in the loop" on this. I do not speak for NNA, I do not have an affiliation with NNA other than providing training in the NY/NJ area.

1) Nemetschek licensees a version of Lightworks for use in Renderworks...

2) Renderworks does not support the high end features in the higher end version of Lightworks...

3) Therefore, it stands to reason that Nemetschek licensees the low end of Lightworks' offerings...

4) This Altivec support appears to have been added across the board to all of Lightwork's current product line....

5) In order to stay current, we can assume that Nemetschek probably keeps reasonably up to date with the current version of Lightworks for development support reasons...

6) VectorWorks 10 came out in October, and past performance shows that NNA likes to release product somewhere between every 12-18 months....

7) We are about 7 months from the last major release, so 10.5 should reasonably come out in the next few months....

8) NNA has made a big deal of including "new" free features in it's .5 releases...

So the real question is not if we will see Altivec support, but when. Personally, my guess is that we will see this in 10.5 in about 3 months. To me that would be the perfect time to market a new release if they are going to stick 12-18 month cycle.

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Hi

MikeB said: "To get more rendering capability out of RW really wouldn't be too difficult (I think?) its just a matter of hitting a price point that NNA thinks will make the product profitable."

Just an observation-TurboCAD is cheaper than VW10 and TC offers radiosity. So in my opinion NNA can definatley put more features in RW and still make some profit. IMSI licences more from Lightworks but sells less than NNA. HOW COME???

Hoping RW improves in the future.

Shaun

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