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  #1  
Old Posted Oct 10, 2013, 8:30 AM
Xavyiy Xavyiy is offline
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Exclamation Paradise Sandbox 1.1.1 is out!

Hello all!

We are proud to announce that the first public version of Paradise Sandbox is now online!



Paradise Sandbox is a real-time scene-builder & visualization tool aimed at architects and 3D hobbyists who are used to work with 3D CAD software whose output models don't have enough detail/quality for being rendered in real-time with great visual results (Trimble SketchUp, Catia, ...).

Paradise Sandbox will automatically enhance your models with real-time reflections, ambient occlusion, shadows, hundred of lights, water materials... and stunning skies, volumetric clouds, thunderstorms and oceans. Also, you'll be able to change your objects's materials with a simple mouse right-click, using the built-in material database (200+ materials, which will quickly grow in the coming months)!

Main features:
  • Full-featured world editor
  • Import from more than 45 file formats
  • High-quality render client (real-time)
  • AAA hybrid rendering pipeline and state-of-the-art post-processing effects
  • 200+ built-in materials
  • Stunning physically-based oceans, skies and volumetric clouds
  • PRO version at a hobbyist price: 59.95€ until 30th November! (99.95€ after launch offer)
  • FREE version
Finally, mention that a lot of major features are planned for the following 1.X version iterations, including:
  • Timeline-based animation/path system
  • High-quality offline render system
  • Volumetric terrain with editing capabilities


Website: http://paradise-sandbox.com/

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/paradise3d
Download: http://paradise-sandbox.com/#download.php

Last edited by Xavyiy; Nov 16, 2013 at 1:57 PM.
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  #2  
Old Posted Oct 11, 2013, 7:14 AM
Xavyiy Xavyiy is offline
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To all people who has experimented extrange behaviours: run it as administrator.

The installer doesn't set write permisions to subfolders so as soon as it tries to write any data (imported file, project, etc) it will not work as expected. That will be solved in the very next version.

Xavier
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  #3  
Old Posted Nov 9, 2013, 9:14 PM
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Trantor Trantor is offline
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I suppose it still has a while to go before being able to compete with LUMION, LUMENRT or TWINMOTION2.

The price however is very competitive (Lumion 4.0 costs $3000 euros!!)

This reflection is quite weird however. The external window should NOT be reflecting the INTERNAL part of the house, upside down. (I am talking about the leftside bottom picture, of the house with pool in front of it. Tried to copy the bigger image from the website to show it but it was javascript so it was not possible.
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  #4  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2013, 12:24 PM
Xavyiy Xavyiy is offline
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Hi Trantor,

Yes, of course, it still has a while before being at the level of other commercial solutions, but as you said the price is not comparable either. Lumion is x30 times the cost of Paradise Sandbox, for example.

Just to give you guys some background about Paradise Sandbox: it's the work of an unique person in his free time during more than 4 years now (who is writing these lines...). What began as a hobby almost a decade ago, has increasingly become in a profitable work so taking advantage of the fact that this is my last year in the university, with just a final project to do, I've decided to go commercial with Paradise Sandbox and quickly improve it and add a lot of new features.

That said, the goal is not to compete in price, this is just a side effect of being such a little development team. However the idea is to provide a professional tool at a very affordable price. (version to version more and more features are added, you can check it at: http://paradise-sandbox.com/forums/index.php?board=1.0 )

About the reflection: yes, it's weird since it's not a reflection coming from the glass, it's just that the internal house walls were set to be too much reflective.

Some renders from the new v1.1.1:





Xavier
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  #5  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2013, 8:07 PM
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Trantor Trantor is offline
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Xaviy, one of the reasons Lumion is so absurdly expensive is that they focus more on the content (trees, people, etc) which they probably buy from 3rd party, include in Lumion and get a 50% profit by reselling those with Lumion than by focusing on the engine itself. I guess that´s why they said they would never allow customers to import their own deformable geometry animations (like people walking). They want to sell those (and charge very well for it) instead of focusing on some old time problems of their render engine.


Anyway, about Paradise Sandbox: how do reflections work? It is like Lumion where most reflections are cubemaps and planar reflections you must choose a few surfaces and then the engine REPLICATES the whole scene to simulate reflection? Or did you guys find a way to raytrace reflections?

Do transparent surfaces cast semi-transparent shadows... or colored shadows (of the semitransparent surface has color)?

Can surfaces be at the SAME TIME transparent and have bump maps/normal maps?
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  #6  
Old Posted Nov 19, 2013, 8:46 PM
Xavyiy Xavyiy is offline
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Hi again!

Quote:
Xaviy, one of the reasons Lumion is so absurdly expensive is that they focus more on the content (trees, people, etc) which they probably buy from 3rd party, include in Lumion and get a 50% profit by reselling those with Lumion than by focusing on the engine itself. I guess that´s why they said they would never allow customers to import their own deformable geometry animations (like people walking). They want to sell those (and charge very well for it) instead of focusing on some old time problems of their render engine.
Good to know. Well, allowing people importing their own animations and any kind of model (high-detailed trees, etc) is definitively one of the priorities in Paradise Sandbox. This will be much more interesting when the animation system will be ready, scheduled for March, so people will be able to create their own animations / high-quality videos. And, as a passionate graphics developer, I will always be improving the core, not just the user interface or "secondary" things.

Quote:
Anyway, about Paradise Sandbox: how do reflections work? It is like Lumion where most reflections are cubemaps and planar reflections you must choose a few surfaces and then the engine REPLICATES the whole scene to simulate reflection? Or did you guys find a way to raytrace reflections?
Yes, we are using raytraced reflections with the viewport data for every surface in the screen and also true reflections (performance hit) in the ocean system.


Look at the floor (or at chairs), these are real-time raytraced reflections (no performance hit).

Quote:
Do transparent surfaces cast semi-transparent shadows... or colored shadows (of the semitransparent surface has color)?
Not at the moment, but should be done along the 1.X version (it's not hard to do, just a matter of times and other priorities right now).

Quote:
Can surfaces be at the SAME TIME transparent and have bump maps/normal maps?
Yes, of course. This can be used for glass or any other kind of irregular and semitransparent surface. Also, PRO users are able to create their own materials and shaders (for advanced / technical users...).

Semitransparent surfaces are able to refract the light too (in real-time!). For example: https://twitter.com/Xavyiy/status/375947891757432832

Cheers,

Xavier
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  #7  
Old Posted Nov 19, 2013, 10:18 PM
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Such basic things (semi transparent and colored transparent materials casting appropriate shadows plus transparency and bump at the SAME time and incredibly, the overhyped Lumion doesnt have those features!)
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Old Posted Nov 19, 2013, 11:25 PM
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Trantor Trantor is offline
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Xavyiy, I can´t get through your bot detection measures on Paradise Sandbox forum! I answer YES (I am a human), type the correct letters (you chose one that is quite hard... I change the image and it´s always hard to precisely tell the letters!) but it seems I can´t get the name of the product right...

Paradise San...

DBOX

And it tells me I am not answering it corretly???? I must wonder if other people did not try to enter the forum and stumbled upon the registration process. If I did not find you through THIS forum I would give up.


Btw, where is the IMPORT button, to import .dae files??? The online tutorial tells me to drag and drop, but I get a negative mouse icon when I try to drag and drop .dae files. And worse, it´s not good to minimize a heavy program like that to drag and drop stuff. In fact, Paradise Sandbox FREEZES here 80% of the times I minimize it, even if its showing the Windows screen... it´s very weird. Its not REALLY frozen, just the image (like, its showing the windows screen, but I can´t click any icon, start menu, etc). By using ALT TAB I can return to the program.


So, my first suggestion is to have a big IMPORT GEOMETRY button. Drag and drop should be optional. Maybe there is an import geometry button, but it´s quite hidden, imho, considering it´s important, because I still can´t find it.

Also, the tutorial talks about opening the Chalet Scene, but it is not available at my free test version. Please, make the tutorial considering the assets available at the free demo version.


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  #9  
Old Posted Nov 20, 2013, 9:55 AM
Xavyiy Xavyiy is offline
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Hi Trantor!

About the forum: I added this anti-bot question a couple of days ago due to an incredibly high number of spam accounts (100+ per day..!!). The answer you have to type is "Paradise Sandbox" (without the quotes). I will change a little the question to make it more clear!

Quote:
Btw, where is the IMPORT button, to import .dae files??? The online tutorial tells me to drag and drop, but I get a negative mouse icon when I try to drag and drop .dae files. And worse, it´s not good to minimize a heavy program like that to drag and drop stuff. In fact, Paradise Sandbox FREEZES here 80% of the times I minimize it, even if its showing the Windows screen... it´s very weird. Its not REALLY frozen, just the image (like, its showing the windows screen, but I can´t click any icon, start menu, etc). By using ALT TAB I can return to the program.
Definitively I will add an Import button to the "File" menu for the next release (you are not the only one requesting it!).

If you get a negative mouse icon try to re-start Paradise. I have imported content more than... 500 times? and I never had any problem except one time that I was getting this negative mouse icon too, I guess due to something related to the internal Windows state, closing and reopening Paradise Sandbox did the trick for me.

About freezes: yeah, weird! It is normal that the viewport stops to render the 3d content when the focus is not on Paradise Sandbox (you can change this behaviour: http://paradise-sandbox.com/docs/Usi..._Sandbox/F.A.Q ), but other than this, freezers are not normal.

I bet Paradise Sandbox detects that some content have been updated and freezes due to generating the new thumbnails (you should see a message in the bottom bar when this happends), unfortunately that cannot be done in background. Despite I have never have problems with this (= it only happends when you add a new texture or modify it, etc, as expected), but maybe some antivirus software, or similar, is changing some asset files timestamp and that forces Paradise Sandbox to update its cache.

Quote:
Also, the tutorial talks about opening the Chalet Scene, but it is not available at my free test version. Please, make the tutorial considering the assets available at the free demo version.
If I didn't make any mistake when packaging the last public version, the Chalet Scene should be available in the free version.

Just open the 'Sample project' (http://grab.by/sbCo)and one of the scenes is 'Chalet' (http://grab.by/sbCi) , just double click on it.

Thanks for the feedback and feel free to make any suggestion, I really appreciate it!

Xavier

Last edited by Xavyiy; Nov 20, 2013 at 2:20 PM.
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