MentalRay, VRay, Brazil?

[Cypher666]

I'm no expert on the subject by any means, but I can tell you what my experience has been like with these rendering systems.


Mental ray is very powerful when it comes to control, IMO you get far more control over shaders in MR than both brazil and vray, the downside to this level of control is that It can take a bit of time to setup, has a steep learning curve and can be a little slow if not tweaked properly. Vray is an excellent renderer, it is very simple to set up and gives you very good control over lighting solutions, which makes it simple to get fast, nice looking renders with very little effort, however I find that you have a little less control over materials than you do in MR (mainly due to the fact that MR is much more customizable and there a heaps of 3rd party shaders available over the net). I haven't really used Brazil much but I am led to believe that the GI is very fast but is a little out of date at the moment (once again I'm not really sure).

I'm not gonna say that one is better than the other; it is very much a personal preference. There is loads of info about this subject across these forums which will explain it much better than I can. Try out a few and see what suits you best. Just keep in mind that MR comes with max while the others come out of your wallet.

[CaptainObvious]

It's not a 3dsmax plugin, but modo 201's renderer seems VERY capable when it comes to extremely high-resolution rendering. The GI seems pretty fast as well. It's priced about the same as Vray, too. I suggest you wait a couple of weeks and try the trial version once it's out.



How long does a typical render take for you right now, and what resolution do you usually render to? And what hardware and renderer are you using?

[kaijorg]

How long does a typical render take for you right now, and what resolution do you usually render to? And what hardware and renderer are you using?[/QUOTE]

My most recent render with MR was 15x11" @300dpi (4500x3300) which cost me 4hrs19min. Until I can justify another machine I am using an HP AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 984mhz 2Gig RAM. There is also a Radeon X1300 graphics card. I was forced to make a sudden switch to Max from Maya about 3 months ago right after I purchased a MacG5 2.7 dual processor. I just can't justify another 3000.00 until I have a steady stream of work.

Thank you very much for the info.

Kaijorg.

[Cypher666]

Yes I'll have to agree with Captain Obvious on that one, modo 201's renderer looks VERY impressive indeed. From what I've seen in the latest lighting challenge it's extremely accurate and easy as pie to set up, but not only do you get a fantastic rendering system but you also get a top end modelling system for a similar price as vray. I'll be checking out this one for sure.

[Larzker]

Are those Modo 201 renders on Luxology's gallery page?

I like Mental Ray for the SSS Skin shader but the best renders I've seen were done with Vray and Brazil. I'm thinking of getting Vray but would consider Modo 201 for their renderer but I don't see examples that are on par with Vray.

[okmijun]

I am doing photorealistic architectural interiors on Max8.

ANSWER IS>Vray

[MikeBracken]

VRAY, Vray, vray.................

[Yourworstnightmare]

You should give FinalRender a try, it's very fast and super easy to use.

[CupOWonton]

For architectural interiors, Vray, Deffinately Vray.

To be honest, Im still learnign MentalRay, but Vray handles multiple reflections and glossy reflections MUCH better than I've seen MentalRay, Unless one of the MR masters cares to put up some help on speeding up multi reflection/refractions and glossies.

[Yourworstnightmare]

There is a reason why Mental Ray is the standard, because it's fast gives great results and you can tweak the settings until you die. This also makes it very hard to learn, and very slow if you don't know what you're doing. You should learn Mental Ray and get another render for the mean time. Vray gives great results and is also used very much for what you do. All the WOW cinematics were done with Brazil, watch a few to see the quality Brazil can deliver, and FinalRender is cheap and gives great results.

[pap87]

All the WOW cinematics were done with Brazil, watch a few to see the quality Brazil can deliver.

I never knew that! Very interesting.

Regardless, the best renders I've ever seen were done with Maxwell. But Vray seems to be the king of architectural/interior renders, but what do I know.

Whatever you use, if you don't know how to use it what good is it? I guess the point is to just pick one and learn it well.

[CupOWonton]

I never knew that! Very interesting.

Regardless, the best renders I've ever seen were done with Maxwell. But Vray seems to be the king of architectural/interior renders, but what do I know.

Whatever you use, if you don't know how to use it what good is it? I guess the point is to just pick one and learn it well.

Some of the worst professional renders i have seen were done with maxwell too. Its not an animation production renderer. Stillshots, maybe, but it hardly qualifies as a production renderer, thats why they changed the name to "Light Simulator" that way no one can sue them on the basis that its not a worthwile production renderer and they want their money back.

Youre right though. Vray is deffinately the arch vis king.

[zky28]

I think glass in mental ray is better than other render except maxwell ,

[Cypher666]

I think glass in mental ray is better than other render except maxwell ,

Actually I found standard MR glass (dielectrics) to be quite buggy, the great thing about mray though is that there is usually a good 3rd party shader that fixes this sorts of thing (in this case the L_Glass shader).

[mp5]

VRay - for interiors, exteriors.
Mental Ray - for animation.
Renderman - for high budget projects.
FPrime - for quick preview in Lightwave.
Final render - for C4D users))
....
2 Larzker:
Modo's render - is FPrime.

[CaptainObvious]

2 Larzker:
Modo's render - is FPrime.
What do you mean?

[dman3d]

Depend on what you are doing, but VRay tends to win in terms of speed (for me). You can split hairs all day long but the only way to find out is start working with one. If you dont have the budget at the time start with MR. VRay tends to handle reflections better, and a few other things IMO. Any one of the current "main" packages can product amazing results if you know what you are doing.

Perception and vision are two big components non of the packages provide. Just remember they are tools like a pencil or paint set. You need to know how to use the tools to make the picture in your head.

PS: just looked at FPrime, that is impressive, very impressive.

[CaptainObvious]

Fprime is a bit like Maxwell "light." Not as realistic, but a lot faster instead. ;)

But to be honest, I'm not really sure it's the best choice for architectural visualization. It is fast, yes, but not for complex GI solutions. It can take hour after hour to filter out all the noise if you render with multiple GI bounces. A renderer that takes shortcuts all over the place might be better, like Kray (http://www.kraytracing.com/). Kray is an extremely impressive renderer for architectural visualization, however, it's not really production ready just yet. There are a bunch of annoying kinks that need sorting first, and it isn't multithreaded at all. I really suggest you keep a close look at it, though. Supposedly, there will be a new version released fairly soon, with significant speed & irradiance caching improvements.

In a certain sense, Kray is quite a bit like Vray. You can use adaptive sampling for just about everything, and it offers so many choices for rendering setup that you don't know where to start. But just like Vray, it offers photon mapping (and light caching), irradiance caching and path tracing, as well as adaptive sampling up the wazoo.

I rendered this image (http://tegelstenclothes.mememachines.net/randomcrap/krayKitchenIrrCache.jpg) in Kray, at either 4096x2800 or 3072x2100 (can't recall) in about 2-3 hours, on a 1.6 GHz single-processor G5! There are a bunch of errors in it, but those are just user errors (like how I forgot to add a water material to the puddle on the kitchen sink). The light setup is dead simple, though: a single area light for the sun light, and a luminous environment outside. There are no area lights in the windows, and no fillers anywhere. Setting up the lighting took maybe five minutes. With the speed improvements in the next release, along with the multithreading the developer will add sooner or later, Kray will be a very competent arch vis renderer.

[dman3d]

Kray is for LW right? Wonder if they will release a stand alone as well...

[CaptainObvious]

Kray is for LW right? Wonder if they will release a stand alone as well...
Yes, it's for Lightwave. I haven't heard Grzegorz (the developer) say anything about a stand-alone version yet, but it doesn't sound that far-fethed, I think. Back before Kray 1.5 or so, it actually was stand-alone. There was an exporter plugin for Lightwave, and you rendered via the command line, I think. So it should be possible to make it stand-alone again, I guess. We'll see. I'm hoping for a modo version. :)

[Thykka]

You should give FinalRender a try, it's very fast and super easy to use.
Word.
mentalray is tweakable, Vray is simple, finalRender is tweakable AND simple :)

[cgoz]

MR >> custom shaders, fast and relible for animations, best SSS skin shader
Vray >> fastest g.i. solution, easy to customize G.I., easy metalic etc. shaders, very realistic interior outputs
Brazil >> most stable (in my opinion ofcourse) render engine for animations and motion blur
Maxwell (i guess everyone here forgot about it) >> most realistic render engine.lots of real world smiulations, got really great shaders, physical sky advantage (vray will have it too in 1.5) but very slow.

btw.
Vray can crash easily with high-res renders especially scenes with rpc
MR can crash when you use hair-modifier
Maxwell is independent with max and that's really big advantage.

[CupOWonton]

Maxwell (i guess everyone here forgot about it) >> most realistic render engine.lots of real world smiulations, got really great shaders, physical sky advantage (vray will have it too in 1.5) but very slow.
I dont think people... Forgot.. as much as they realise Maxwell isnt realy a production renderer. They even re-named it to " Light Simulator" arguably to avoid people suing them for selling a faulty 'renderer'. I mean realy, you almost have to emphasize " Very Very Very Very Very Slow" in order to get across how slow maxwell realy is. The only way theyve sped it up is by adding a noise cleaning solution.

[/quote]btw.
Vray can crash easily with high-res renders especially scenes with rpc
MR can crash when you use hair-modifier[/QUOTE]
I think if youre using max, RPC crashes it a lot of the time anyway. My main problem with RPC wasnt crashing, it was the GI the RPC objects put off. You had to exclude them from GI if you wanted to keep your sanity. I think the High-Res crashing and the hair-modifier crashes with Vray and MR were usualy due to memory management issues, usualy having too small of a cache, or no bitmap caching turned on. Ya got to admit though, Vray does a hell of a job with Vray mesh instancing.

[mp5]

Captain Obvious (member.php?u=192925): As I know, modo's render is based on Worley's FPrime technology.

[cgoz]

I dont think people... Forgot.. as much as they realise Maxwell isnt realy a production renderer. They even re-named it to " Light Simulator" arguably to avoid people suing them for selling a faulty 'renderer'. I mean realy, you almost have to emphasize " Very Very Very Very Very Slow" in order to get across how slow maxwell realy is. The only way theyve sped it up is by adding a noise cleaning solution.

btw.
Vray can crash easily with high-res renders especially scenes with rpc
MR can crash when you use hair-modifier[/QUOTE]
I think if youre using max, RPC crashes it a lot of the time anyway. My main problem with RPC wasnt crashing, it was the GI the RPC objects put off. You had to exclude them from GI if you wanted to keep your sanity. I think the High-Res crashing and the hair-modifier crashes with Vray and MR were usualy due to memory management issues, usualy having too small of a cache, or no bitmap caching turned on. Ya got to admit though, Vray does a hell of a job with Vray mesh instancing.[/QUOTE]

thanks for corrections.
what i mean with MR crashes with hair-fur and vray crashes with RPC was an overall statistical comment up to my experiences.and ofcourse this is all about memory problems.
Also vray+RPC crash problem is as you said not a totally crash, when memory is out it says "hey i got some problem here, don' wanna continue but if you insist don't trust me with the result cause i'm gonna spread around some mismatch colors"
thanks again cheers.

[CupOWonton]

Yeah, I just LOVED finding Bright Purple, Green, and Yellow splotches all over my scene after rendering over a weekend, that was SO much fun.

[CaptainObvious]

Captain Obvious (member.php?u=192925): As I know, modo's render is based on Worley's FPrime technology.
It isn't. Allen Hastings said so himself on the Lux forums.

[dman3d]

BTW VRay can smash through huge renders using the VRay raw image format. Sucky part is you have to convert to EXR with command line (at the moment at least) Using the vrimg format has resolved tons of highres problems for me. Writes each bucket as it completes keeping memory free.

Just like everyone is saying you have to know the gotchas, dont use anything on the "x does not support this list" then after that, know thy bugs.
Example of VRay list (sure there is one for the others): http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/VRayHelp150beta/render_unsupported.htm

Forum, forum, forum. Do searches on the support forums for any issues that pop up and you will most likely find someone who has encountered the same thing. It is unfortunate that this is an after the fact when your in a crunch but that is where experience and time come in. This sort of thing will be encountered with almost any software, I cant think of a single package that is bullet proof, and again what can go wrong will. Dont use something new on a live project until you are comfortable, much less in the middle of it.

cheers

[mp5]

It isn't. Allen Hastings said so himself on the Lux forums.
Thnx, i didn't know this).

[cgoz]

thanks for the link.

[YOSSERGEI]

i'm think

what do you do?
this is the question, all the rendering software they have his properties.
i prefer V RAY for the architectonic scenes the set up is very fast and easy
for the product and fast renders of course i prefer BRAZIL and for detailed models and scenes very very complex i prefer MENTAL RAY for the many shaders which don't have the another software.


jajajaja sorry i'm new in the forum, my name is SERGEI from MEXICO CITY i'm industrial designer but i like all the CG ART many thanx

[ThirdEye]

Thnx, i didn't know this).

they basically have nothing in common, even the technology used is different (progressive refinment vs bucket rendering)

[Anthonie]

I prefer Vray at the moment but I recently started practicing mental ray and well
I don't get any good results. I'm doing things wrong but I dwon't even know what I'm doing
wrong....

well anyway. like some other said before. vray is relatively easy to learn and mental ray obviously harder. Atleast that is my experience so far

[Timewaste]

Ok, here's my share of experience from my quest for the "perfect" renderer:

- Brazil: solid and production-proven, but slow and out-of-date
- MentalRay: production-proven, seems like THE industry standard for animation,
but has really bad documentation (at least the 3ds max-version) and
I wasn't able to produce anything decent in a reasonable time
- VRay: simple, great and accurate results, speed is ok. still images can be breathtaking,
can't say much on complex scenes and/or animation with GI

Personally I ended up using finalRender for the last 2 years, mainly because of its speed and the mentioned simplicity and tweakability (I just love the fR-Advanced material). It also has great compatibility with most major plug-ins. But over the time I had to discover some down-sides as well:
- pretty unstable with complex scenes
- buggy
- kept crashing for reasons I can't explain
- the praised plug-in compability turned out to be pretty unreliable

I also discovered that the majority of companies don't use fR, which is probably the strongest reason, why I switched back to VRay. I'd love to learn MentalRay as well, but it's a real pain in the a**.

That's only my experience, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheers.

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