I guess it needs to be repeated. Wartech was shut down for a TOS violation not anything to do with his products or alleged copyright infringement. This is from the staff at Renderosity posted above and in the other thread.

What I take away from Renderosity's statements goes like this...

They (Renderosity) affirm that the models that Wartech was selling here are his own and do not infringe on anyother's copyright. At no point did they tell buyers to stop using the models from the seller.

This is very poignant in that they are aware of alleged copyright issues but have not directed buyers to take action.

So...as a commercial artist, I am going to use WarTech's models that I purchased in good faith with the understanding that Renderosity has now fully shouldered any liability from the use of those models.

If I am mistaken in Renderosity affirming that these models can be used they are free to contact me (hopefully soon as I have several pieces that are due to be sold) and clarify the situation.

From what I have heard he did not extract the meshes. That his models originally had higher poly counts than the game meshes.

Not really, he has modified them significantly.

My hope is that Renderosity, THQ, and the original artist can come to some agreement.

And yeah, I agree with you.

Well that just frickin blows chunky salsa!

The result is superb! The difuse shadows are astonishing, along with the specular highlights and the textures. A copy of that render is going into my inspiration art file!

You should honestly think about putting together some tutorials on how to accomplish such results, I for one would be an avid reader of such information!

Render times are going to be killer, even on my quad core (my average scene) takes about a minute to render.  At 30 frames per second (and I would think that you would actually by looking at 60 frames a second), you are talking about 30 minutes for one second of footage.

The cost of subing this work out to a professional render farm is HUGE! However...in your position I would look at what it takes to setup a beowulf cluster. The poor man version of a super computer/render farm. I have seen 50 node clusters that were put together (with a fair amount of dumpster diving) for less than $2000. The thing here, it isn't processor speed that matters nearly as much as the number of processors.

D|S does support multi-threading (i.e. multiple processors) but I am not certain that can be translated into a full scale beowulf cluster.

The other thing to think about is what video editor you are going to use. If you have any asperations to using a video camera down the road...matching the editing software with the video camera is important.

Deci6el,

That is an excellent piece of art! Exactly the type of ultra cool art that I want to do!!!

So...I can see the huge benefit that an fx program like Particle Illusion or Trapcode's Particular can provide.

Is the moral of the story...don't play with photoshop brushes when you can use fx programs?

Is there any benefit in even getting CS3???

Well beyond the fact that I can't seem to get Paint Shop Pro to deal with PSD layers. 8-(

John

Thanks for all the responses and welcoming me to the forums, I am glad to be here!

SouthBeachPhoto, I wish I could figure out how to convince Paint Shop Pro (I am using version 8) to play along with PSD (I don't know why I can't figure out).

Spedler, Particle Illusion looks pretty cool. Would you say that it is more user friendly than trying to add effects than using Photoshop brushes?

BTW...sorry it took me so long to reply, relatives are visiting and so I have been running around.

Thanks!

John

I rendered a piece in Daz Studio...6 spotlights...8 point lights...and around 40 objects...it took eight hours to render. As such, I think that a render farm would be very cool.

First question, is a render farm the same thing as a Beowulf cluster?
The reason I ask is because I am looking for information on the actual setup of the system.

So, I guess my next question is...Linux or Windows XP? 
Will Linux have the same tendency as Windows for database bloat?

Just initially I am thinking that Qube! would be a good que manager. Any thoughts?

Interesting suggestions...

jfbeute,

I like the idea of the render farm...a lot. I had not even thought of that as an option. When I think of render farms I always had linked them to animation, which is something that I am not really interested in.

Thanks.

You too fpfrdn3. I appreciate the help. 8-)