How fast do you upgrade your software for architectural visualization?
With the release of Blender 3D 2.50 in October of this year, a lot of users are willing to migrate immediately to the new interface and tools of the software. Most of the excitement is based on the new interface and tools designed to make Blender even more powerful and easy to use. The question I'm asking here is how fast do you upgrade and how often? In architectural visualization projects we have to be careful about the software version we use to produce our renderings, because the projects don't end when the images are delivered to the client.
From time to time, the client may require you to make changes in the project. For instance, last week an old client requests a small change in a project. The change was pretty simple and all I have to do was to replace a few pieces of furniture and render the images again. This project was created two years ago and I did the modeling and rendering of everything in Blender 2.43 and rendered in YafaRay 0.0.9.
Since I have all those tools in a backup with the project files, it's quite easy to open the file and change the model. If I didn't had those tools in a backup the project I would have to setup everything again in YafaRay, which is quite different from the old renderer. My point here is that we have to evaluate well when it's time to change the workflow, and ensure that old projects won't be harmed by the upgrade.
This is one of the reasons that make me still use the old YafRay or even Indigo, when it was a freeware renderer. I know a few artists and architectural visualization studios that still use outdated versions of 3ds Max, V-Ray and other tools. They have an entire workflow based on old versions with a huge amount of projects being updated in a regular basis, which don't justify the upgrade that would demand an upgrade on the hardware as well.
How about you? Do you upgrade your workflow by the time new software is released? Or wait for a while to change?
I usually upgrade when the software house implements a function I have been really missing in the version I own. Now I do not have in mind a practical example, but this is my general behaviour.
In this and in the post before, you have pasted an image made with 3D Max and V-Ray as a “header” of the post.
I think it would be better to use images made with Blender; for example this cool interiors by cyberlecs:
http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2487
Or this abstract (but inspiring) exteriors by Xelptic:
http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2178
By the way, I think is better to upgrade as soon as you can. Most of times it´s really not so difficult to upgrade an old project.
Cheers!
Hi r2,
I would love to use those images, but I don’t have permission from the authors. Those images I pick are CC.
In future articles I will try to get in contact with the authors, to get permission to use their images.
Regards
as for me I usually upgrade only stable program releases, so i haven’t faced any problems with my projects yet, however, most often i use blender just to discover 3D space of some building.