[Twice]

Ok, i feel pretty stupid asking this question, but I'm not quit sure about what rendering is? I know that a often used program is Brazil.... and thats all. Should I start rendering? If so, any good ideas for what to use, and where to find them?

In advance.....thanx!

[Jock McxSporran]

Ho boy...this is such a ridiculously complicated question that I'm tempted to say "if you don't know what it is then you don't need it", but I won't

"Rendering" in the sense you are using it (I think) is the process of creating flat bitmaps from a 3D scene. When working in a 3D app what you see in the viewports is (usually) just a representation of how the final output will appear, not the output itself. Once you have set up the scene you hit "render" and your 3D app then goes about calculating how the final frame should look by taking a number of samples per pixel, then sampling that data down to come to a final RGB value for each pixel of the final image. The reason this process is necessary is that medium to high-end 3D capabilities are always a couple of years ahead of what current display technology is capable of handling in real-time.

Brazil is a 3rd party plugin renderer which will eventually be offered as a high-end rendering solution across multiple platforms, but at the moment it is still an alpha release and is free as a render effect for 3dsMax (while it's still in development). It has some capabilities which Max's default scanline renderer doesn't have, and has subsequently become rather popular among the Max community.

This explanation doesn't even get close to being comprehesive, but I can't think of a way to put it into simpler terms (and I don't have time to write a book )

Bottom line: if you are into 3D then you are already "rendering" in some form or another and may want to check out Brazil (www.spltterfish.com), if you aren't into 3D then it won't be of any use to you whatsoever.