Thea V3...Coming March 2nd!!!!

[jenujacob]

As the title suggests...
i am surprised Altair (Thea's parent company) is hardly making an effort to advertise this anywhere...
anyhooo.. i am quite stoked! Shame there are no teasers or anything...

you can read the small announcement <<<< here >>>>

[majid]

As a Thea old user (That is not using anymore) and Thea lover, I think it is getting somewhere: It seems now they have included fur and grass (hopefully) and color variation for the same instance... fine bloom effect (hopefully with zero speed drop) and also nice color and sky mood. That is all I guess, watching the announcement image.... I hope there are ways more good news....

[jenujacob]

As a Thea old user (That is not using anymore) and Thea lover, I think it is getting somewhere: It seems now they have included fur and grass (hopefully) and color variation for the same instance... fine bloom effect (hopefully with zero speed drop) and also nice color and sky mood. That is all I guess, watching the announcement image.... I hope there are ways more good news....

HI Majid!
I didn't realize you quit Thea! What engine do you use primarily nowadays?
And man! You got some rad detective skills! I think you are spot on with those new features now that I look at the image again....

[solo]

I still occasionally use version 1.5 for studio renders, but with Lumion, Enscape, and Twinmotion around Thea is just no longer a go-to product, and I feel Altair does not give a crap about its users.

[jenujacob]

I still occasionally use version 1.5 for studio renders, but with Lumion, Enscape, and Twinmotion around Thea is just no longer a go-to product, and I feel Altair does not give a crap about its users.

hi Pete!
i agree with you on the fact that Altair doesnt care about the user base... but i stick around with thea for stills and use twinmotion for animations. i am currently looking at the bridge between twinmotion and unreal but it is an overwhelming experience.
i hope thea moves into the realtime rendering sooner than later. i am glad that Tomasz is still actively developing the plugin. i am not sure about Ioannis nowadays if he is still actively developing thea or he has moved into other roles within altair.

[majid]

I guess Ioannis is targetting a long-run goal. Who knows maybe in near future two worlds meet: ray-tracing and real-time engines, I mean. As far as I know, he insists on quality the most. I hope and hope it comes true that Thea could keep its users and expand its community.

[jenujacob]

Its here!

Video

[david_h]

I have checked out the video and such. is it a completely new re-buy or is there an lesser cost for just the upgrade? I couldnt tell. I really struggled with V2 and wished I could've gone back to V1. Never used the studio version, just the SU plugin.

It might be moot anyway since I am slowly transitioning to REVIT and am not really a renderer anyway.

D

[sfto1]

I have checked out the video and such. is it a completely new re-buy or is there an lesser cost for just the upgrade? I couldnt tell. I really struggled with V2 and wished I could've gone back to V1. Never used the studio version, just the SU plugin.

It might be moot anyway since I am slowly transitioning to REVIT and am not really a renderer anyway.

D

It is subscription now, and they offer one year or three year plans. The three year plan is discounted

[david_h]

Oh well. . .that's nice.

Looks like I'm out.

[majid]

I think the only right guess of mine is the random color for the same instance!
It seems that the new version speed rocks!
A real game changer!

[solo]

It is subscription now

Thanks for that, I'm out.

[Gus R]

At first, I was pretty disgruntled about the whole yearly subscription trend but over the years it seemed like there wasn't anything I could do. It's here to stay.

I waited over 5 years probably 10 to get Thea or Vray. I finally bit the bullet and went ahead and grabbed a Thea subscription for $280.

Vray offers a monthly plan at $50/month which amounts to $720/year. Their yearly plan is $350/year and perpetual license is $790. It's a better renderer than Thea but when I last installed a trial version it went sideways on my Windows 7. I was happy with Thea 2.2 and no Thea 3.0. It has it's works and limitation with my machine but overall it's good and doesn't require a team of scientists to run like Blender which reminds me of a navigation system from a 1970s science fiction space ship.

Lumion looks fantastic but it would require an up to date CPU and GPU to do what it can do. Then there's the matter of cost which is close to the price of major auto repair or buying a nice used car at $1,803 to $3,607 for the top version.

Thea allowed me to get a renderer without breaking my bank account and it's a really nice rendering engine with a lot of great features.

[pipinek]

At first, I was pretty disgruntled about the whole yearly subscription trend but over the years it seemed like there wasn't anything I could do. It's here to stay.

I waited over 5 years probably 10 to get Thea or Vray. I finally bit the bullet and went ahead and grabbed a Thea subscription for $280.

Vray offers a monthly plan at $50/month which amounts to $720/year. Their yearly plan is $350/year and perpetual license is $790. It's a better renderer than Thea but when I last installed a trial version it went sideways on my Windows 7. I was happy with Thea 2.2 and no Thea 3.0. It has it's works and limitation with my machine but overall it's good and doesn't require a team of scientists to run like Blender which reminds me of a navigation system from a 1970s science fiction space ship.

Lumion looks fantastic but it would require an up to date CPU and GPU to do what it can do. Then there's the matter of cost which is close to the price of major auto repair or buying a nice used car at $1,803 to $3,607 for the top version.

Thea allowed me to get a renderer without breaking my bank account and it's a really nice rendering engine with a lot of great features.

There is no upgrade pricing this time for long-time Thea users.

Really original approach ending my adventure with Thea.
Vray still offers a perpetual licence and a very attractive upgrade price as well as Vray Cosmos offered with the latest upgrade.

[david_h]

Dear Wizards of Smart:

I had to re-install SKP for bug splat reasons, and I lost my Thea. (old school thea4Skp). I thought I had an installer (rbz, or exe) but I can only find an rbs file in my old 2018 Sketchup folders. IS there a way to install that? Compress the rbs to zip to rbz? I've tried that. Doesn't work. Something else I can do? I don't render other than just tests, so I am not interested in the all-in subscription. but I do like Thea better than podium, which I am using now.

Help!

thx

DH

[Rich O Brien]

Did you look through their forums?

Licensed User registered their have access to old legacy versions...

https://www.thearender.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=170

[david_h]

thanks Rich, but I am not seeing it. I just taken to the latest version 3. I was hoping to avoid that.

[Rich O Brien]

I dunno so. Once it went to the Altair One portal thing I got lost and stopped using Thea.

Maybe PM Tomasz on their forums and ask nicely for a legacy build?

[majid]

You mean there is no previous version availabahe here: https://www.thearender.com/releases/?

[david_h]

thank you guys. I guess I am not very quick.

But .. . I think you knew that.

D

EDIT: Up and running. Thank you!