Rhino

[blewett_john]

Hello All,

I've been playing with the Rhino demo. Before I commit to buy the software I was wondering if any of you can answer the following questions:

1) Can Rhino be used as a stand alone design product, provided plug-ins such as Phaser are installed? Or, do you need something like Fastyacht to do a design. Or, is Fastyacht just a "nice-to-have"?

2) Is Flamingo needed to make a good rendering?

3) Are the tutorial CDs worth the $79?

4) Any pointers, lessons-learned, or advice about Rhino?

Thanks,
John B.
Huges Cruising Cat 42

[DavidG]

I would be interested in answers to this one, also does anyone have experience of other rendering packages, I understand that Paintshop Pro and maybe Photoshop can render .iges files.

I use Autoship, and would really like to produce nice rendered images as you see in the magazines!

David

[Jeff]

I understand that Paintshop Pro and maybe Photoshop can render .iges files.

This I have not heard before and I don't believe it to be true. Maybe "shade" but I don't see how either of these 2D photo programs provide 3D lighting (e.g. raytracing), shadows, camera angles, material scale and positioning around 3d elements, etc. for a realistic 3D rendering. Maybe if you are skilled enough you can simply 'paint' a shaded view into a rendering, but I'm highly skeptical.

[Jeff]

Is Flamingo needed to make a good rendering?

The only real way to find out is to download a Rhino demo version and a Flamingo demo version and try it for yourself with and without. It's hard to say how good is good enough (is a nicely shaded render ok, or do you need more realistic materials, better raytracing, etc?). If you can afford it, it's probably worth having. One of my favorite things about McNeel software is that they provide fully functional demonstration versions downloadable from their web site so you really can try it before purchasing - no surprises. It's so much better to have a functional demo than a product brochure or cd which simply shows you a generic software walkthru but doesn't let you try it for yourself. Things I like (from trying the demo of Flamingo) are it's tight integration with Rhino vs. having to export/import into another program, easy materials and easy rendering. I think 3D Studio Max provides better camera and lighting control and possibly more dramatic renders, but Flamingo is easier with materials and saves the step of export/import (which is time consuming if you make a lot of changes). I still like the easy water and sky rendering which Bryce provides, but I find it nearly impossible to render the actual boat/object in question in Bryce because it doesn't offer enough control or precision for me, but the skies and water are unmatched.

[Polarity]

the one problem I have with rendering in Rhino is that you need to split the surface to have it two different colours and create 2 offset surfaces if you want it a different colour inside...
Check out the McNeel Penguin renderer - its really interesting!
Personally I love Rhino because it is so easy to learn and use - but I don't use it professionally so I can not comment on that aspect. The images in my gallery were done after a couple of months with Rhino having started at completely zero (ie never used any type of CAD package at all).
Lets face it for the money, what else comes close?

[blewett_john]

Hello Polarity,

Where is your gallery? May I have a peak?

All these responses concern rendering. My question is: can I start with a blank Rhino screen and end up with a boat design? I ask you since you say you started from a blank.

Thanks,
John B.

[Jeff]

Take a look at these images esp. the bottom two rows - pretty nice I think (the lines are from the evaluation vesion)

[Jeff]

Oh and I forgot to say welcome to our forums John!

[Jeff]

1) Can Rhino be used as a stand alone design product, provided plug-ins such as Phaser are installed? Or, do you need something like Fastyacht to do a design. Or, is Fastyacht just a "nice-to- have"?

Personally I find many of the marine-design programs easier to get started with and faster (at least for me at this point) to work in than Rhino for hull design. Then again, I haven't spent much time in Rhino, and I'm willing to bet that once you spend a couple hundred hours with it, things seem much more intuitive, so I'll let someone else answer that question. Rhino is a great program - I just haven't had the time to put aside to get comfortable working in it yet.

[Polarity]

Hi John

The ketch Polarity 2 here was made from a set of plans that I bought from Ted Brewer - there were no CAD files so I started with a scan, The entire reason for putting the drawings into CAD was to be able to make up the interior.
For the hull - I put the station lines in the background, traced over them, spaced them out, hit "loft" - shazam ! instant hull. The transom was done with the aid of the "construct curve from 2 views" option. All this took a lot longer to learn than to do. I suspect that the 79$ would have saved me a LOT of time! - but since I was starting from zero ( see this thread to understand how little I knew - the "expert" I mention there did not turn out so well and I ended up re doing 95% of his work.) I was not familiar with any of the terminology. I did find the Rhino tutorial very helpfull though. then I got carried away and did the whole boat - right down to the clevis pin on the bowsprit...

The Polarity Solo-1 open 50 was just an idea I thought up and drew from scratch here This was all done in Rhino - but its a hard chine hull.

The option one sketches are definitive proof that I should stick to sailing!

It's interesting to note in the Poll above that until 6 months ago Rhino was nowhere.

I suspect that the answer to 1) is yes, you can but it might not be the best way to go - depending on your budget. Once you have the hull though I would think Rhino will be a good solution for the rest. Prosurf might work well for the hull for you - then hit Rhino or your mouse finger will never forgive you!

Hope that helps

Paul

PS one other thing about Rhino is that it will run on your Average computer - no liquid cooled CPU required!

[duluthboats]

Hi John,

Welcome aboard, I hope this will be of some help. Having just made this decision I’d be happy to answer any questions you have.

After a long search I decided on Rhino for my design work. I’m not a NA or ME, I have some experience with Auto-Cad and use high end Cam software on a daily basis. I have tried most of the Cad software on the market today. Last year I bought TubroCad V8 Pro. This is 3D Cad that is amazing in what it will do for the price. I had a difficult time drawing with it. It crashed when I made stupid mistakes. (often) It will not unwrap a developable surface. I bought it because of the price, not a good idea. The search went on. I played with ProSurf and Rhino for a while, and found they both are very good for my needs. ProSurf is faster for hull design and statistics without plug-ins. Rhino is a better 3D modeling tool and for me was easier to learn. But if you want numbers on your hull you will have to buy the plug-ins. It was hard to choose, I made my choice because Rhino draws similar to what I was use to. Learning to draw with 3D Cad can be very frustrating and is not easy. Whatever you choose the learning curve will be long. I’m still at it. I did buy the Marine tutorial and would recommend it if you go with Rhino. You need to learn the basics before you can start this tutorial. I will never learn to fully use all that Rhino has to offer. In spite of all my mistakes I have not been able to crash it. If you decided on Rhino look for the new release, it is coming soon.

Try as many as you can, find the one that works for you.

Gary

you can create renders like the magazines with rhino using bmrt and rhinoman takes time but you get really amazing results i been used it for a while and work just great

rhino its a great tool to work surfaces its easy, and very intuitive to use and have the right tools i higly recommend it, but.....its not a hull modeler like fastship, prolines or autoship etc..., you still can create any surface for a hull depending on your skills, but if i was you i will look foward to get a software for modeling the hull surface i use prosurf wich is a great tool and right in the budget i will really encourage you to look an option to have a hull surface modeler software becouse they will have integrated the hydrostatics and other tools that really makes hull surface modeling easyer.

i haven't seen the cd for marine design

Like kindly was pointed by the other replyers its very important for you to try the software and make a list of what you want to achive

i been working with rhino and i'm rellly satisfied with it and again if budget its in the way....i will recommend prosurf and rhino

good luck and please ask any question i know that the comunity its kind and redy to help good luck

any mor question about rhino feel free to ask

[Jeff]

Thanks very much for the post guest - can you tell me more about bmrt and rhinoman? (cost for example?) How about showing us something you have rendered using bmrt? Is it dramatically better or more difficult to use than Flamingo? 3D Studio MAX?

[blewett_john]

Thanks all for the help. It's looks like Prosurf with Rhino gets the most votes. If I remember right Prosurf is one of the more affordable softwares. Now all I have to do is convince the wife it is a good thing for me to spend $1000 so I can draw pictures of sailboats.

This might be a trickier question, do any of you have a sequence of pictures that shows the process you went through to get the end product? Word descriptions help but pictures are best.

Thanks again,
John B.

bmrt its a render engine that its included in rhino, wich is capable of raytracing and photorealistic renders, i discovered in the bmrt website that the software is no longer available free for download but rhino still supports bmrt, its takes some practice but a least you dont have to spend all this money on other software, i haven't tried flamingo, i have used or at least tried 3d studio and the truth is that for what i do and the images i have been able to obtain i will never consider to spend that much money for 3d studio, but...if i had the budget i will buy it not thinking twice, but going back to bmrt, i can draw the model in rhino and render the model in rhino with the help of rhinoman which is a great tool and free, what rhinoman does is to manage the material, shaders and other "things" for bmrt in order to render, rhinoman is a plug in that works whitout any problem inside rhino, still my guess is that maybe flamingo its faster to work with, but i haven't used it so i can't tell, if you want nice photorealistic renders of models, bmrt will do, but if you want "a walk through", i would suggest a software that can do that and find the time to do it, a"walk through" is a big waste of time if you have no purpose for it, if a client is willing to pay for it, that's okay!, or if you want to do it for kicks again its great, but for a project where is not required or the reason to create a model its minimum its such a great waste of time, beside 3d modeling takes time, but rendering.....maybe longer, again depending of what you are rendering and what are you using and how....and 3d studio its not so friendly to use from my point of view, and about models that i have done they are actually used in projects and i'm not priveleged to disclose that work.