What to Buy for Christmas

[Jamie Duncan]

Hello everyone and Merry Christmas!

We are a small architectural office that occasionally produces 3d
renderings. I do the models and render them completely within AutoCad -
export them to adobe photoshop and get a reasonable rendering. In the past
year I have done about 10 models yielding 20 to 25 rendered views, and am
finding that the results are not always predictable, and not always that
good (I probably could use a book of tips & tricks.).

I am at a crossroads - will 3d studio viz be worth the enormous price tag?
Will I get improvements in rendering quality - appearance of bitmaps etc?
What about performance. I have a 1.4 Ghz P4 with 640 MB ram and 32 MB
Geforce II DDR video and some photo raytrace renderings take 7-8 hours!
Would someone who has more than my meagre knowledge help me with this?

Thanks

Jamie

[Kevin Anderson]

Jaime, Only you (or your Boss/Acc't) can decide if its' worth it. But, the
rendering possibilities are in Viz vs. the internal Acad render are pure
night vs. day, take a look at the autodesk.viz.vizions NG for example
postings of user generated work. One the cpu side you should be fine, one
could always use more ram, especially if you go with the new Viz4 recently
announced. See more on that in the general 3dstudio-viz NG, or the new
viz4.general NG.
--
Kevin Anderson
www.KaddAssociates.com
"Jamie Duncan" <jdu...@eol.ca> wrote in message
news:2F7775AA36846FCB...@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

[Randy Sanders]

hi There

Jaime,

for the Latest and Great Information on VIZ 4 go to:

http://www.cgarchitect.com/

Jeff Mottle's excellent CGArchitect.com website

he has some VIZ 4 Information and some outstanding VIZ Images
by Guillermo Leal Llaguno - of Scream!Point in the review of VIZ 4

http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/Reviews/Review001_1.asp

you can FileLink autocad dwg Files into VIZ (or draw in VIZ only)
for Additional VIZ Information, check out this VIZ Community Resource
website:

www.viz2000.com

Randy

"Jamie Duncan" <jdu...@eol.ca> wrote in message
news:2F7775AA36846FCB...@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

[John Colby]

VIZ will blow away an ACAD render, every time. Its a tool designed for
rendering, ACAD is a tool designed for drafting, they are both great at what
they are designed to do. Its just choosing the right tool for the job.
Modeling, lighting, and animating are easier with VIZ. VIZ renders faster
than ACAD also.

--
John Colby
Lauterbach & Associates
www.la-arch.com

"Jamie Duncan" <jdu...@eol.ca> wrote in message
news:2F7775AA36846FCB...@in.WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

[Daniel Douglas]

> ...will 3d studio viz be worth the enormous price tag?

Enormous? It's less than $2,000. You might pay that much for one rendering
done by hand. VIZ is a bargain, I'd say. Do consider, though, that the
cost doesn't (or at least shouldn't) end when the software arrives. You've
got to learn to use it, and the firm should be realistic about the need to
at the very least buy some training guides and give you a couple weeks
uninterrupted to do tutorials, or maybe you could take a short class. If
you're expected to just start cranking out beautiful renderings without the
investment in training, you and your firm will feel frustrated with VIZ.
It's complex software, and not a program you can learn by playing around
with it, like you can with Photoshop or something.

Once you've learned the basics, there's no better place than these
newsgroups to get immediate help on the finer points.

Good luck.

Dan