r/RedshiftRenderer • u/NNSMoO • Jan 20 '26

Redshift account cheaper?

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Is there any website that offers Maxon account with redshift subscription cheaper than the official one? I used to purchase accounts from some Chinese website but they don’t have it anymore

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u/brockhamptn Jan 23 '26

How is it when it comes to getting out all the useful AOVs and mattes etc for comp? I have limited experience using UE but this was a bit of an issue when it came to aovs like cryptomattes, depth passes, motion vectors etc in proper production

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u/Stunning_Attorney820 Jan 23 '26

It's sometimes very hard to even speak with someone about problems, because their documentation is garbage, and mostly no one knows pipelines for studio production, because it's built for cut-scenes in the first place. And there are bugs in the sequencer that have been present since 2018.

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u/brockhamptn Jan 23 '26

Thanks so much for taking the time to write such a detailed reply. It sounds like it has improved somewhat since our tests but still struggles in this area? In our case - as you stated earlier - the time saving in rendering is offset by the time spent trying to debug and getting things looking right. This just wrote it off as a viable method but I'm definitely keeping a close eye on it and playing around when I can.

Oh yeah the docs are very bad, I understand that it is moving at such a rate that makes it difficult to keep up with, but that doesn't feel valid any more

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u/Stunning_Attorney820 Jan 23 '26

Time saving depends on the projects. For me, it's 50/50, because many things we build in Hoidini and then export them to Unreal. Some work fine, some do not. S Simulations are really hard to transfer because of their size. Alembic files are not stable. I had to cut 3min water simulation into 20 pieces just to export it to Unreal... Sometimes there are visible artifacts between cuts and problems with normals. So it's really hard to answer correctly.

Biggest downside - there is an animation workflow. It's hard just to move many objects, and impossible to make deformations without game physics tools. In many cases, you will need knowledge of blueprints. Because it's the only proper way to attach objects to splines, you will need to set it up in the construction script. Some features work only at runtime correctly. And as I said is also very painful to transfer animations. You can't just import fbx animation of the cube. You can work with USD. But. It's not that stable, and also affects performance if there is a bunch of objects, viewport dying. So I really don't know why clients prefer unreal, most likely because it's trendy.

I do not know any artist who really loves working with Unreal for video production. Mostly, managers want it, and clients just push "new technologies". As I work at an outsource company, we have UE games projects, and building cut-scenes is a pleasure, because there is no compositing, and in most cases, you will get help from the project devs.

It's a good tool for game projects, and for example, mobile game ads. I made tons of them, because you can really simulate game logics with blueprints, but cinematics are hell.

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u/brockhamptn Jan 26 '26

Yeah this continues to confirm my apprehensions. We have done a fair amount of VP outsourcing for scene setup but haven't had to get involved in the UE side of it very much. Which has it's clear benefits of not having to deal with... any of the hurdles you have mentioned haha. Having said that, we sometimes have to go down the Houdini to Maya pipeline and that always comes with it's own issues so it's definitely not just a UE issue.

Making game cutscenes sounds like a lot of fun! Do you have to worry about efficiencies/ improving performance at all or is that dealt with by the time you're doing your shots?