Hi Erich,
Hope all is well.
Thought I take the time to reply to most of your questions as a fellow Mac user as in the last 14 years,
and also as a creative professional that actually worked in the Industry as a creative director, graphic designer and 3d generalist. So we can put most of the things on a more objective level here. Let's address it one by one.
by ErichBoehm » Tue Dec 31, 2019 8:13 am
Bucket Rendering, and denoising don't work on a 2013 imac with the latest version of MacOS installed. Niether does OpenCL rendering. Gives me zero samples per second, and crashes when I try to disable it. Seems like Indigo isn't targeting Mac users?
* Tested it for you Bucket Rendering and denoising works flawlessly on my 2013 MacPro with the latest macOS installed.
OpenCL works faster than ever with single and dual GPU also.
** Tested it on my 2012 MacBook Pro also for you. Bucket Rendering and denoising works flawlessly on CPU.
However GPU rendering does not work for me either on that machine. It has an Intel HD graphics 1536 MB integrated GPU.I wouldn't expect it to do much...it's not powerful enough. But for prototyping CPU works reasonably fast for a dual core.
So as for your iMac 2013 it's an all in one, with a not much more powerful GPU than in my laptop. Just a bigger screen.
It won't work sorry.
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Seems like Indigo isn't targeting Mac users?
Quite the contrary! Indigo Renderer is at the moment the ONLY full featured unbiased renderer on macOS. With multi scalable GPU support commercially available. So much so that it is the fastest GPU renderer on macOS. ( And tbh maybe the fastest on CPU also )
Doesn't seem like a good move as almost the entire creative industry (at least here in the United States) heavily relies on Mac products.
Let me share my experience here with some facts from the last 14 years. The creative industry uses Mac products because of three things.
1 - Stability for Adobe Apps
2 - Time Machine
3 - Air Drop
4 - Convinient AF
Ofc more minuscule things also, but this are the features that are not available on windows. And it makes the pipeline and workflow of a mid range or bigger Studio much more effective. But that's it. Let me tell you that all of the Studios I worked in all had Mac's as the main computer for design and graphic or retouch related work. BUT in almost all Studios there was at least 2 custom built PC's with high end cards programmed as slaves to do the render job. If you seriously take a client that wants a 3D project done in reasonable time.
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I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Indigo is really great tool for simple scenes (actually using it to mockup some ideas for a client at the moment) and this is where it shines in my view. It's just that for serious professional (commercial work) work there are some areas where this tool is lacking. Think of the major differences between a professional Red camera and a consumer DSLR. What are some of the major differences that come to mind?
We definitely not taking it the wrong way. The major differences that come to mind is that a RED dragon is around 20K USD and an entry level DSLR is 1K. That translates directly to your setup, we giving you the lens of Indigo but you lack the body of the camera to use all of it's features. You won't get 8K raw video on a 1K DSLR.
When I compare Indigo to Photoshop, one of my most heavily used tools, it's that efficiency where Indigo falls short.
The statement answers your point it self but let me add my opinion on it. They are both very different applications both for different purposes comparing them even in terms of efficiency falls short. PS was designed for layers and manipulation of images, cuts, coloring, editing etc.. without an undo button the whole application would became illogic and unusable.
Look at Maxwell or other big commercial renderers. Vert powerful texturing features that deliver a great blend of power and ease of use.
I been a Maxwell user for years before I discovered and switched to Indigo, I'm not sure what you refer too being great in that. No pun intended it was much worse than Indigo's. I would not take that as a benchmark of anything. Other renderers yeah Arnold and Houdini handle textures very neat imo.
What about being able to export a PDF with the rendered version, wireframe, and other render passes in grid form for client review?
PDF is mostly used as a print format not sure it would make sense having that in a renderer. Like you said you have PS or Ai and you simply save it out from there. If you don't add anything to your render that indicates that it is need to be a PDF than you might as well send the JPG,TIFF,PNG format that Indigo already supports.
How about the ability to save and load camera settings, or better yet an autosave feature so if there is a power outage, you don't lose all your work?
You can already save/load all your camera settings in the 3D app you use. Indigo saves automatically in user set periods, please give a read to the user manual.
How about social media sharing options? I know this seems like a gimmick, but we live in a social media age, and platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc are powerful tools for promotion.
We let Maxwell steal that feature from us. : )
Color picker is a little dated too
You mean the material color meter? Think it's fairly good has all the numbers a designer would need to add exact color.
Speaking of colors, what about being able to create gradients instead of just solid colors for material properties?
You can create gradients it's 1 line of code in a shader. Please read the manual how to do it.
What about a color picker tool that let you sample color values?
You mean like the one comes built in with macOS?
How about lens presets for Hollywood's favorite lenses or even classic film lenses? Classic film simulation or even light leaks?
There is an application called Cinema4D. It has everything built in as a standard every classic lens there was and will be.
Even VR. Indigo supports VR btw.
I know this is a lot, but I hope it gives you an idea of how much exciting stuff Indigo could add that would make it the talk of the town :)
Nah it's cool, constructive feedback is always good. We have a fairly good imagination about exciting stuff to add.
Talk of the town is one of our goals for 2020 in a big right way. : ) yippiyayo
The render will restart, but when I select the material, it hasn't been changed. Indigo version 4.2.25.
This is the forum for Indigo Renderer 4.4.5 Erich. Assign material works fine tested it for you also.
You select a material that you want to replace an other material with ( aka new material ) and than hit the assign icon and simply click on the object, or part of the object in your scene that you want to update. And it changes the old material to the new one. Please take some time and read thru the product manual.
You should try it Indigo Renderer 4.4.5 is fire.