Top Rated Thea Render Alternatives
Early in my 3D rendering career, I was a user of Kerkythea which is a free render engine. Then the same company who made Kerkythea announced Thea Render as a commercial product. Eventually I gave Thea a try and didn't look back. I love the speed and quality of the renders...mainly the speed. I also like the import and save options. For example, I can import a tree I made in Blender as an OBJ model, tweak the textures to look very realistic, then save the tree as a Thea library model that will be ready to render alone or dragged into any scene within Thea Studio. While using the Sketchup plugin, I also love the fact I can see my project rendered while still working on the 3D model or scene. I've tried other engines but I settled on Thea for the reasons I mentioned. I think Thea Render is a very underrated render engine that deserves a lot more attention because it's so awesome. And the price is not bad either compared to other high end render engines. I also love the community in the Thea Forums with active and very helpful fellow users and staff. The updates are also free with detailed change logs and previews. The staff is always sharing information and seem to really care about our feedback. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Lighting interior scenes have a steep learning curve but from what I see many artists do, great interior renders are very doable. I would like to see a beginner's lighting mode that works the same way Kerkythea does. Having said that, I like that it forces me to learn actual photography in order to use Thea effectively. I would also love to see better animation options. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
24 out of 25 Total Reviews for Thea Render
Thea Render is both easy to use and powerful, allowing you to produce high-quality images with just a few adjustments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Many asset companies do not sell 3D models in Thea format. To address this, you can render FBX and OBJ files in SketchUp using the Thea Browser. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Quality and performance are two major pros of this software. Thea Render can be used in synergy with modeling app and as a standalone studio what gives more flexibility working on different modeling apps and merging all pieces together inside studio without any effort. Output of Thea most of the time is good enough to send images to client without taking extra time for post production. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Since some time development of Thea is very slow and there's not much information provided when and what will be improved. General UI needs improvements there are lots of small things to change which could improve using this software. Presto Engine should finally support procedural noises and also there could be direct connection between Substance suite and Thea material system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Simply put, I like the speed - Thea has a variety of excellent render methods, and they are all capable of creating a very clean realistic render, but for me Presto AO or MC is the way to go when I'm on deadline with a demanding client. The speed of Presto allows me to show clients more iterations in a shorter period of time that would have been possible with other render engines. This in turn reflects well on our little design shop and makes clients feel like they are getting the maximum bang for their rendering buck. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The advanced materials builder can be difficult and incomprehensible at first...to be fair there are tutorials that clear this up, but it should be more intuitive...
Some controls for things like texture scale are located in more than one place in the GUI, there should not be any redundancy - give me ONE place to control everything -related to a particular function...
"Undo" needs to work like every other program in the world and undo the last operation. Not just SOME operations.
If I alter the scale of a diffuse map, then the default behavior should be for Thea to also scale the related maps (bump, displace) accordingly, don't make me dig around under the "structure" tab and type in the same values...just update everything and if that isn't what I wanted THEN make me dig into the tabs..
Camera: Use the proper nomenclature for the camera functions - Film Height and Focal length mean different things to "REAL" photographers...if Theas terminology matched actual photography terms it would be easier to learn the differences between Thea funtionality and "real" camera functionality.
I should be able to animate a lights movement, and also its on/off/intensity status simultaneously.
(Think of the strobes on an approaching aircraft...moving AND turning on and off)
3D Micrografix could do this in 1998.
Rotating the global environment should be simpler and more intuitive.
When using the "manual sun" setting, give me a "nudge" control that moves the sun a tiny amount, allow me to set the amount of each nudge... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
For architectural modeling and industrial design I am using Rhinoceros and 3dsMax, adapting according to the characteristics of these two packages. Operational workflow has led me to use other 3D modelers (such as SolidWorks and SpaceClaim) but Rhinoceros has remained the primary software which, I believe, is the ultimate stage for concept design. I have used V-Ray since its birth but with the advent of unbiased rendering engines (Maxwell, Fryrender) I adapted my working approach to take advantage of the characteristics of this new way of "visualization".With the introduction of Thea Render, with its multiple render approach (unbiased and biased), I have further changed my way of work, because, I think, Thea has a unique way to operate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Nothing in particular, If not more support from some of the features of the 3d software I use. But I am aware that the development team is working to do this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
After trying many render engines I set on Thea for many reasons, the best of them is:
1. uncompromising photo real quality. looks just as good as Vray and many other at a less price and allot less time spend on settings.
2. fast settings, just aim and hit render - its already amazing.
3. super fast!
4. easy proxy support for sketchup (including skatter) - allowing for great renders with low impact to memory.
4. great community and support, busting forum with many resources shared. helpful staff, never had a support post unanswered within hours! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
to be honest? there is absolutely nothing to dislike while using it in Sketchup.
unfortunately I started working in Revit and there is no version for revit and as of late for 3ds max as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I like Thea's all features especially the BSD method as it is the quickes and provides reasonable quality in reasonable time compared with other unbiased method or even render engine like Maxwell. I like BSD because gives the same quality as vray provided years ago. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Many features are only supported for unbiased engines such as Lighting, and Colimo. The development team should focus on more integrity for BSD as it is the most reasonable for demanding pictures under tight deadlines. Talking about architecture or interior design. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Thea Render's Presto engine with relight is quick and network rendering offers settings that make rendering a pleasure. Relight gives more control over lighting for impact. Having the software and using it is one thing. Having the resources of the people behind this renderer makes one feel a part of the community... a great value. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Some of the new features, like fog, still have some tweaks to be made. But, as the new feature is developed those kinks will be worked out. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The immediacy of the feedback, as I can now design in Sketchup and render on the go. Although I'm in the archviz field since 2004 I still don't like to model in 3dsMax in favor of Sketchup and was looking for an alternative to Vray as exporting the model to 3dsmax only for rendering was a huge waste of time.
Thea for Sketchup has become an indispensable tool in my workflow, and I love the friendliness of the community in the official forum, and I am looking forward to contribute to improve the Thea experience for all of us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
1. the lack of news from the devs since the soft is in the hands of Altair.
2. to have to convert all my Vray/max library to be able to use it under Thea workflow.
3. the thea tool's material converter under 3dsmax is really missing some key features, as I spend most of the time removing falloffs, blends, 2sided material, mix, procedural noises, vraynormals, etc. although it could be done automatically if developpers took the time to improve their converter. Since we have fresnel ramp in Presto now I really think we could get an automated conversion of all the falloffs in Vray materials.
4. Noise affair: I feel Thea should align with concurrents and fix the noise in interior renders (when the artificial lighting is more proeminent than sun&sky) or at least propose a denoiser render pass.
5. more tweaking of HDR input and output. the handling of the HDR material is a must-have nowadays and we need more parameters. The tonemapping alone should be taken more seriously as it's a waste of time to be dependent on ArionFX or Luminance HDR to handle the HDR output.
6. I'd like to have a material file format that embeds the texture files as a zip/rar/7zip
7. the thea browser that doesn't sort the files from networked places is annoying, just as the fact that cases matter (A-a shouldn't matter when sorting alphabetically)
8. the network render node (Thea client) keeps it RAM footprint even though the render session is finished.
9. the material editor could be improved a lot.
10. I don't like Thea studio's interface. at all. It's buggy and redundant. I avoid it most of the time.
In general, I have written all my thought here: http://thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=19136 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
For the work we do, I really need an engine that stays within SketchUp (no messy exporting), that way we can continue to work on our design and generate graphics for client approval throughout the process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Not a whole lot I dislike about Thea. It would be great if it handled displacement a bit easier, like I have seen in Max. It would also be nice to see more assets offered from modeling companies (trees, people, etc.) already setup at proxies. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Fast interactive rendering, incredible amount of geometry, CPU+GPU rendering, a simple but effective material system and the deepest integration with Sketchup, make this one of the most important tools to help me design and sell my projects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I'd like it to have more procedural features, dirt, bevels and randomizing options for both materials and proxy systems. I'd also love to have an even stronger integration with Allegorythmic's Substance tools. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
