Cheetah 3D

[Jake]

TheAllusionist (our founder ) suggested I start a thread on Cheetah3D.

http://cheetah3d.com/

I have a few renders and worked with it for several years. It's a mac only program and is a pretty versatile little software for 99 US dollars. It has some great animation capabilities and accepts three types of HDRI's, spherical, cylindrical and probes.

It also has all the export options you would need including EPIX which allow it to play nicely with Piranesi.

http://www.informatix.co.uk/piranesi/index.shtml

For those not familiar with the EPIX format, it is a 2d file that retains it's 3d depth and materials info. When opened in Piranesi trees, people and other entourage will change size according to perspective depending on placement in the image. Very cool for quickly adding landscaping to archVis work.

These first images are still's illuminated with custom spherical HDRI's I made using a Kaiden Spherical head and Stitcher. The stitched image was was opened in CS2 and exported as a 32 bit radiance file and used to light the scenes.

The lamp image was model in SketchUp and imported into Cheetah and place in an HDrI I shot in a Chicago 2 flat. I matched the perspective of the lamp and table top with the hdri to create the illusion of one scene.

The Gehry Chairs were just an attempt at an abstract art piece.

The coffee scene is a collection of models by me and a few components form formfonts. The Bialetta pot courtesy of Michel at pushpullbar.

[Jake]

Here are three ArchVis shots done a couple years ago. All use HDRI's and a single distant light with post work in Piranesi. These are all just tests. I did not do a lot of post work to finalize the images.

[Jake]

Here are a couple images showing the rendring capabilities. Cheetah can give you real nice hard surfaces, especially chrome (sink image). The vase images was created in hexagon and imported into Cheetah and rendered using the same HDRI in the early lamp image. I think the glass works pretty well.

[Jake]

Here are some animations made using Cheetah and HDRI's. I think one or two use the apple h264 compression so that might be a problem for some.

http://www.designorg.com/openWeb/fred1.html

http://www.designorg.com/cheetah3D/broadHighH264.mov

http://www.designorg.com/openWeb/chairs.html

[TheAllusionist]

Hey those are real sweet, I didn't know Cheetah was capable of that type of output, thanks for sharing and enlightening me a bit. Nice of you to bive credit to the model authors as well. Very nice work and of course some of the credit must go to the artist!

[Jake]

Originally Posted by TheAllusionist

Hey those are real sweet, I didn't know Cheetah was capable of that type of output, thanks for sharing and enlightening me a bit. Nice of you to bive credit to the model authors as well. Very nice work and of course some of the credit must go to the artist!

I think there is some sort of stigma attached to software that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Cheetah has a lot of potential in the right hands. I kind of moved on a bit because I need better control over interior lighting, but I think you could develop a methodology that would work pretty even in interiors situations.

Here is one of the standard teapot test scenes I did with Cheetah. You can see the subtlety of lighting Cheetah3D capable of. Pretty good texture control too.

The developer has now included bones in the latest version so character animation is possible. I think this is more the direction he is heading because of popular demand. Seems archVis is always behind the door when the goodies are passed out in most softwares. I should say that Martin Wengenmayer, the developer of Cheetah, and I worked on getting an EPIX exporter written a about 8 months ago. Martin would do the coding and I would do the testing. With a little help from the folks at Informatix(Piranesi) we got a pretty good little EPIX exporter. I'll dig up some samples of what can be done with that and post them later. Martin is a really good person to work with and has put a lot of effort into Cheetah3D. Mac folks ought to have it in their tool box.

[Director Bob]

Thank’s Jake, That is some sweet work. I think it’s always good to have knowledge of other operating systems capabilities as well as available software.

[Jake]

Thanks Director Bob,

I tend to use Cheetah when I want a more artistic or illustrative approach. Here is shot from above of Falkestrasse by Coop Himmelblau. The model was done in SketchUp by Tim Danaher. I do not know how he did it because it's a real piece of work. Great model. Very talented fellow. Tim also writes software reviews for Architosh and some UK Mac publications. He just did a write-up about Modo at Architosh.

Tim's Site:
http://vizarch.blogspot.com/

Architosh Site:
http://architosh.com/

Tim and I were running Cheetah through it's paces a year ago with this model and I thought I'd try a more abstract approach while Tim was going for more realism.

[TheAllusionist]

So does Cheetah have an importer for SU or do you use 3DS or OBJ to get it in? Some great stuff, love seeing work in programs usually overlooked.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by TheAllusionist

So does Cheetah have an importer for SU or do you use 3DS or OBJ to get it in? Some great stuff, love seeing work in programs usually overlooked.

I generally use .3ds for Cheetah but occasionally use .obj and .fbx.

Cheetah has a cool function called a "smart folder". Store your .obj or .3ds in it and link it to the folder on your computer.When you load the Cheetah file the imported files in that folder are automatically updated. Saves some time.