Sorry, but I mean really...

[playmesumch00ns]

"Better looking" is a bit of an imprecise term. The finalrender image certainly has less noise than yours, but then yours does look better, mainly because your colour choices are nicer.

It is perfectly possible to make a path tracer that slow, hell, it's quite difficult to make a flexible path tracer fast without bias...

Even so, the image on the cebas page is ridiculous, it is advertising after all, and is supposed to illustrate a point more than anything else. Just be grateful you know enough not to be duped by underhand marketing tactics!

[MasterZap]

"Better looking" is a bit of an imprecise term. The finalrender image certainly has less noise than yours, but then yours does look better, mainly because your colour choices are nicer.

Jozvex pics clearly has more "definition" (i.e. contact shadows), even the final gathering one. The cebas picture is clearly over-interpolated. You can get the same over-interpolated (and fast) result in mr by simply intentionally setting ridiculously large FG radii.

/Z

[playmesumch00ns]

Hmmm... you may have a point... although there are less obvious interpolation artifacts in the final render picture.

Of course, none of this counts for anything until you see it move

[Jozvex]

Yes by better looking I did mean the contact shadows in particular.

The FG scene is by no means set to good settings. I turned FG on, and then reduced the FG Presample Density to 0.2 for speed. So it's using 1/5 of the ray spawning points it wanted by default.

[cpnichols]

It looks like Cebas is back to their 1980s style marketing. Some of their old finalRender vs Brazil/Vray ones were really funny about 4 years ago. They got pretty badly slamed for their negative advertising.

[mental]

It's a bit dark unfortunately because Maya/MR doesn't seem to register brightness greater than 1 when using path tracing.
@Zap: Would happen to know anything about this?

[Venkman]

It looks like Cebas is back to their 1980s style marketing. Some of their old finalRender vs Brazil/Vray ones were really funny about 4 years ago. They got pretty badly slamed for their negative advertising.

I have been looking into external renderers that work on the Mac right now, and the couple that I can see that will work with Maya are: Maxwell, Turtle Render, Renderman for Maya, and Final Render 2.

I followed Maxwell for months and was disappointed with how it evolved (for now), but having just switched from Cinema 4d- I saw that community erupt with praise for Final Render 2. They are loving the speed and the quality.

From what I can see, Maya Mac 3rd party renderers are not too common, but the above mentioned engines compete directly on price. I had been eyeing Final Render for some time and have heard nothing but good things about Stage 2 for C4d, I have heard mixed reviews on Turtle Render, and I'm still not quite sure to think of Renderman for Maya. It is a pretty high quality product from all sources, but I am unclear to what advantages it really offers over something liek FR2.

I am going to focus on animation, but some high quality interiors or arch vis. renderings are not out of the question (which some users have said Renderman for Maya's raytracing is not fast)- and FR from Cebas looks to meet my future needs. I would like to try it first.

I'd be quite thankful for input from some of you guys. If this thread would get too crowded I would also appreciate a PM.

[lazzhar]

Joz can you post the scene file please? Want play a bit with FG and see.

Venkman, I'm curious if you didn't find your needs in Mental Ray for Maya?

[lukx]

I always said that FR is problematic renderer.

[tweeeker]

I have been looking into external renderers that work on the Mac right now, and the couple that I can see that will work with Maya are: Maxwell, Turtle Render, Renderman for Maya, and Final Render 2.

Are they all out of beta? Last I heard, Maxwell was up to a rather troubled release candidate and Final Render is still at alpha status.

T

[playmesumch00ns]

I am going to focus on animation, but some high quality interiors or arch vis. renderings are not out of the question (which some users have said Renderman for Maya's raytracing is not fast)- and FR from Cebas looks to meet my future needs. I would like to try it first.

I'd be quite thankful for input from some of you guys. If this thread would get too crowded I would also appreciate a PM.

If you're mainly going to be doing animation, then renderman's your best bet. If you really care a lot about GI and raytracing, then you might as well just use mental ray: none of those 3rd party renderers give you anything that mental ray doesn't (with the possible exception of Maxwell, but that's a special case).

[Venkman]

Are they all out of beta? Last I heard, Maxwell was up to a rather troubled release candidate and Final Render is still at alpha status.

T

Maxwell is in bad shape right now with their "RC" debacle, FR2 is supposed to be "released soon" (it's out for Cinema 4d), Renderman is out and people are raving about it, and Turtle Render has been out for quite some time.


Venkman, I'm curious if you didn't find your needs in Mental Ray for Maya?

I like it so far, but just like the "advanced render" module from Cinema 4d, although it can produce great results, many want those same results without the render times associated with it. :) Basically, I would want to use Global Illumination in animation. A 3rd party renderer makes that a possibility in production with deadlines looming.



If you're mainly going to be doing animation, then renderman's your best bet. If you really care a lot about GI and raytracing, then you might as well just use mental ray: none of those 3rd party renderers give you anything that mental ray doesn't (with the possible exception of Maxwell, but that's a special case).

Thanks for the input. I have heard a couple of people say that now- that Renderman is just lightning fast for animation.

My only hangup (which is becoming less of an issue) is that I may indeed need to do some high quality stills with Global Illumination. I don't do 3d animation for a living you see, I do multimedia- so that can be animation one day and a 3d still the next!

I think I may have to take advantage of that money back guarentee with Renderman and give it a shot.

Although Final Render 2 does have physical sky! How cool is that?

[Jozvex]

VRay for Maya might come out in the next few months. Will it be available on the Mac do you think? I might check that out.

I think the only two renderers I would consider adding alongside Mental Ray would be VRay or Maxwell, simply because I usually need to go for more realism-oriented things rather than not. I've been following the Maxwell crisis to see if it hopefully looks to right itself again soon.

Of course, anyone is free to donate me a copy of RMfM if they wish!

(I'll post the scene shortly lazzhar)

[Venkman]

VRay for Maya might come out in the next few months. Will it be available on the Mac do you think? I might check that out.

I believe it is PC only. :sad:

That's why I am looking at the renderers I mentioned.

I think the only two renderers I would consider adding alongside Mental Ray would be VRay or Maxwell, simply because I usually need to go for more realism-oriented things rather than not. I've been following the Maxwell crisis to see if it hopefully looks to right itself again soon.

Me too. Although everyone is complaining about not having phong shading built in, craashes, etc.- I firmly believe that is going to be one powerful piece of software once they get the kinks worked out. The quality of the renders (granted, not from their current release candidate)- have a kind of soul present in the light that other renderers do not. It just feels so tangible. I even feel that the noise adds a bit more to the believability.

I also don't believe Next Limit went out to deceive anyone. Real Flow is a pretty cool product and that is doing well. I just think Maxwell is so advanced that it is taking them longer to reach their goals than anticipated, and who can blame them? Their renderer is so simple to set up and it is modeled on real light physics! Insane!

Of course, anyone is free to donate me a copy of RMfM if they wish!

Yeah, me too.
:thumbsup:

[cpnichols]

For Mac users... have you seen this?

http://www.kraytracing.com/

[Per-Anders]

Just to give a bit of an explanation which might clear up some of this, none of mental rays modes are metropolis light/progressive path tracing algorithms.

Maxwell~Render is currently the only full example of a commercial progressive path tracing/metropolis light rendering solution (and this is what i guess this is meant to be comparing to, and busting a few myths about).

Mental ray's available modes are, image vertexmap based gi, stochastic gi and i believe there's a radiosity solution too.

I hope that clears some of this up a little. At the end of the day Final render does have a very fast and smooth GI engine (probably the fastest out there currently), but it uses a very different set of algorithms to MLT, it's three algorithms algorithms are - Adaptive Quasi Mote Carlo, Monte Carlo/Stochastic and Image VertexMap.

[Jozvex]

Joz can you post the scene file please? Want play a bit with FG and see.

You've probably lost the urge to play with it now, but here's the scene file (Maya 7):

http://www.jozvex.com/temp/Rings.zip

:thumbsup:

[MasterZap]

Mental ray's available modes are, image vertexmap based gi, stochastic gi and i believe there's a radiosity solution too.

[dath_vader_voice]I find your lack of knoweledge about mental ray disturbing[/darth_vader_voice]

;)

/Z

[lazzhar]

You've probably lost the urge to play with it now, but here's the scene file (Maya 7):

http://www.jozvex.com/temp/Rings.zip

:thumbsup:

Thanks Joz. If we lose the urge quickly we should say bye bye and go do something else :)

I just wanted to try and interesting Renderman compliant renderer called Air. It looks pretty fast to me.
http://img449.imageshack.us/img449/8968/airring1ae.jpg
Your scene as it is renders after 46 S btw.

[Per-Anders]

[dath_vader_voice]I find your lack of knoweledge about mental ray disturbing[/darth_vader_voice]

;)

/Z

I'm sorry does MR have access to an unbiased MLT/progressive bidirectional path tracing based radiosity solution? path tracing in mr looks to me to be just standard stochastic/montecarlo... not the same thing (in fact almost the direct opposite).

It's fairly obvious that I don't use MR much :D, but what other global illumination algorithms does MR have?

i'd assumed that it's standard gi modes without additional coding (which after all you can do in any engine and would then qualify any engine for having all modes) - were your basic photon mapped solutions (global vertex map/radiosity), standard brute force stochastic/montecarlo mode, and fg which seems to be a form of image vmap/qmc. what others does it do out of the box?

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