max5 -how good is the standard renderer?

[BrandonD]

The default scanline renderer is quite good for most people. In fact, I've used it almost exclusively since 1996, only recently moving over to Brazil. You can do good work with it, it's fast and generally pretty effecient. The key to a renderer is its features, how it works with lights and materials, and integration. Feature wise it's pretty good considering at the core it's a scanline renderer with a ray server and support for ASPR Radiosity AND Global Illumination. The lights and material support I would say is better than most packages. Still, where it lags is advanced rendering techniques. There are 3 types of motion blur supported, all with their strengths and weaknesses. Scenes over 5 million polys are very difficult to render and in general it becomes very inefficient with memory when getting into massive scenes. Brazil and VRay are pure raytracers at the core and are designed for larger datasets.

For what it's worth, all the years I worked at Computer Cafe and Blur, we used the default scanline renderer. Also, on the film "Coronado" we used it too. In fact, it was MAX right out of the box plus two plugins. www.coronadothemovie.com

[LarsSon]

Max's basic scanline rendering is not too bad. I think it's just depends what you want to do with 3d. I have seen so many beautiful pictures made with Brazil or finalrender etc. but there is no chance to get that kind of quality to animation. And i'm talking animations with deadlines, not just for fun. If you like to create just still images or have plenty of time/renderfarm to make animation, then it could be nice to have better rendering engine.

I really enjoy Max 5 new radiosity features and photometric lights. You can't get faster radiosity based renderings with any other product.

If you are comparing to cinema, Max is faster but Cinema is still going to be winner, when we are talking about image quality, and nothing more than image quality.

Hope you enjoy your new Max! Send us some masterpieces after two weeks... or when you have turned to be user of Brazil!?

[cowhen]

Thanks a lot for the replies so far.
I will mainly want to do stills... (at least at first, later perhaps an animation, but right now I don't have the time to do an animation, and of course not the knowledge :scream: ).

In case I will later decide to get another renderer: Is there a student version available of one of the major products? I could'nt find any information educational licenses.


BrandonD: The movie stills are looking absolutely amazing. :applause:


regards

cowhen

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