Mental Ray vs Native...

[MDC]

I find Maya's renderer to be pretty quick. Mental Ray is deffinitely slower, especially if you intend to use GI. The other thing is Mental Ray has to compile all the shaders and scenes before actually rendering, which makes it take that much longer. Renderman and Entropy also also very quick renderers, especially if you use precompiled shaders. BMRT is kinda slow by comparison. Personally, I'd just stick with the native renderer because it supports everything, and you can do some really nice stuff with it. Maybe the PLE renderer is a bit slower because it has to add the watermark:) Maybe do a test. Construct the exact same scene in Maya vs the same simple scene in Max or LW and see if Maya really is slower, or if you just have some goofed up setting somewhere that are increasing your render times.

[stunndman]

i'm just evaluating mental ray and entropy

one thing to keep in mind with mental ray - it lacks support for a lot of features (see below)

exluna's entropy on the other hand is feature rich and a RenderMan compliant renderer

i'm not a CG pro - so i better don't judge the quality of the renderings - if there lacks anything than it's most probably me :)

mental ray does distributed network rendering even for single frames - that's a nice feature

right now i'm trying to dig into entropy - using MayaMan as the translator

this combination has only one drawback - the render process does not get detached from maya - maya is blocked while entropy is doing it's job - the rendered image is loaded into an external viewer which has to be closed before you can return to Maya - and there's no easy image browsing (for comparing) as with the Render View Editor

at first that really hindered my exploration of entropy and i wrote a script to fix that (detached rendering, rendered image goes into Render View Editor)

well - here's an image i rendered with mental ray - the bump value has more influence in mental ray - therefore the image got a bit bumpier than anticipated

http://godonacid.com/shared/spaceSHIP_INTERIOR_V03_R01.1.tif

mental ray - unsupported features

All postprocessing effects: Paint Effects, shader/light glow, optical effects, 2d motion blur, and fur rendering.
All particle effects: particle instancing and software rendering of particle systems
Volumetric effects: light fog, environment fog, volume fog
Direct rendering of Maya subdivision surfaces
Render Layers, Render Passes
Maya's noise/volumeNoise shaders (added in Maya 4.0)
Image Planes
Interactive Photorealistic Rendering (IPR)
Output to the Maya IFF image file format
Field Rendering
Pre/Post Render MEL scripts

[-wT-]

Here's a thread with some images made with MR: (Including tons of my own tests with it)
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9365

Mental Ray indeed is very nice renderer, but it still lacks some features, but those aren't really THAT essential... I mean, you can still use MR and do so much of so god damn cool images, although that list of unsupported features looks big.

[Lunatique]

Ibanezhead- sorry for asking an off topic question, but I'm curious as to what your thoughts are regarding your experience so far in Maya compared to your experiences from Max and Lightwave. What did you like better, and what did you miss from Max and Lightwave?

[UncleBen's]

Some time ago, I did a little test with Maya and MR. You can look at it here:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8131&highlight=macro+style

Well, I like Mental Ray pretty much. In raytracing it's fast, but the integration in Maya is not really to good yet. Unfortunately the particle stuff and many other things are not yet integrated :-(
But I am looking forward for the next version of Maya to MR connection.

[Ibanezhead]

Ibanezhead- sorry for asking an off topic question, but I'm curious as to what your thoughts are regarding your experience so far in Maya compared to your experiences from Max and Lightwave. What did you like better, and what did you miss from Max and Lightwave?

I have no problems with MAX, except it is buggy sometimes, and that it has no real NLA. Character Studio has a convoluted NLA setup called Motion Flow, but it is pretty messy. Besides that MAX 5, the upcoming version, looks outstanding. Maya and Max are similar in many ways, and not in others. MAX seems to copy Maya...

LW on the other hand has many problems. First, it has a great Modeler, UV Unwrap Tools, Surface Editor, Texture/Shadow Baking, Lights and Cameras and Renderer. No complaints in these areas. But LW is a split app. In one app you Model, Texture, Weight Map, Surface, and setup Psuedo Bones called Skelegons. The other app, Layout, you setup Lights, Cameras, Animate, turn Skelegons into Bones and setup IK, make changes to Surfacing, Render, etc... Modeler has multiple undos, while Layout has only one undo, that's right one undo for animating and setting up all the above!... The IK system is also very slow compared to other apps and the reverse foot setup just doesn't seem to work right. It has No IK solvers, you have to manually setup IK. Gimbal is also a problem in LW, with out much solution but building your rig on it's back or making "Bank Controllers"... Granted I am only using 6.5b and it has upraded now to 7.5. There have been some changes and advancements, and some of those I am not too aware of, but the split app/one undo thing is still there. Many people like the split app and that is why they like LW. I have had it 2 years now, and have never completely rigged a character and animated it, while in MAX I could do it with no problems, and have for many years now.

So you ask, "if you know MAX so well, and have no problems with it, why don't you buy it?" Because it is now $1500 more than Maya, and plus I already know MAX, and if I am going to spend that much money on a program, I want to add something new to my resume...

Maybe LW will upgrade to something great, but not many companies hire for LW. They may have a copy here or there, but it doesn't seem to be high on the job list. Maya and MAX hold that place... Although, I have a job, it is always nice to be prepared and know the industry standards if the worse case scenerio happens...

By the way, thanks to everyone for all the responses to my earlier question...

Vic

[Lunatique]

Hey, thanks for answering!

You might just be one of the few people that has used Lightwave extensively and kept your neutrality! Most Lightwave users would never admit so many of its faults. :D

So, do you feel that Maya will be the app that replaces Lightwave and Max for you? Because according to the short comings you mentioned in the other two, Maya seems to pick up the slack pretty well, and can do the same things the others can too.

[Ibanezhead]

While I'll admit that LW users are pretty hardcore, I know of a few other guys who are getting Maya (or Max on one occasion), or have already gotten it to replace or compliment LW. Many tend to just get Messiah to help with the lack of up to date Animation tools, but I think that is pointless, cause I think every purchase should benefit your resume and standing against your competition. Not many companies use Messiah, so why bother?

I do hope to purchase Maya after 4.5 comes out, as long as the price is the same. I look at it as an investment. It wont replace MAX for me, cause I use it at work, and have no choice in that, but I will have to decide whether I want to sell my copy of LW, and BodyPaint for that matter, if I get Maya. It is funny to hear LW users compare LW to Maya. After using PLE, there is no comparison. Sure LW's renderer is better, but that is about it. Maya seems to really be a well rounded package that can get the job done, and it is not as hard to learn as people have made it out to seem. If you want to get lost in a program, then try LW's unorganized default configuration. It's like they didn't even try:eek: ...

Vic

[playmesumch00ns]

Basically Maya rules, but...

The renderer is pretty crappy on the surface . You have to get to know it and be willing to put the work in tinkering with the AA.
It does have its good points though, one of the main ones being working in the hypershade you can create some lovely shaders. With MEL you can make beautiful effects.
But it is slow. With luck Alias will address this in future versions but for the moment i'd say just buy a faster processor: it'll be worth it despite the extra expense.

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