. you can switch each window to full screen mode
. you can alter the 4 window layout to other presets, ranging from 2 to 6 window layouts

@ frank: the new docs are completely in english. the forum is mostly n french, yes, but the shiva developers always answer in english, too.

c4 follows completely different goals, is much more hardware demanding and less scalable. it does not have the modular OSplayer-gamepack-design, no web player etc, and it never wanted to be like this. c4 tries to offer a low-cost alternative/replacement for engines like idtech4 or ut2.5, including the scene management, shader/lighting system, a "real" programming language (cpp) and thus aims a completely different market. shiva's slogan is "development is a game", and it's really fun with their tool. but shiva is nothing less serious because of that, the results are amazing and achieved in a fracture of the time you'd normally need in most other engines.

I know I shouldnt....

But here another comparison:

Architectural Viz done by Stone Trip:


Architectural Viz done by Roxxor Entertainment:


In the end, you do all the modeling by yourself, you have to make the textures all by yourself...
designing user interfaces, scripting, shading and movement/camera scripts...
every single part of such a project, takes a lot of time and zeal.

Does a better tool set makes the over-all process so much more faster?
I mean, I ask my self, does it worthwhile having all those nice tool-sets?

The part that is really time-consuming, is something that couldnt be drag and dropped.
It is something that no engine nor tool-set can create within some single clicks.

All those tool-sets seems to get better an better, I wonder what happens when they become so much powerful that there is no more need, to have freaks like us.

cheers

What are you trying to say? Of course you can display such geometry with baked textures in almost every engine. You even could quite easily do your own OpenGL model viewer in a few days which is able to display such stuff in exactly the same way.

Though I could imagine that a web player would be very advantageous in the visualization business.

It depends on your project. Creating terrains, placing models or even "painting" them on top of your terrain will save you much time.
A good in-game material editor saves you much time. You will see that, when you place models in a level and when they do not fit to the rest of the environment.

Modelling and texturing is always the same. But creating real living worlds is another story. I experienced a lot what a difference it can make if your world editor reflects real-time changes. Level editing goes much faster.

At the other hand you don't need it that much if you make a 2d casual game. But even then a good editor makes a big difference. Look at the TGB editor of Torque Game Builder. You can paint your collision-zones, place all elements, graphics, preview everything in real-time and test particles. You can test and prototype games much faster.

And I agree with Amy that your architecture visualizations could be even more interesting and easy to watch if they simply run in the browser of the client.

ShiVa offers a better workflow esp. for your case, zwecklos:

. you can import lightmaps from 3ds max directly into shiva see the tutorial
. shiva offers you built-in ambient occlusion calculation for more realistic lighting
. setting up the materials is more than 100% easier than in 3dgs
. you can't yet run a7 with AA and PP effects
. ShiVa offers you a preconfigured framework, all you'd have to do is drop in your objects, assign the materials and press "play"

so all in all, i'd say you could create the same demo with nicer PP effects and running much faster (plus cross platform in a browser of your chioce) in literally a fraction of time. and that is what counts. it is, to quote you, all drag and drop for such a simple thing as architecture viz.

look here what you can read in the FAQ from C4:
"For Nvidia hardware, a GeForceFX 5200 or higher is required. For ATI hardware, a Radeon 9500 or higher is required. For Intel hardware, a GMA X3000 or higher is required."

I consider this a quite old system to run a game but not "hardware demanding".



true, but it supports some game consoles:
http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/faq.php#E2

But at the end I agree with you. We can choose whatever fits best to our needs.

you _know_ that you can't run all the shadow and parallax thingies on a FX 5200. but the truth behind that statement is: it requires at least a shader 2.0 card. i'd say you need a GF 6800 to get a decent quality and speed.

shivas rquirements: Intel Pentium II 450Mhz or AMD K6 450Mhz, 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM, 3D Accelerated Graphics Card with 32MB RAM minimum
of course this is too low too, but i tested it on a GF4MX (DX7) card. the engine automatically reduces the rendering quality, shaders fall back or switch off. it really scales. recommended are a dual core 3800+ and a recent 128mb 3d accelerator. pretty much the same what i'd recommend for c4.

i'd really love to see a comparison between a7 and shiva with zwecklos' architectural scene. if you accept that direct comparison and download the free stonTools (dae exporter) for 3ds max, i'd be willing to drop your exported models into shiva, assign the materials, and make an online demo.

"and sadly the interface was a no-go for me again. How can you seriously like that?"
the shiva UI and lots of windows editors workflow is THE HELL in earth!!!
poor documentation and "SHORT" video tutorials that you can´t learn
anything with, "withouth code examples" and "french language" fórum???

just good features are not enough>.<

A7 with aum and unity is a good example of good step by step complete tutorials that you can learn with!

well with the visualisations, if the shadowmaps and ambient ambient occlusion is realtime then you can also let your customers move around the furniture a bit to see what it looks like differently

that's a random rant that may have been true for 1.5, but it definitely isn't for 1.6.x. the new shiva developer zone is truly amazing, several admins (developers) answer your questions in the forum, over 30 video tutorials should give you more than you need (plus many written ones) and the documentation has colored sysntax, explains every function, its variables etc.
purchasing a license offers you the possibility to write emails to the devs directly and get help.
you have a point with the french forum. the editor is awesome if you ask me, quite intuitive, good looking, comes with customizable design and layout, blabla it's only awkward if you are not used to it, but so is every, and i mean every, 3d application. of course it has a learning curve, did you expect to write your games in one afternoon, including learing the tool, its several modules, a whole scripting language etc? if you don't want to get your hands dirty, go and make love with fpsCreator.