FStormRender for 3ds Max v0.3.8a, Hot fix.

[Karba]

Hello, are there any plans for a reset-button for the GPU?

This is not possible due to some cuda bugs. I will try to find a workaround.

[Karba]

Im all for the demo aswell.... at least we can see the progress and see if its worth jumping ship for it. Exciting.

Demo version with watermarks will be available.

[Iskánder ivp87]

antonyebl not necesarily... I still work with 2015 and in a lot of places here are business running on 2014

[Sylk]

We're at least 3 to want that.

http://www.fstormrender.ru/forum/for...=5052#post5052

[Hubl]

Hello, are there any plans for a reset-button for the GPU?

[Syrom]

Im all for the demo aswell.... at least we can see the progress and see if its worth jumping ship for it. Exciting.

[Syrom]

Mitviz... i understand your viewpoint on maxwells UI. It took me a while to master it and once i did, I loved it. Its got a steep learning curve imo. Fstorms is very simple but its lacks a few things that would give you further control in a more managable way. Imho.

[Miguel1900]

Yes, a demo is absolutely necesary, but he confirmed at least that every final version will have its demo, including last added features too.

[mitviz]

its the best! consider paying vray license for a year then instead of fstorm and altus, way cheaper

[mitviz]

i really hope the ui does not get to the point where it look like maxwells, its abit confusing last time i checked, the best ui is the most simple and i think fstorm has that covered

[Syrom]

Nice work Karba. CONGRATS on all the work amd getting this far. I like many in here think its still to early to charge. Theres several factors that are preventing me from purchasing it at its current state. It should be more polished. Currently i am torn between Maxwell 4.0 and Fstorm. Maxwells UI is superb and real world, but its gpu on v4.0 is garbage. But its UI makes ul for it imo. If fstorm had a similar UI current stage, I would be all for it being released as a paid commercial. But its so early still. Im glad you will do a demo for us to play with and judge its price though.. thxs for that.

[PIXELFLUX]

Karba is definitely free to charge at whichever point he seems fit, as with any software developer. I was merely suggesting a model that worked well and ended up with a bang for the Corona team so much that they moved offices twice now, hired a whole bunch of people and their rendrerer is hard to fault. I've personally been using it on paid projects since Aplha 7.2, if I recall correctly and I do think the timed alphas worked well - they managed to get people to use the engine for a bit each time to get the bugs and feature requests out of the way while keeping themselves totally secured for v1 release day. FairSaaS works well too and the pricing is perfect for individual artists to not need to look for pirated versions (let's face it, how many people do you know with illegal versions of VRay, for example?).
The bar is pretty high with Corona and I really do like that there's choice. So far I'm digging FStorm and I'm in a market for a renderer that will use my machine to the max (I've got 4GPUs sitting in my box - 2x overclocked GTX 1080 and 2x Quadro M5000, with an overclocked i7-5960X at 4.5GHz and 64GB DDR4 for now) and FStorm looks like a really good renderer straight out-of-the-box, so to speak. Only three things that make me really struggle with my decision here:
1) FStorm has no physical units or render passes (yet)
2) No out-of-core, so large scenes will be out of the equation
3) Redshift renders perceivably faster and produces slightly more pleasing results in some scenarios I've used, even if it is a biased renderer (so is VRay and most others). And features out-of-core for large scenes.
I'll need to do some more testing to decide and this will also ultimately result in me pushing for a switch at work (I manage the machines and my boss gives me freedom over what tools I use for the jobs at hand), just wished I could try it with more "mainstream" features, even if it was a timed alpha for a month. But this will do, it's already looking very nice and I especially love the glare effect, I think FStorm nails the glares!
As always - no hard feelings. Andrey is the one converting coffee into code, so ultimately it's his brain-child to do as he pleases with

[antonyebl]

There 'will be' need to buy released version at some point, e.g. when max 2018 comes out etc...(unless Karba decides to (re)compile the free version for that too...)

Some valid points raised. Depends what 'market' one's after; for established workflows and pipelines a lack of perceivably essential features is a factor to consider...

Otherwise even with open-source projects folks are happy to support the developers (and pay for convenience/features they want to see developed).

[oguzbir]

@PIXELFLUX
Mate I really do see your point and appreciate it. Frankly it's not up to us to persuade the dev at any point.
What I meant was there are some other renderers out there that can start selling the software when they see fit.
I personally take it from the day it released its early alpha version and the time it took to its current state..
Having tested all others from day one. Fstorm really stands out.. Adaptive sampling is working great.. Only this needs a bigger applause..
Iray is owned by Nvidia. I mean nvidia! And it wasnt that good at start, init?. Dont have the license for the new versions. Redshift is good but frankly it's basicly a vray on boost runs on the gpu right?
Corona is super duper I know but it's cpu based. Since adding additional gpu increases the speed linearly I'll stick with gpu renderers for now. And Fstorm is the one I respect most.and I expect more from it. Why not let the developer earn some money to support him... if he adds more features there wont be a need to buy the released version

[PIXELFLUX]

I can't comment on Octane, but Corona before v1 already had proper 32BPC output, all the image output formats worked fine, all major render elements were there with even more custom ones added now (such as LithtMix), it used physical units for lights, custom VFB, etc. Even provided tools like scattering and custom shaders, as well as various material libraries to get you started (I appreciate it's not necessary for everyone, but when quality textures are on offer - count me in!).
Besides, without out-of-core rendering this is just another VRAM-limited renderer that's only good for products and simple interiors/exteriors, while with the stuff I have to do (houses, fully furnished inside and out with exteriors) I run into 30GB RAM territory. Not speaking for everyone here, of course, but for some of my work this engine would simply not work. And if a rendering engine isn't universal - it's NOT PRODUCTION-READY. So if I wanted something not production-ready - I might as well stick to Iray+, since I got a license from Nvidia anyway.
I'm not saying go all the way up to v1 and keep adding features for everyone to use indefinitely forever until v1 is reached - no, that's silly. Corona devs sorted it out by providing Alpha6 as free forever (much like this v0.3.8a) while further alphas were timed, meaning they no longer worked after a specific time the devs gave themselves to release the next alpha. If I remember correctly, the last alpha stopped working 30 days after the realease of v1, giving everyone enough time to buy the engine. And we did. So that having been said - it DOES make total sense to offer all the features in alphas (timed). Are you really gonna gamble with "new features" and bug-hunt with a paid version, especially on a commercial job? (not saying bugs don't happen, but if simple stuff is missing - why not add it in and let people test it?)
Please don't take my comments the wrong way, I'm not trying to be negative, but just telling you my personal experience with other renderers. I'm looking for something that is versatile and fast and runs on my GPUs no matter the scene/texture size. And so far only Redshift ticks all the boxes.