If you can't beat em, use them as your back-end

[podperson]

If you can't beat em, use them as your back-end

How about improving Cheetah 3d's ability to interoperate with Blender.

1) Cheetah 3d's missing rendering features will probably never catch up with Blender's.

2) Blender's UI will almost certainly never be remotely as good as Cheetah 3d's.

So...

Use Blender's python-powered API to treat it as a privileged render plugin and get SSS, volumetrics, vector motion blur, toon shading, OpenCL-based stochastic rendering, and so forth "for free".

 

[GardenSpider]

How about improving Cheetah 3d's ability to interoperate with Blender.

1) Cheetah 3d's missing rendering features will probably never catch up with Blender's.

2) Blender's UI will almost certainly never be remotely as good as Cheetah 3d's.

So...

Use Blender's python-powered API to treat it as a privileged render plugin and get SSS, volumetrics, vector motion blur, toon shading, OpenCL-based stochastic rendering, and so forth "for free".

Awesome. And it would actually be for free because Blender is a free software. Genius!

-- GS.

 

[filip c]

Great idea!

There was a time that I hoped audio, (native) drivers, sss and volumetrics would be the next great feature included in every new release of cheetah. ( I still do:wink: ) I understand that these things are hard to implement (on a short notice, even for SuperMartin) and probably won't make it in one of the following releases, so the next best thing (in the meantime) would be allowing us to easilly combine some of blenders and cheetah's force.

Every time I try Blender, I quickly return to Cheetah, but one can't ignore Blenders features.

+1 from me too

 

[ZooHead]

How about improving Cheetah 3d's ability to interoperate with Blender.

1) Cheetah 3d's missing rendering features will probably never catch up with Blender's.

2) Blender's UI will almost certainly never be remotely as good as Cheetah 3d's.

So...

Use Blender's python-powered API to treat it as a privileged render plugin and get SSS, volumetrics, vector motion blur, toon shading, OpenCL-based stochastic rendering, and so forth "for free".

It's open source, so why not?


​

 

[GardenSpider]

Great idea!

There was a time that I hoped audio, (native) drivers, sss and volumetrics would be the next great feature included in every new release of cheetah. ( I still do:wink: ) I understand that these things are hard to implement (on a short notice, even for SuperMartin) and probably won't make it in one of the following releases, so the next best thing (in the meantime) would be allowing us to easilly combine some of blenders and cheetah's force.

Every time I try Blender, I quickly return to Cheetah, but one can't ignore Blenders features.

+1 from me too

Wow, native audio would be sweet! Just imagine the lip-synching you could do!

-- GS.

 

[novolume]

Personally if I were Martin it wouldn't be a route I would be looking to explore. I imagine that Blender is Cheetah's largest competitor - with those selecting Cheetah for its interface and ease of use. By opening the door to Blender you're essentially introducing your user base to it, those that use it for any part of their workflow are likely to become comfortable with it and eventually make a complete transition.

I'm not sure that it would bring any new users in but it would almost certainly lose some.

Martin may think differently to me, but that's my opinion.

 

[GardenSpider]

Personally if I were Martin it wouldn't be a route I would be looking to explore. I imagine that Blender is Cheetah's largest competitor - with those selecting Cheetah for its interface and ease of use. By opening the door to Blender you're essentially introducing your user base to it, those that use it for any part of their workflow are likely to become comfortable with it and eventually make a complete transition.

I'm not sure that it would bring any new users in but it would almost certainly lose some.

Martin may think differently to me, but that's my opinion.

I thought the point of this post was that Cheetah would use the strengths of Blender to support it's own weakness. Since it would have both great UI and render options, why would anyone choose Blender, which would then lose the advantage of render options?

-- GS.

 

[novolume]

I thought the point of this post was that Cheetah would use the strengths of Blender to support it's own weakness. Since it would have both great UI and render options, why would anyone choose Blender, which would then lose the advantage of render options?

-- GS.

Ask the users that have left Cheetah and migrated to Blender - there are quite a few.

 

[mykyl66]

I have not moved to Blender but I have certainly added it to my arsenal due to the limitations I have noticed within Cheetah 3d. However a lot of times I pull anything (Fluids, cell fracturing etc) back into cheetah for rendering as it is just faster to set up things within Cheetah.

If it was possible to grab some of those things automatically from Blender that would be fantastic. Remembering the keyboard shortcuts in Blender can be frustrating.

Mike

 

[GardenSpider]

Ask the users that have left Cheetah and migrated to Blender - there are quite a few.

But that means there's always been the danger of it. Why would integrating some of Blender's tools into Cheetah make more people jump over to Blender?

I don't use Blender because of it's awful User Interface, but would love to use it's powerful renderer for motion blur and other effects. Cheetah has great User Interface, but not a powerful renderer, so by combining Blender's render engine with Cheetah you have an even better app. Not really sure what your point is about more people switching over to Blender. :|

-- GS.

 

[podperson]

Ask the users that have left Cheetah and migrated to Blender - there are quite a few.

It's more tempting to move to Blender if simply using it for renders is so painful. I'm suggesting a ju jitsu move — instead of trying to compete with blender, turn it into a complement.

 

[novolume]

It's more tempting to move to Blender if simply using it for renders is so painful. I'm suggesting a ju jitsu move — instead of trying to compete with blender, turn it into a complement.

Yeah I understand what you're getting at and the reasons behind it, personally it's not something I would do but it's not my software!

 

[filip c]

Now if I want some of the features Cheetah hasn't yet, I already "have to" turn to other software...
I would think that the risk of me moving to other software is now greater than when I only need blender for rendering...

 

[Martin]

That probably won't happen. I have all these features on my todo list for Cheetah3D and they will be added for sure. Some of them are actually already under development. Working on such a workflow would just delay these features even more.

Bye
Martin

 

[novolume]

Not really sure what your point is about more people switching over to Blender. :|

-- GS.

My point is that I personally don't think essentially admitting defeat on certain features and pointing your users towards what is probably your largest competitor makes good business sense.

 

[podperson]

My point is that I personally don't think essentially admitting defeat on certain features and pointing your users towards what is probably your largest competitor makes good business sense.

That's the wrong way to think about it. Think of it as focusing on what makes your product great and not trying to be all things to all people.

Blender now has a powerful integrated toon shader and a very impressive GPU accelerated physically-based renderer in addition to its original decent renderer, and all of it integrates with its node-based compositor. I don't see this stuff appearing in C3D any time soon and why should it?

Build a clean pipeline to Blender as renderer and features essentially get added to C3D while Martin sleeps.

Usability is one area where C3D can clearly compete with the big boys, and interoperability is usability.

 

[novolume]

That's the wrong way to think about it. Think of it as focusing on what makes your product great and not trying to be all things to all people.

Blender now has a powerful integrated toon shader and a very impressive GPU accelerated physically-based renderer in addition to its original decent renderer, and all of it integrates with its node-based compositor. I don't see this stuff appearing in C3D any time soon and why should it?

Build a clean pipeline to Blender as renderer and features essentially get added to C3D while Martin sleeps.

Usability is one area where C3D can clearly compete with the big boys, and interoperability is usability.

We'll have to agree to differ on this one. Ultimately it doesn't matter what I think anyway - it all comes down to how Martin sees Cheetah developing.

 

[podperson]

Seems pretty clear that Martin isn't inclined to take this approach. I understand but I think it's going to lose users in the long run.

When folks model in zbrush and render in maya, they still post to zbrush forums and zbrush still gets credit. Seeing maya as "the enemy" because zbrush has its own rendering engine would be silly.

The problem here is that Martin loves his renderer — it's a lovely renderer and it was good long before the rest of C3D caught up — very much and sees it as the core of the product. I think it's actually a weakness, and C3D might be a stronger product if it had no renderer at all but simply fired off rendering jobs to Blender or Luxrender or Indigo or whatever.

 

[GardenSpider]

Seems pretty clear that Martin isn't inclined to take this approach. I understand but I think it's going to lose users in the long run.

When folks model in zbrush and render in maya, they still post to zbrush forums and zbrush still gets credit. Seeing maya as "the enemy" because zbrush has its own rendering engine would be silly.

The problem here is that Martin loves his renderer — it's a lovely renderer and it was good long before the rest of C3D caught up — very much and sees it as the core of the product. I think it's actually a weakness, and C3D might be a stronger product if it had no renderer at all but simply fired off rendering jobs to Blender or Luxrender or Indigo or whatever.

I'm not sure it's a weakness, it certainly gives Cheetah an advantage over Google SketchUp. (Though it has many advantages over Google SketchUp so that may be a bad comparison).

-- GS.

 

[rekh]

Okay, I'm a total newb. You guys are vets so I say this with total deference.

Why can't we just 'borrow' from other software and incorporate into C3D? I hate jumping from app to app. Sucks. Yes, I know, sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. But still.

I did a little playing around. I added the freestyle menu from Blender onto one of the property menus; as it relates to the toon function...