[Evalric]

Final Render for cinema is a very buggy piece of software, which should be defined in terms of beta versus it being on sale. I have used (or tried to use) Final Render for now over 4 weeks, and the experience has not been a pleasant one.
What is wrong with it you say? Well not to sound bitter let me talk about the very good, what a very nice render it is and almost as good as Maxwell but much faster, and i must say i was very exited when i first saw the speed and the quality, my potential architetural dreams went over the moon, and thats where they have stayed and on the darkest side at that.

But lets keep on the positive before the due bashing. Easier to set up than Maxwell, and with a very good Cinema feel and integration, you are quicly on your way, blazering render on a simple low poligon Architectural scene (that before i discorved all the droped geometry which worked fine with cinema)

Yes i was over the moon, and i thought architectural animations here i come! Stills with Maxwell and beautiful animations with FR2. HAHAHAHA!!!!

Okay now the reality check. Numerous crushes, dropped geometry, animation flickering, physical sky, which does not work and only gives a shity grey Dahhhhh?!!??! White screens, black screens, droped frames, AND THE LIST GOES ON and ON! Black patches because it does not like the geometry, and all on the same scenes that cinema did effortlessly if longer. Hallo Moron attack?!?!!?

And what about setting it up of Final Render, A NIGHTMARE you have to be a rocket scientist. Has anyone heard about IP clamp?? You will after you have battled your way through the instalation. A bitch to set up, you have to be a real tech head to make sence of it AND I AM NOT! And when final Render is set up it is physically locked to your computer, meaning if your mother board fries, dies or what ever, you have to rebuy Final Render 2 or convince Cebas that has truly died (And how do you do that? or how do you upgrade your machine?) and maybe they will give you an other, no I am not kidding! What a sick joke!

So if you happen to be on the move like i am, you cannot take it with you unless you put it on a lap top. But you can share it on a network, like most Cinema users work on large networks DAHAHAAH?!?!?!
(And it is also tempermental on network rendering crushing for no apparent reason).
Okay so the solution is to get in touch with cebas, who at first were nice (cause i rang them direct from Australia because i could not install IP clamp properly, after that I sent a couple of urgent emails to Cebas re my problems who never responded. I then went on their forum where some great poeple took their precious working time to help me through some of the problems that i had and thank you so much to them. AND IT SHOULD NOT BE THE WAY CEBAS SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!

But when i started reading the forum closely, i realised that i was not the only one, and most importantly most of my problems were bugs, and it seems that Cebas is doing little if northing to fix these bugs even after 9 months Final Render 2 for Cinema has been on the market, and as one user said “it seems that cebas is using cinema 4D users as their beta testers for Maya” while an other recommented “Ho my Cebas really is taking a bashing on the forum”. While 3DS Max users have been waiting an eternity for their update of stage 1 and just got it FRIGHTENING!

So for US $700 you would expect much better.

Yes there is no doubt that Final Render 2 is potentially a great renderer that cinema 4D truly needs, but not the US $700 beta version that they presently using to solution starved Cinema 4D users.

I dared to call Final Render “shity, a retard and needed an update urgently” on the Cebas forum, and Cebas’s responce was not to get in touch with me to see if we could rectify the problem. Their responce was to bar me from the forum, which is the only tech support they offer (an other large complaint from the forum users). I sent them an email at in at info@cebas.com and it bounce back, please read message below:
“Hi. This is the qmail-send program at cebasserver.de.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

Does this make you reassured after aving spent $US 700?

On the other hand, i get a 24 hour turn around from Maxwell next limit on any tech questions that i have. (and this not a software war as both have their places in a production cycle if only Final Render worked properly). AND i would gladly use it and recommended it any one if only it did work properly.

I will totally agree that some of the problems may have been through some of my lack of knowledge and inexperience with the software, but most were not, and battling bugs days on end for little result and loosing a client for failing to deliver, is not my idea of fun, especially at $ US 700 for beta testing!

In my limted experience of Final Render, it seems to be stable with very nice small geometry and after that well its a suprise, animation definitely is very temperamental.

The bottom line is about counting on a software on dealine that does what it says on the package, day in day out, and thats what cinema 4D does or it gets very quickly fixed. Final Render does not do that and does much worse and it has cost me a job, which has never happened to me before.
So if you are thinking of buying Final Render for large architectural work and have read this, then YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. stick with Cinema (bake)for animation for the time being.
If you do not, It could be a very costly mistake, and one where you will have no support and no money back!
eric valric