Adobe Dimension

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  • Ranger

    Has anyone used this? I've been playing around with it this morning and it looks pretty decent but it is really killing my machine.

    I'm currently trying to render a simple scene (one of their background images, a box with a decal place on it), currently 30 mins into a render and nothing seemingly progressing, fans going like mad. It's a brand new, fully specced out iMac so I would've thought it should be able to handle something like this.

    I was thinking of getting a subscription to LiveSurface Context to help speed up client visuals and pitch stuff. This morning I see this app doing the same thing included with CC so would be good to know how others are getting on with it.

  • face_melter1

    This is what they called Project Felix? I tried a demo of it a while ago.

    From what I remember it uses a version of Vray for the engine which primarily uses CPU grunt, so (from experience) using an iMac for rendering is a bad, bad, scene - it goes to 100% from the start and the fans will kick in no matter what the spec.

    It also uses Vray RT which is their progressive renderer - it builds the image gradually rather than calculating the passes individually. So after a while you start to get diminishing returns in terms of render time against image quality. In theory you can leave it to render until the heat death of the universe and there will *still* be noise in the render.

    It's an interesting idea, but it seems that it hasn't progressed from when I tried it. Typical Adobe, to honest - their attempts at 3D have always been fucking woeful. I know why they use RT - you can get a workable image within minutes - but the trade-off is a serious drop in quality. RT renders with minimal GI calculation. It seems to be tilting more towards quick prototyping than any kind of serious production quality image.

    If you can work around it, it may prove to be useful but a dedicated 3D/render workflow will kick its arse every single time.

    • Wait. The noise can be mitigated somewhat using the denoiser pass - does Dimension have that? I can't recall.face_melter
  • CyBrainX0

    I had to look this up. I thought it was a joke about Adobe Dimensions from the 20th century.

  • mugwart1

    Oh fuck no .... Adobe entering into 3d realm ....

    Even without seeing/knowing anything about this software. I can see this failing. Adobe is one of the most closed off and rigid softwares out there.

    3d is a platform with very demanding real time requirements. It needs to be open, codable, expandable and hackable. Run on every platform and connect to anything.

    I've had to deal with the horror of colour management and how closed off it is for some pipeline issues and it was nothing sort of hell.

    I'm jaded, I loved Flash but it was so closed off it lead to its own downfall. Shit had it been able to compile with any language it would have had change to own the software market.

    3D requires opensource ... Adobe is heavily against this. Hope this falls on their fucking face ;-) I'm so bitter!

    • that is the first and last time I dont reaseach anything before I rant!mugwart
    • this is worse than I though!! its horrible -- think they can take on lightwave/cinema4d/ modo with this...mugwart
    • there is a steep learning curve with 3d ... its because its fucking hard and complex!mugwart
    • I think it is only being put out there as a quick route to visuals for branding projects.Ranger
    • ^ your last point for sure. they're not trying to compete with the playersGnash
    • they're offering 3D scenes in Adode stock to make it even easier for noobsGnash
    • The vector output from the older versions of Dimensions back in 2002 were actually really good. Seems a lot of people are having issues with the new one.PhanLo
    • these comments make it worse ;-)mugwart
  • _niko0

    anybody using this? I'm trying to create a simple teddy bear head but just want to view and export the wireframe/polygon view but it doesn't look like it's possible, I'm thinking maybe I need to create a material and fake the wireframe look?

    or abandon it all together and use a proper 3D program but Dimension is part of my subscription so I thought I'd give it a shot

    • ppl i know using it are downloading 3d shit from the stock library and using that to spice up things. mostly for cheap but good looking at the presentation shitsted
  • _me_0

    its fine for mockup stills of basic 3D extruded text or logos... i've achieved semi-decent results using a insitu photograph as the environment lighting for example.

    but yeah - its slow, clunky and will make your machine fry while rendering....

    you may wanna import the OBJ into Photoshop and try that... ?

  • evilpeacock1

    You might be better off using the "light" version of Cinema 4D that is bundled with After Effects. Steeper learning curve, but C4D is a much more powerful piece of software.

    Once you get over the learning hump you can have go-to lighting/scene templates that do pretty much the same thing as this new Dimension, but with way more flexibility.

  • face_melter1

    ^

    What peaCOCK said. Dimension is a renderer, first and foremost, and a mediocre one at that. Designed to import models rather than any type of modelling. I tried it again just recently out of morbid curiosity and it hasn't gone any further forward since my last comments three years ago. Biscuit-brained interface and a sub-par image quality especially with glossy and specular.

    If you want a wireframe effect, Cinema4D has a wireframe / sketch shader as standard and produces great effects with some tweaking. The path is longer but the results are more rewarding.

    • I think everything has a wireframe/sketch shader at this point.formed
  • shapesalad1

    Blender... it's free and over the next few releases will surpass C4D.