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Author Topic: Railclone for max 2018  (Read 5775 times)

FI6242

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Railclone for max 2018
« on: May 18, 2017, 07:55:29 AM »
When can we expect a new version for max 2018?

iToo

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2017, 08:36:05 AM »
In the next days we'll release a new beta of RailClone 3 with Max 2018 support.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

FI6242

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2017, 12:33:34 PM »
Cool we are waitig for it

FI6242

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2017, 12:06:33 PM »
any news about the beta for 2018?

iToo

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2017, 01:04:54 PM »
Not yet, sorry. We are having problems with one of the new features planned for next beta.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

iToo

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #5 on: May 26, 2017, 04:45:09 PM »
RailClone 3.0.3 beta with Max 2018 support is available.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

DBowker3D

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #6 on: May 26, 2017, 05:29:13 PM »
Many thanks for this! When can we expect support for Mental Ray BTW? Is that on the list for the general release (I hope)?

iToo

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #7 on: May 26, 2017, 09:33:56 PM »
Hi, please let me to copy my reply from other post (Forest Pro in this case):

Initially we are not going to support Mental Ray in Max 2018. We found several technical issues related with the fact that now is an optional package, and not included by default in Max.
These are not easy to solve, and taking in account that many customers are planning to migrate to other renderers, we considere this issue a low priority.


Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

DBowker3D

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #8 on: May 29, 2017, 06:38:11 AM »
OK, well obviously I can't really argue regarding the programing difficulty, integration or whatever, but honestly this answer (or the longer version for Forrest Pro) is pretty... I'm trying to think of a diplomatic way of saying it, but can't.  >:( You're basically saying that the product that we've been using and come to depend on has now lost a major compatibility component, and you're not in any hurry to fix it? Really?

So, no support for Mental Ray, because AD dropped it, yet Mental Ray for 2018 is already available and is slated to have even more development than it previously did. Students or newer users who may have been renderer agnostic can jump around to whatever they feel like, but many pros will be buying the MR Pro license and are already using the free version now. Why? Workflow and legacy file scenes for starters.

Have you considered the complexity on our end, where we may have hundreds of scenes, and thousands of objects built up over time utilizing Mental Ray exclusively? I have VRay and find it lacking in any number of areas, but again, that's not the biggest issue: long-time users of one system or another depend on the libraries they've built up over that time. You could tell me that Pixar was giving away Renderman for 3DS Max for free and I still would be switching outright. Maybe over the course of a couple of years, but in the meantime I have a lot of work to do. Clients don't care "how" it gets done, just what it looks like and how much it costs. There's no room for "Well, I know I did it that way before and for this much, but it's going take an extra couple weeks and cost and extra 25% because I need to switch my workflow over to... How well does anyone think that'll go over?

At the very least, you might want to survey your users before assuming that the majority of users either only using VRay or don't care what they use. Along with that, is there any workaround to use in a Mental Ray workflow. So far I've been building with Railclone in max 2017 and then collapsing the meshes for export to Max 2018. Obviously not ideal as instancing and many other features get sacrificed using this method.  :(

iToo

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #9 on: May 29, 2017, 09:50:31 AM »
Hi, i understand your situation and all customers who used Mental Ray for years, but we must have an overall view of the problem.

We did some time ago a survey between our users. The result about render engines popularity was: V-Ray 82%, Mental Ray 11%. Other similar surveys (as this from CGarchitect) give V-Ray 62%, MR 6%.
But with Max 2018 this position may change completely, now that Mental Ray is not longer the default render engine, and render nodes must be purchased separately.
We do not know what the impact may be, but for sure it will not be positive.

Said that, we don't discard to support Mental Ray in Max 2018 for next releases, but there are others problems to solve and our resources are limited.
Of course i appreciate your feedback, and the priority of this issue may change if we receive more requests from other customers.

Meanwhile, instead collapsing RC objects, we suggest to use RailClone Tools. This method is more efficient in render, because creates Max instances when possible.

Thanks for your understanding.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

DBowker3D

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Re: Railclone for max 2018
« Reply #10 on: May 30, 2017, 03:39:57 PM »
Thanks Carlos for your thoughtful response.
And also thanks regarding using the RailClone Tools to generate Max instances. To tell the truth I'd forgotten all about that and will definitely incorporate it into my workflow going forward.