Recently I had a chance to test out some new rendering software. Bunkspeed Shot is a program that branched off from Hypershot.
When I started up the program I was presented with the option to start a new project or open a project. I went ahead and opted to start a new project and see what I could import. This program can import a variety of file types, such as, obj, igs, etc. However, one file type I was surprised to see and found incredibly useful was to import Rhino scene files. Meaning I can take a file from Rhino, save it, and import it into this program to start rendering. Once the model had loaded I had to figure how to work the program. Granted, I could look through the help file to figure this out, but where’s the fun in that?
Once I had a model loaded up the first thing I wanted to do was change my viewport. The default viewport is a bit small (set at 480×270) and was a bit difficult to work with. I began to search around for a way to alter this and quickly realized a lot of the options I was looking for seemed to be hidden in various menus.
When I opened the dialogue box that would allow me to change my viewport resolution I found I was somewhat limited in my options. In the demo you are limited to 960×540, 640×360, or 480×270 which seem to be an odd selection of sizes. It appears in the full version you can choose 1280×720 and fill window. One thing I had noticed is as soon as I tried to bump up the resolution it would warn me that performance would be affected. This may be different on your machine but on mine it made the program very sluggish and even non-responsive at points. So I was stuck with a situation of work with a viewport that is a bit small to work with or choose a larger size and risk the program crashing or running slow.
I went ahead and tried to work with the smaller resolution so my performance wouldn’t be affected. It took awhile to get the hang of the controls and where everything was located. The menu on the right of the viewport has most of the options you will need to set up the render of your file. You have the option to apply pre-made materials, set up environments, back plates, just about anything you’d need. The one option I was looking for and couldn’t find was an option to freely control light placement. It appears it is all predetermined by the environment you place in your file.
One of the side menu tabs will give you some freedom to control the camera. This does not control the position of the camera, that is controlled in the viewport, but rather the attributes of the camera itself. You have complete control over aspect ratio, focal length, aperture, f stop, just about anything you’d need.
Once everything is set up, object positioned and material assigned, it’s time to render.
The render menu gives you a couple of options for exporting, jpg, bmp, psd, or tif. You can freely set up the resolution of the image and the amount of time you want the render to take. I could have it render in 1 minute and sacrifice some of the quality of the end product or bump the render time all the way up to 3 hours if I need as much detail as this can do.
Over all this program looks like it’s a really good program. It took a little bit longer to just “dive in” and render stuff out but once you take the time to learn the program (and look that that help file I ignored) you can really learn to do some decent renders from it. The only problems I had was the sluggish behavior and on a couple occasions it crashed while rendering. This could be tied to my pc I was working with so I urge you to test it for yourself. While this program had branched off of Hypershot, keep in mind, it is NOT Hypershot. The program is set up differently and behaves differently. If given the option I’d probably choose Hypershot just for the ease of use. However, if you take the time to learn this program it might be just as effective as any other rendering software out there.
