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Frequently Asked Questions
General What is Realsoft 3D - a new version of Real 3D? Realsoft 3D is a completely new software. What are the main differences between Real3D and Realsoft 3D? RS3D introduces hundreds (if not thousands) of new features and a new advanced user interface. The main goal in RS3D development was to develope an extremely powerful 3D modeling, animation and rendering software which would also be easy to use. What is a recommended hardware configuration? On Windows platforms, Intel Pentium or better, 512 megabytes of RAM and 100 megabytes of free hard disk space for the software installation. In other words, the software does not set any special requirements for the computer. An OpenGL compatible 3D accelerator is highly recommended, because the software takes full advantage of it. All processors and processor cores are utilized as well. Does Realsoft 3D run on AMD based systems? Realsoft 3D is fully compatible with Athlon and other AMD processors. Which Platforms are supported? RS3D is ported to the following platforms/operating systems.
How much multithreading is there? RS3D takes full advantage of multithreading. Time consuming tasks such as rendering are executed by asynchronous threads. For example, the number of threads to be used for rendering photorealistic images can be freely defined by the user. Licensing Do you have a student license/pricing? Yes, the discount can be up to 75%. Can the student version be used in commercial productions? The student license can be used in commercial productions. Is the student version limited or cut down? No, the product and the upgrade prices from it are the same. If I buy the Windows version, how much does it cost to switch to the Linux version? The Linux license is included in the more expensive Windows license. Do you have a special discount for users of other 3D packages? Yes. A competitive upgrade from any other 3D software (worth 200 USD or more) costs 400 euros. Modeling Can RS3D vectorize an image? Yes. The result is a set of nurbs curves. Due to advanced simplification procedure applied, the generated curves consist of minimal number of control points needed to represent the detected outlines. Does RS3D export NURBS surfaces as true NURBS entities? Yes, if the file format in question supports NURBS surfaces. For example, Iges file format allows you to export/import NURBS models to/from Realsoft 3D. Does RS3D read IGES? There is a plugin product available at our webshop for reading IGES files.
Rendering Is OpenGL utilized for realtime viewing? Yes. Will Realsoft 3D render in the background? Yes. Does Realsoft 3D render radiosity and caustics? Caustics is included. Radiosity is not available, but another kind of illumination system that allows customizeable global illumination effects is included. Can distributed network renderering speed up rendering of still images? Yes. The system works with both still images and animations. I assume there is support for motion blur. How about deformation blur? RS3D supports physically correct motion blur with user definable quality. All animated objects get correctly blurred. Can metaballs be transparent? Does motion blur work for metaballs? Transparency, refraction factor or any other material property can be defined for metaballs. Motion blur works for metaballs. Does RS3D support anisotropic rendering? Yes. Specular illumination effects that depends on viewing direction vs. another geometry defined direction, such as direction of tiny hairs on velvet, or direction of grooves in a 'brushed' metal surface is piece of cake for the V4 rendering system. One can define such an effect with a couple of lines of VSL (Visual Shading Language). Furthermore, one can define anisotropic refraction, anisotropic reflection etc. Does 64 bits per channel mean that each R,G,B and A are represented as 16 bits integers? No. Each color component (or any other channel, such as alpha, distance, etc.) is represented as a 64 bit (double precision) floating point value. Does RS3D support dual-reflections? Yes. RS3D supports multi reflections/refractions i.e. each ray can be divided into any number of reflected and penetrating rays with user definable direction and intensity. Direction and intensity are material properties which can be defined using VSL (Visual Shading Language). I assume RS3D renderer subdivides NURBS surfaces to polygons for rendering? No. RS3D handles the surface evaluation on rendering time allowing you to render surfaces with quality corresponding to millions of polygons. The same is also true for Subdivision Surfaces. Animation Is it possible to map a single point to multiple skeletons (weighted multi mapping) ? Yes. An object or individual point can be mapped to any number of skeletons. Any object can act as a skeleton. Does RS3D support constant speed motion paths? Yes. The animation system of RS3D allows you to use any object as motion path with constant speed, automatic banking and many other options. For example, you can move an object along a nurbs mesh. Can I use say 5th order NURBS curves as animation paths for cameras? Yes. By using hi degree nurbs curves, one can achieve very smooth camera fly animations. Does skeletons support angle constraints? Yes. Constraints can be defined for all the three joint angles. 3rd party development How can I get the Developer Kit for RS3D? You can download it for free from this website. Is it possible to plug in your ray tracer to other applications? Yes. Any RS3D module, such as the photorealistic rendering engine can be plugged in to other applications. It is also possible to build completely new applications based on RS3D libraries.
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