CGTalk - 3rd Party Renderers

alphatron

06-17-2002, 10:25 PM

Greetings,

I posted this on the lighting and rendering board but it doesn't seem to active over there.

I use Maya for just about everything and am quite happy with it overall.. but the renderer is really starting to be a sore spot with me.

Does anyone have suggestions, comments, or experiences with 3rd party renderers that are either integrated with Maya or are standalone but can import Maya files? Any that can do HDRI is a plus.

And as a side question, between Entropy and Messiah:Render, which do you prefer?

Thanks!

erakesh

06-21-2002, 11:22 AM

Hi

Yeah, I too felt the same about the Maya renderers. Well atleast the Maya 4 renderer is much better than it's predessor. Well if you are looking for GI and caustics to add to your renderer. There is Virtualight to you rescue. It was just enough, though it is still making further releases towards the final. It is available for free at www.3dvirtualight.com. This is a standalone renderer. If you would like to integrate this into maya, you have to also install the mvl(maya to virtualight) pluggin, which is there as a link in the same site.

Then we have LightFlow, with is also pretty awesome. Check this out too. Then there is Entropy, Mental Ray and Messaiah:renderer (Arnold)

I have not much idea about them. But have tried the Entropy demo renderer. It is more or less the Renderman with some more features and different name. Mental ray is also good. Arnold is really good for most of the renders. Man have you seen some of the images from it's gallery. They are really good..

So it's up to man.. You are the boss.

But do try Virtualight and LightFlow.

Cheer up!:bounce:

alphatron

06-21-2002, 11:29 AM

Thanks a lot!
I really appreciate it.

I've tried Mental Ray for Maya, but found that the integration with Maya is very poor. I just wish Maya had as good a renderer as Lightwae..so many features, and pretty fast too!

I'll try your suggestions and post back :)

CGTalk Moderation

01-13-2006, 08:00 AM

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.