Flamingo nXt
Overview
Flamingo nXt
Flamingo nXt is an easy to use photorealistic rendering solution for Rhino3d, developed by McNeel - the developers of Rhino3d (link) itself.
Flamingo nXt works from within Rhino3d, there is no need to export data and thanks to the streamlined interface it’s possible to get good results within the first few hours of use. Simply assign a preset lighting model, choose an environment, drag and drop materials from the included library and press the render button.
Realistic results are achieved by simulating the way in which real light behaves. Interior and exterior daylight simulations plus HDR image based lighting are all easily enabled via Flamingo nXt presets. Indirect illumination, refraction and complex blurry reflections can also easily be incorporated into the scene.
Flamingo nXt uses progressive path ray tracing - the rendered image refines over a number of passes. Whilst blurry reflections and complex shadows will need quite a few passes to refine, the overall scene can be viewed after one or two passes and, if judged that adjustments to (for example) lighting or materials are needed, the render can be stopped without having to wait for the detailed render to complete.
Flamingo nXt supports network rendering as standard and the processing power of two additional machines can be harnessed to speed up renders. Should more power be required, an unlimited amount of ‘render slaves’ can be added at extra cost.
Interesting features include a 3D tree library useful for architects and urban designers, alpha channel support for post processing and a number of post processing effects including lighting channels, glare, haze and glow.
Network licenses of Flamingo nXt can be shared using the Zoo – the same license manager used for network installations of Rhino3d.
There are software bundles of Rhino3d with Flamingo, this can also include Bongo the keyframe animation plugin and Penguin which simulates an artistic approach to rendering.
Flamingo nXt is competitively priced and there are no annual maintenance or support fees.
There are quite a few Rendering options for Rhino3d users, some are plug-ins some are standalone renderers. Some are faster, some are easier to use, where we can help is in explaining those many differences and helping you find the best solution for your particular focus. Contact us with questions, we’d like to hear from you.
Key Features
Flamingo nXt Key Features
Advanced Lighting
- Default lighting presets for quick setups of common scenes
- Studio Lighting
- Exterior Daylight
- Interior Daylight
- Artificial Lighting
- Advance use of high dynamic range images for scene lighting
- Free library of high Quality HDRI images for lighting
- Soft shadows calculated automatically
- Indirect lighting calculated enhancing depth in renderings
- Lighting Channels allow you to edit light strength in realtime without the need to re-render the scene
- Automated daylight calculation based on lighting presets
Sophisticated Materials
- Material templates for common materials
- Blurry reflections, control over Fresnel effects and reflection styles
- Accurate Transparency
- New Bump Mapping
- Normal Maps
- True Displacement Mapping
- Material stored in model for easy transfer to others
- Drag and Drop material assignment
Advanced Options
- Progressive Path Tracing - render continues to improve in quality with each pass
- Less memory needed for models with many instances of the same block
- Alpha Channel support for compositing in backgrounds or objects
- Tone Mapping for brighter images
- Burn Control - White point adjustment
- Post Processing - No re-rendering required for these effects:
- Depth of Field
- Exposure
- Vignette
- Glare
- Haze
- Glow
- Wires on/off
- Text on/off
- Adjust Lighting Channels
- Fractal Tree Generator
- Background rendering option allows modelling whilst rendering
Network Rendering
- Set multiple computers to render image
- Distribute render to other computers whilst working
Foating / Network Licences
Flamingo nXt Licences can shared / floated in the same way as Rhino3d, using the Network License Manager called The Zoo
Technical Details
Technical Details / System Requirements:
The advice relating to Hardware and Operating System options for Rhino3d are all relevant to Flamingo:
Rhino3d and Flamingo System Requirements
There are also some sample workstations suitable for rendering with Flamingo or any of the other popular rendering plug-ins for Rhino 3d here:
Rhino3d & Rendering Workstations
Basic Specification Requirements:
Supported Products
- Rhino 4.0 sr8 or above
- Flamingo will run as a 32-bit process when running in Rhino 4.0 for on any operating system (this limits Flamingo to 2GB of memory).
- Rhino 5.0 both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions
- To take full advantage of 64-bit operating systems, Rhino 5.0 64-bit is required.
Supported Operating Systems
- Windows XP 32-bit only
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7 & 8
Notes
- 1 GB RAM or more is recommended.
- Hardware requirements match Rhino's hardware requirements.
- Multiple CPU cores will accelerate renderings are recommended.
- Video card speed does not affect Flamingo NXT.
- Running Rhino 5.0 for Windows on Macintosh hardware with Bootcamp and one of the Operating systems above is supported.
- Simply Rhino suggests that if you are using a Mac then BootCamp with Windows 7 64bit is the best option