www.kraytracing.com

Hi guys.

I'm really interested in buying Kray as it seems to be a great render engine for high quality (and fast !) visualization, especially in architecture.

I have 3 questions though i'd like to ask to the "big guys" here before i go and buy it.

The first one is about DoF : does Kray do "real" DoF ? (that means raytraced, with bokeh effects, etc, etc...)
And is it as good as LightWave's one ?

The second question is about instancing : does Kray support heavy instancing ? (like i have a "forest" of heavy trees i'd like to render, will it be able to do that ? As an example, with LightWave 64bit, it's starting to be hard with 40/50 trees each with 400/500 k polys...)

The third question is about mesh emitters : do they behave like "real" lights, that is with caustics, etc, etc ?

I hope it's a "YES" to every question, then i'd be set !
Thanks for reading.


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette

P.S. : i have a last question regarding Mac version of LightWave : will it work with Lightwave 64bit on Mac ? (which is still on OpenBeta right now...)

Tartiflette wrote:
The first one is about DoF : does Kray do "real" DoF ? (that means raytraced, with bokeh effects, etc, etc...)
And is it as good as LightWave's one ?

This is my opinion: Nobody use DoF directly from Engine renders (I mean prof.) it is too poor for control. Personaly I use always Z-buffer + DoF PRO. This is the best way and control and cos FAST.

Tartiflette wrote:The second question is about instancing : does Kray support heavy instancing ? (like i have a "forest" of heavy trees i'd like to render, will it be able to do that ? As an example, with LightWave 64bit, it's starting to be hard with 40/50 trees each with 400/500 k polys...)

Instance in Kray is most powerfull tool. Of coarse need update for better control...but managment of memmory is perfect.
10 billion poly on 8 Giga memory is no problem...ofcoarse You can more. Instance start VERY FAST in Kray. You can render forest

Tartiflette wrote:The third question is about mesh emitters : do they behave like "real" lights, that is with caustics, etc, etc ?

http://www.kraytracing.com/joomla/what-is-kray

Tartiflette wrote:P.S. : i have a last question regarding Mac version of LightWave : will it work with Lightwave 64bit on Mac ? (which is still on OpenBeta right now...)

I think yes. Wait for Jure answer about this.

I'm hijacking this thread a bit. Won't take long. But it might be just as relevant to Tartiflette as it is to me.
When is the buy page coming back?
I've been lurking around these pages for quite a while, and I'm unsure whether to invest in Kray or not, and I got loads more "yay" than "nay" on my list. But I'm also thinking about LW Core, so either one is going to be brought home asap, but can't afford it at the same time.

Tartiflette wrote:Hi guys.
The first one is about DoF : does Kray do "real" DoF ? (that means raytraced, with bokeh effects, etc, etc...)
And is it as good as LightWave's one ?

Yes. It's real DOF and yes it is good but then again I may be biased.

Tartiflette wrote:The second question is about instancing : does Kray support heavy instancing ? (like i have a "forest" of heavy trees i'd like to render, will it be able to do that ? As an example, with LightWave 64bit, it's starting to be hard with 40/50 trees each with 400/500 k polys...)

Yes.

Tartiflette wrote:The third question is about mesh emitters : do they behave like "real" lights, that is with caustics, etc, etc ?

Yes.

Tartiflette wrote:P.S. : i have a last question regarding Mac version of LightWave : will it work with Lightwave 64bit on Mac ? (which is still on OpenBeta right now...)

Yes.

olahaldor wrote:I'm hijacking this thread a bit. Won't take long. But it might be just as relevant to Tartiflette as it is to me.
When is the buy page coming back?
I've been lurking around these pages for quite a while, and I'm unsure whether to invest in Kray or not, and I got loads more "yay" than "nay" on my list. But I'm also thinking about LW Core, so either one is going to be brought home asap, but can't afford it at the same time.

Trust me, it's better if you get Kray now.

The shop should be back online in the next few days. Paypal has been giving us some problems but Grzegorz is dealing with it so check back in the next days.

Tartiflette wrote:P.S. : i have a last question regarding Mac version of LightWave : will it work with Lightwave 64bit on Mac ? (which is still on OpenBeta right now...)

Yes.[/quote]

This is not true right now because of an bug with the licensing system with Kray Mac 64bit.

jfk

Thanks guys for the quick (and detailed !) reply.

For Johny, i know DoF in post is way faster than doing it in render, but sometime there's no way you can do in post a "real" DoF effect in post because of limitations in the way the post DoF is calculated.

Not to mention that DoFpro isn't available on Mac, as well as a lot of DoF filters, which is a shame when you look at the way the PS integrated lens blur is rendering DoF...

For all of that, i NEED an integrated raytraced DoF in the render engine.
And for 300+ euros, i expect the render engine to have that possibility, Cinema4D AR3 being an exception, but that is another story !

But if Jure tells me Kray's DoF is as good as LightWave's one, i'm more than OK as LightWave's raytraced DoF is just great !
I'm more concerned about that licensing issue with LightWave 64bis Mac, as it's the one i'm using.
Any info on this ?


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette

Tartiflette wrote: I'm more concerned about that licensing issue with LightWave 64bis Mac, as it's the one i'm using.
Any info on this ?

Hi,

The licensing issue has now been resolved in a internal kray beta build. Hopefully a release is not too far away.

COVEMATT wrote:Hi,

The licensing issue has now been resolved in a internal kray beta build. Hopefully a release is not too far away.

Thanks for this information, extremly useful for me !
Now i just need to wait until the store is back online !


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette

Salut Laurent, je te conseille vivement Kray!!! C'est un moteur de rendu très puissant et qui boostera la quelité de ton travail quelqu'il soit!

khan973 wrote:Salut Laurent, je te conseille vivement Kray!!! C'est un moteur de rendu très puissant et qui boostera la quelité de ton travail quelqu'il soit!

Merci pour le conseil !

Oh yes, i'm really eager to have it in my hands and see what i can do out of it !


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette

jure wrote:The shop should be back online in the next few days. Paypal has been giving us some problems but Grzegorz is dealing with it so check back in the next days.

Any news regarding the store problem, as i will badly need to buy Kray quite quickly ?!!??
I hope it wont be long !


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette

How's the work on the shop going ?

olahaldor wrote:How's the work on the shop going ?

still waiting for the Paypal to resolve problem. Should be this week.

Yoohoo, today is a great day, as the Kraystore is back online and i was able to finally purchase it !
So now i can proudly say i'm a Kray customer !

... But unfortunately not a Kray user yet, as it seems the Kray actually available to customers has a problem with LW 64bit for Mac OS X...
It keeps asking me for my keys, even if i enter them again and again, and refuses to start a render !

Help !
I've read this bug was gone, so if you have any insight on what i could/should do, it'll be more than welcome.
The wait to use Kray is literally killing me !


Cheers,
Laurent aka Tartiflette