View Full Version : Mental Ray for Maya's first release is a TOTAL Flop!!!
Jacobo 02-09-2002, 08:37 AM We've been fiddling around with mental ray for Maya at my university for a about 2 weeks now and have come to the sad decision that it is a complete failure...even for it's first release! The integration at first (Like A|W proudly claimed it was) seemed very tight to all of us, but it soon faded away and left it's place to total disillusionment! We were naturally expecting it to come with certain limitations in it's first release, but soon it was evident that the major chunk of these limitations lied right at the heart of Maya's preliminary features. The use of radiosity is a complete utopia all on its own. The calculation process is incredibly slow, let alone the rendering itself. This also goes for caustics... With the basic instinct of wanting to see Maya bring out quality render output, these are the first two features one naturally itches to tackle but soon finds out that given the current state of efficiency of MR for Maya, we found out that it would be almost impossible to use it in any sort of project, even for a still image render. So next thing, we decided to find out how the normal render capabilities got along with Maya, of which I should say, we were very hopeful but ended up getting frequently blocked with tons of limitations and obstacles on the way. Light linking, one of the most essential elements used in Maya to set up proper lighting in a scene could somehow not make it's way into this integration. Complex shading networks cause MR to halt and occasionally freeze or crash Maya (as is documented I must add) and some key features are not recognized by MR...Motion blur on certain frames of animation where deformers are involved or rigid body dynamic simulation is made can be seen missing or partially rendered. The list goes on, but the worst part is that it is just waaay too slow. You can just find yourself waiting 20 to 30 min for a scene to render, as we did with a few lights and a measly 6 thousand polygons with only a few, not too high-res textures and ray traced shadows at a resolution of 480x360 on a P4 1800 computer with 1.5 GB of Ram!!! So, anyone expecting an XSI like integration from MR for Maya should wait till version two or maybe three is out, cuz it is as yet, sadly, quite unusable!!
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SheepFactory
02-09-2002, 11:01 AM
i also believe that its not production ready , too many crashes and too many unsupported features from what i have seen at the lab.
its still much better than maya's renderer , like the final gathering does deliver some amazing renders , but does it justify the price tag?....NO!
for that price you would expect a softimage like integration , like the render region tool , all shader features supported , less crash prone than it is right now.
but its not as bad as you make it seem in your post , GI rendering is slow in all the packages , for renderings without GI and even final gather renders are much much faster than maya's native renderer.
i hope they'll make it more closely integrated in later versions.
A|i
meshsmooth
02-09-2002, 03:58 PM
well i can only talk for myself, but we got it about 4 weeks ago and im imprest by how well it works!!!
doing alot of fine tuning we have it rendering full raytraced images at over double of the speed of mayas native renderer. As for final gathering well it is a bit slow (isent it always ), but like alot of stuff in MR we have noticed that playing with the settings in MR render globals you can still get very fast renders out.
Jacobo, i have no idea what youve done to get such bad results from MR, we have had no such problems. are you using layered shaders??
but i still think that MR is the biggist rip-off in 3d!! how can thay ask for $5000 for a renderer that ( at the moment ) does less then mayas renderer?? but atlest it was my boss who payed for it and not me!!
Jacobo
02-10-2002, 08:10 AM
Meshsmooth, I will have to correct myself here... I just tried out light linking today and it worked just fine. I just don't have the slightest idea what caused it to stop working the last time... I must admit that my post went out in haste with a bit of frustration, probably both out of my predilection towards MR itself and of course for Maya which I teach here, and to get a decent render out of it. A|W had announced that MR for Maya was gonna be a very tight integration, and that the users of Maya would be working with it just the way they were used to in Maya, but I guess these limitations broke my enthusiasm a tad. But at least I know that in the future releases, it'll get to be a whole lot better than it currently is... We discovered that rendering speed goes up when MR's render globals are used other than Maya's. I must again admit that instead of being pre-judgmental at this time, we'll have to fiddle around a bit more until we can find optimal methods of getting the most out of MR for Maya... I'll try to post some images here as we move along ;)
mr.bean
02-10-2002, 02:26 PM
those horrible render times on a 5k poly scene are probably your error.
mental ray requires a good bit of know how before one can call them selves a tweaker - as does mayas.
Jacobo
02-10-2002, 09:06 PM
that's probably true... I will have to work on that...
SheepFactory
02-10-2002, 11:44 PM
yes seeing some images rendered with MR will be really nice , lets work on it.
A|i
Grooveholmes
02-11-2002, 05:29 PM
Would any of you guys lucky enough to have your grubby paws on MR PLEEEEAAAAAASSE post some of your MR renders?
MR for maya is really a holy grail to maya users.
i found out that it render really fast on regular scene with raytrace but no GI+ final gather. and the result came out quite well too.
but when i render a scene with GI and final gather on. i always got problem with blured shadow maps. it always turns in to grainy dots. so i turn off maya's default shadow map and turn on it's raytrace shadows. this time the shadows renders came out to be softer and the grain is not so noticable. but once i blow up the blur value. the grain came out in the renders again. i have tried tweaking with the shadow map size (MR), shadows samples. it still can give me the quality that i want like what i did in Renderman (softshadow).
btw, i know how to do HDRI in xsi. but how can i do the same HDR in MR4maya? i can't find the node related to radience/hdr.
if anyone here knows, please give me a hand.
:)
Grooveholmes
02-12-2002, 08:30 PM
That's cool kfc, but show us some images.. i can handle a little grain!
Hrmmmm, what is this reluctance of people to show any images they've done with MR for maya? I wonder if its a reflection of the quality of that renderer:(
SheepFactory
02-13-2002, 01:55 AM
nope its because we are too lazy to render :)
i'll post an image as soon as i am done with the modelling of my piece. hang in there buddy , its coming.
A|i
Grooveholmes
02-13-2002, 04:05 AM
HA HA HA "use the mel luke"
Jacobo
02-13-2002, 04:19 AM
kfc... In order for MR for Maya to render with HDR image probes you need two things that didn't come with this release,
1- HDR support in MAYA itself
2- Image plane support by MR for Maya (which is optional actually as you could map it inside a sky dome as well)
Cheers
Aj
aawww.....
no hdr support? why it's not even mentioned in the manual?
now MR sounds like not as powerful as Final render or any other max plugin renderer.
shit....
NowInc
02-19-2002, 11:21 AM
Ok...so...We got a copy of it here a few days ago...and have been playing around with it..and I must say..what a peice of garbage!!!
SLOW...DOESNT render Sub-Ds (even tho Mayas site clearly states it "perfectly integrates into maya), and the documentation is VERY vaugue and un-helpfull...
All of us here (as XSI users as well) feel that this is a perfect example of something that had GOOD potential that was just executed very poorly.
Does anyone else out there agree with us? Or do we stand alone? I mean...it COULD be a lot worse..but it is still far from what we were expecting...
Rendertime?
Render quality?
Integration (huge maya problem usually)?
Do you have any examples? Theres another string in the maya forum thats very interested in hearing these type of results.
Or is the answer just keep with the thinking Renderman type are king?
I personally am not sold yet, and want to explore a bit more.
Rendertime?
Not complaining. I guess I have a quite a good
threshold after some maya rendering.
Render quality?
I have a bit unusual criteria for what you call render quality.
I'm very much into overall sharpness and clarity
of rendered image (why is renderman king?).
Great deal of mray rendered pictures looked somehow
fuzzy or too soft for my "taste".
Not having any problems about that also:)))
Integration (huge maya problem usually)?
I guess we should wait for that in a next versions.
Lets consider it a good investment for now.
Do you have any examples? Theres another string in the maya forum thats very interested in hearing these type of results.
It's coming.
Raven
02-24-2002, 08:31 AM
what's really dissappointing is that it doesnt support some of the baisic features like all of the post-processing effects, volumetric effects, ie lights, render layers, field rendering.....
good thing i didnt buy it. its far from being ready for use in actual work production.
i had a chance to play with it and it's good for doing nice still shots but not full animated projects.
i hope these unsupported features will be addressed.
redfuzz
02-27-2002, 12:25 AM
Great to hear EVERYBODIES impressions, whether they are just your first frustrations or if you know what you are doing and can see the limitaions. The studio I work at is considering MR, and it's all these complaints I hear that worry me. Please keep the experiences coming...I hope to get my hands on a legit demo copy soon, not sure I can find a non legit version yet, anyone know if it's out there?...
g
Raven
02-27-2002, 07:09 AM
i havent tried it yet but i did download it and plan on giving it a shot.
www.exluna.com
BMRT 2.6 beta is a free download.
Entropy 3.1 is full blown out commercial version for $1200. Pixar's Renderman i think is still king. but Mental Ray and Entropy isnt too far behind.
SheepFactory
02-27-2002, 07:19 AM
Entropy is a great renderer indeed.
The 3d max connection is out now , I can list a couple of good reasons that maya will be next.
Once its closely integrated , we'll have a renderer that can actually be used in production.
and i would much prefer an entropy direct link to maya rather than using mayaman as a middleman. dealing with one software gives you enough problems , no need for making it harder with throwing a couple more in the mix.
as for mental ray , its great but until they integrate it as it is in softimage xsi , i am not touching it.It's too "loosely" integrated for my taste. and definitely not worth $4000. Now if i was in charge of buying seats for a studio , instead of spending all that money at maya and then spending more to get a decent render out of it, i would rather get softimage xsi advanced instead , which costs less than maya unlimited and offers much more. True softimage was not up to par with maya in terms of polygonal or nurbs modelling when it first came out , but from the feedback i have been reading for xsi 2.0 , it looks like they are ready to take the first place.
my 2 cents
A|i
Hey guys, I've been reading this thread as it grows. And I've got to say that everytime a new or new version of a render engine comes out, a lot of people are really quick to tear it apart. All render engines, MR, Entropy, Renderman, etc have their strengths and weaknesses. And I agree that MR for Maya has a few kinks that need ironing out, but all in all I think it does a great job. I mean, if you think about it, the guys and girls that handle all the programming aspects of porting MR to Maya, and designing these renderers, are a helluva lot smarter than we tend to give them credit for. So if for some reason they couldn't find away to incorporate a certain feature, or weren't able to work a bug out, then it might not have been as simple as our complaints would imply.
But, I've been using MR for Maya and so far so good in my opinion. And you guys wanted a few images that you can get an idea from. Here's a couple I've completed recently.
Render time: a little over 3 mins 1.3Ghz Athlon 512 RAM
http://phantomgrafixstudios.netfirms.com/mentalraytest1.jpg
Render time: 6min 38secs
http://phantomgrafixstudios.netfirms.com/mentalraytest3.jpg
Raven
02-27-2002, 08:06 PM
these are obviously quality renderings and i for one like mental ray. we're not tearing it down as u might suggest but on a production level its not ready. it doesnt support volumetric effects, ie lights, post-processing effects within maya, to name a few...
i definitely feel MR for maya is good for still images but not for animation that requires some of maya's basic features which arent supported within MR.
MR for maya will be ready for production in a few upgrades but not in its present state.
Raven
02-27-2002, 08:15 PM
i know its not a simple task as writing code for "hello world" but lets not forget the end user who might purchase these products. we all agree that MR for maya is a good renderer and obviously has its KINKs (understatement). but that's ok because most software who's intial release usually does have flaws. what i dont comprehend is the price tag on a product that's not up to par on full scale production. i just feel the price tag ought to reflect the product's useability/performance. in this case it doesnt.
a good product w/a bright future nevertheless.
NowInc
03-05-2002, 10:14 PM
Im not saying MR is a BAD render...its far from it...im just complaining that we here have had a hell of a time "making good" with it...it is VERY loosly integrated..and DEFINATLY not worth 4000...sorry..but thats a financial blow to my employer of which I am already getting heat for...
I think we are all spoiled by XSI's fantastic integration with MR and passing off the "shakey" version we have for Maya as incomplete. It is FAR from it....it is still after all..still mental ray...
Im waiting for a version 2.0...until then...its back to doing it the "hard" (and yes..still the best) way...faking it ;)
Im just lucky i didnt get my ass handed to me..first we had MAJOR licensing problems with XSI 2.0 (which i suggested we get) and now this Mental Ray fiasco...you can imagine how much heat im under..heh...
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