Thea 1.4 is Released!!

A very impressive update to the very powerful Thea Render was released today. There’s also a promotional sale for anyone interested. As I said before, this renderer is very underrated.
http://theapresto.com/index.html

https://www.thearender.com/site/

Looks good. I was trying to figure out what the limiting factor in RAM or VRAM might be in the case of using both CPU and GPU. I would think that it would still be limited to the VRAM… am I right?

I’m not sure of the technical terms but as a user, I can tell you this renderer is lightning fast with very professional results. Worth every penny. You can work in either modes that uses CPU+GPU or CPU alone. Many ways to render with this. The possibilities are huge.

The developer of the Thea plug-in for Blender (which is free, btw) is continually making improvements and is super responsive to bug reports and suggestions.

It seems like most of the changes are enhancements to their more GPU-centric Presto engine, have they about maxed out what they wanted to do with Thea Standard or are any future enhancements waiting until Presto catches up?

maybe I should revisit the engine - I bought it.

The CPU is also very fast. All this time it’s been Presto catching up with the CPU options.

The engine is really interesting, but I have been not able to use it… I installed the plugin, downloaded the demo and the demo file and followed the intro tutorial… The image renders blank and when I try the IR I get a trackball error… using 2.72 vanilla. Guess I need to experiment a bit more…

EDIT: am I wrong or the demo is still the version 1.3.08? No 1.4 demo?

I do not understand the “hype” around the Thea Renderer.
The architecture renderings in their gallery do not convince me.
There must be a huge disadvantage, else they had better example renderings.

Kind regards
Alain

Dear Alain,

I do not see any hype created around Thea render. In fact Thea is the most underrated renderer available.
Thea is very robust render engine having baised, unbaised, cpu, gpu, cpu+gpu, interactive modes. Being a user myself,I can tell you that don’t judge the engine just by the gallery; download the demo and test it yourself.

I am sure sooner or latter Thea will get the place it deserves.

Looking forward to see your image in the Thea gallery.

I managed to make the renderer work… now if I use presto it renders, but once the render is finished I get a “script execution failed at line 3” and the render is not imported in blender.

@Bernardo I had a similar problem once. It was corrected by setting the output type to RGB instead of RGBA. Hope that works for you.

Why address this thread as “hype”? I posted as a user of the product not a salesman. So I can vouch for what can be done with it. You have to look at the user’s renders. Many professionals are cranking out some great works. Did you look at the Presto page in the first link? Try google “Thea renders” and look in the images mode.

that worked! Thanks a lot! :slight_smile: I am curious to play around with the engine

I do not understand why you flame it before testing it yourself.

What’s the difference between that plug-in and this one…?

It’s the same plugin made by the same developer who is always working to make it better. Thea is actually a standalone render engine that supports 3d file formats so you’re not restricted to use only the plugins. The blender plugin was always free. You just have to purchase the standalone studio to use it. Or you can play with the demo.

As a user myself, I can vouch that Thea is a great render engine and incredibly fast. For anyone interested in accessing a commercial engine I believe it has the best price/performance ratio out there. The only downside is that it’s far behind the likes of V-ray etc in terms of tutorials, documentation etc.

Also, while there are a small number of high end users, it’s true that the low price bracket has attracted a lot of hobbyists. This isn’t at all a bad thing but it means that you might have to search about a little for premium work, it does exist:) Check these out!! http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6183

I’ve attached one of my own Blender/Thea renders.


Is the plugin integrated in Blender (like Octane) or does it need an export process?

It is pretty well integrated and is improving periodically. Personally, I got so used to using Thea studio from the beginning that I still tend to export into it. Here’s an old demo, it has been improved since then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J8YV-KlDqQ#t=28