i want to know how it works! They had to have really thought of somthing new, or cut coreners on quality, because if newtek could make it faster they would.

Heh - I'll let you know. I've just purchased the Worley catalogue of plugins (owing to the $ being so weak against the £)...

Worley doesn't cut corners. Their aren't many programmers out there with Worley's abilities so it is unlikely Newtek could have done this on their own. I ordered it as well so hopefully I'll be able to download it tomorrow. Once they get the SDK worked out so FPrime works 100%, the combonation of FPrime and G2 will really give Lightwave some teeth.

I don't believe they cut corners either...

from what I've seen and read so far it's an iterative renderer; improving quality and precision with each iteration.I'm going to get a copy too!

Wow...... that is just crazy!!!!!

and i like the iteration rendering, it's kind of fun to watch :)

anyone know what kinda system they use for the demos?

Here are a few test renders I did with FPrime tonight. The machine is a P4 2.53 MHz with 1 Gb ram.

This is a 2 minute render. Fprime constantly refines the quality. The image is pretty good after a few seconds and for the first minute improves a lot, after a minute the changes become more gradual.

There is 1 spot light and 1 area light. An HDR image is used for some of the reflections. The floor is a couple of procedurals. Shadows and reflection raytracing are turned on.

and here is my Strat model WIP with no lights, 1 sky dome with luminosity set to 140%. FPrime radiosity set to Monte Carlo, 60% intensity, and 10 bounces. YES 10. This first one is a 10 minute render time or about 11 iterations.

and the same render after 30 minutes...

another cool thing about FPrime is you can zoom in on any point without moving the camera using the mouse wheel. Here is a 2 minute render of a zoomed in section. I reduced this image by 50% in Photoshop.

That's amazing, Cory! Its great to see what can be done with this first hand like this. What do you make of the plugin though, are you thrilled by the results?

My advice would be to beg, borrow, or steal to get FPrime. It is unbelievable how fast setting up scenes are now. Especially with 2 monitors. You put FP in the 2nd monitor as big as you want and as you change your scene, the render adjusts. There are some things that don't adjust immediately (Worley noted they are due to LW limitations) but you just move the time line or hit refresh and it will adjust.

Well that's me well and truly sold then! Cheers for the info, Cory and thanks for sharing your experiences and renders. Oh for two monitors!
*runs off to get credit card*

That last one I reduced because it was 800 pixels tall so here is a cropped section of it at 100%. This was only 2 minutes. I knew there was a reason I microbeveled the hell out of that model.

WAHHHHHH -- No fair. I'm still waiting for my license key from Steve :(