First thoughts...

[irradiancecache]

Hi Guys,

I honestly mean no disrespect by this as it cannot be an easy job to sit down and code a Render Engine…

But you really need to focus on getting higher level output visuals.

I was really excited when I heard about Bella, – on paper it sounded excellent – but I’m afraid when I looked at the gallery images, my heart sank.

Again, I mean no disrespect, but it’s like looking back 10 years or more.

You really need to up your game if you’re going to compete successfully in this industry…

It’s also very alarming that you don’t mention whether it is GPU, CPU or hybrid…

Also, I find it crazy that you didn’t include an .fbx or .obj importer into your Standalone App.

J

[Jeremy Hill]

Constructive criticism is always welcome. Your point about CPU/GPU is a good demonstration of why we are in public beta, and not yet selling. We have plans to allow referencing of external files, and I’ll be sure to clarify about CPU/GPU in the features page and also the FAQ.

[Oscar Cano]

Hi! Thank you very much for taking your time to give us your impressions. We really appreciate it!

At this stage, our gallery is mainly technical, we have focussed in showing different features in simple set ups to help appreciate the effects. That is why you can see very simple objects, but being simple, they show interesting features like complex caustics seen in specular materials, something not possible to be done in all renderers, nested dielectrics, thick lens, layered materials, dispersion, and so on.

But said so, and I couldn’t agree more with you, our gallery need a more artistic touch, and we know it, and this is why we explain that in the gallery forum:

We are coders, so although we try our best to create nice images, you may have noticed that we are not necessarily super-awesome at doing it. 🙂 And besides, it is really a better use of time for us to write code.

Therefore, we will be watching this forum, and will be offering a license at 50% discount, for each of the first 25 images we choose, provided the author agrees to let us use the image in our main website gallery, in marketing materials, and so forth. Naturally we will always properly attribute any work we are allowed to use.

So, as our gallery grows, we will differentiate between a technical gallery and other more artistic & production one.

Regarding your interest in CPU/GPU, Bella runs in CPU. Our first concern is producing a correct result, so we begin with CPU, but we have a strong background and long experience in GPU coding so Bella has been designed with GPU in mind. Is a matter of time we made the two architectures work.

Sorry for the inconvenience of not importing .fbx or .obj. Is in our roadmap to do that.

[Jeremy Hill]

@irradiancecache: I was out of town for the weekend, but I have now updated the features & FAQ to make it clear that Bella is currently CPU-only, thanks again for mentioning that.

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