Today I'm ranting about renderers and How I learned to stop fearing and Love the Kerky.
The university prefers Artlantis as its premier renderer. I admit, it isn't too shabby. It's definitely less imposing to new users compared to Kerkythea. I've used Kerkythea for five years now, and frankly, I haven't really tried any other renderers (mostly because they aren't exactly open-sourced). I'd like to try Thea and V-Ray someday though.
Here are some pros and cons. Completely subjective and I'm a bit biased like that.
Kerkythea Rendering System 2008 Echo
Pros:
- Extreme customizability. I can make pretty much any material in this thing. It's easy to use once you get the hang of it.
- Speed. Frankly, if you've kept your materials organized in the start of the project, it's extremely easy to change materials at a whim. Everything is listed in this handy dandy sidebar.
- A ton of rendering methods. This is where Kerky shines. You can choose the rendering method that suits your time and detailing needs. I'm not even sure what system Artlantis uses for all its renderings.
- Space for efficiency. Related to the above, it's really easy to make your renders more efficient. Turn off the extra lights and self-luminescent materials would save you hours of render time.
- Compatibility. Compatible with most 3D file formats. Shares this advantage with Artlantis.
- Open Source. I don't feel guilty about erasing watermarks anymore. But really, I'm a fan of freeware myself.
- Community. The forum that the Kerkythea team operates is a treasure trove of knowledge and libraries. You can get really useful advice here, download some globals or materials to help with your renders, and view work from anyone from around the world. There's a ton of knowledge here to read and to absorb, with a really nice and helpful community to back it up.
Cons. (I feel bad writing this)
- Render time. Kerky can take a long time to render. However, Kerky offers both Network Rendering and Multicore Processing Support. Multicore really saves time depending on how many cores are present in your PC.
- Navigation. As I might have said earlier, Kerky can be really annoying to navigate in sometimes, especially on a slow machine like mine (I have to switch to Pointcloud preview to kill lag). Zooming is also rather inaccurate (you need to use the Dolly tool), and you need to select a material/model as a "point" to rotate around, which can be problematic if that model is spread across the entirety of your model. Kerky could use a 2D navigator.
- Animations. Kerky doesn's support the kinds of animations that Artlantis can do. Basically Kerky can only create static flythroughs.
Artlantis Render Studio 4.0
Pros:
- User friendliness. It's simple enough to understand and use.
- Procedual Clouds. The feature I probably love most about Artlantis. You can generate clouds for the background using parameters in the Heliodon. Useful to keep your skies interesting (rather than having to import new globals every time in Kerky)
- Animations. Another lovely feature that Kerky needs. Artlantis can do basic animating, and has built in libraries for it (such as water fresnals and animated people). Also useful for things like time-lapse animations which I would like to try in the near future. Basically, I use Artlantis for this feature the most.
- Navigation. That 2D window is genius. It helps navigating so well, and even allows focal point and focal length change. It's easy to place your camera exactly where you want it.
- Radiosity. Artlantis makes everything nice bright and radiant. Really useful for outdoor shots.
Cons:
- Slow preview. I'm not sure why Kerky has to re-render the image in the preview. It's silly, resource intensive and there's no way I know that can turn it off. On faster machines it's probably nice to visualise the scene, but there really should be a way to turn it off before it makes mashed potatoes out of my processor.
- Render times. Render times in Artlantis is a bit tricky. The renders are wildly unpredictable at times. I'm not sure what rendering method Artlantis uses, but the render times can be incredibly long sometimes, especially for animations (it took 3 days the last time to render my animation). Funny story here, I didn't even finish rendering the animation for submission, I just compiled all the temporary image files Artlantis generated and compiled them manually. Submitted on time, so I'm cool with that.
- Lack of customizations. I guess it's a tradeoff for user friendliness. I hate how Artlantis manages shaders though, since it can be a bit tricky to make new shaders the way you want them to look, as opposed to Kerkythea. It's also tricky to mass-convert a shader to another one, since Artlantis tends to group things to layers.
- Proprietery. All my pictures have a giant watermark slapped to it. There's a workaround, yes, but you'd feel guilty doing it. Also it's a pain to get them off animations. I'm a starving student after all.
So there you have it.
I love my Kerky.
-Saunder
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