A comparison - Comments welcome.

[Mr.Tyler Durden]

To be honest, as long as you don't know how to use AR3 to the max, you won't be able to indulge in the advanced features from either VRay or Final Render.

to put it simple, you might want to start with walking before trying to sprint ;)

cheers


Tyler

[Cian]

I agree with Tyler.
I personally use Vray for most of my renders as it is far more advanced and powerful than AR3. Don't get me wrong. AR3 is a great render engine but it lacks that great wow factor that vray gives you.

---------Quality----------Cost(around)---Speed-----------Learning curve

AR3.----Good------------€500------------Fast-------------Easy-ish
Vray----Very good------€900------------Very fast--------Not so easy

Vray is also an industry standard which makes you that little bit more employable.

Cian.

[NicoAdri]

i've heard that 'wow' factor comment before...it'd be nice to know what the 'wow' is though. Lighting? Materials? What?

TIA

Adri

[franz78]

I am a True Vray fan,
but i think is important for an artist to know and have a most of important render on preferred platform.

in big production studios use more than one renderer, for example you can use AR for volumetric Effect anf Vray for all other things.


Best Regards
Franz

[Cian]

That "WOW" factor is all in the lighting and that's why it's a firm favorite among the
Arch Viz community.

I must say I still use AR3 for several things like rendering hair and then compositing in PS with my Vray render.

Cian.

[AAAron]

i've heard that 'wow' factor comment before...it'd be nice to know what the 'wow' is though. Lighting? Materials? What?

TIA

Adri


How it handles glossy (blurry) reflections! And while you could call that a lighting thing it´s also a material thing.

[djart73]

Uhh, please show me the "WOW" factor, i really like to see it...

oh no, wait, first show me the Artists who render out pictures and sending them direct to the customer... without colorcorrect( ans all these little things you can do in Photoshop)

Sorry, but i will never understand that" Yeah, my renderengine can render better than yours" attitude.

That dont means i am a fan of AR3 or what so ever renderengine.

These are just tools and no magic.
But, if you can show some WOW examples... i never stop learning :-)

Best regards, djart73

[Cian]

DJ art. I somewhat agree with you.
I use PS for all my post work. I don't just bang out an image straight out of Cinema and hand it to the client. Never have done either.
But still. I know how to use both engines and still If I did post on both images I would end up handing the vray one to my client.

Just take a look at the renders over at the Vray forum (http://www.vrayforc4d.com/forum)

Then compare them to the ones on the maxon site.

[soccerrprp]

am i wrong, but couldn't comparable images be created using AR3? perhaps it takes longer, or differing approach (obviously), but the image quality would be the same.

i guess SPEED is an obvious consideration here when we say that one renderer is better than another.

the one thing that I know that has been an issue with AR3 is SSS. Is SSS much better in Vray?


Thanks. Just wanting to know...

Richard

[AdamT]

My feeling is that has much more to do with the artist than the render engine.

That said, Vray can be faster and it does have some things AR doesn't (lens distortion, IES lights ... ?).

[lllab]

vray and ar3 are both very different tools.
both are good, both work very different in the end and have different weaknesses and strenghts.

i would say which one want to use depends on the artist and the work that she/ he wants to do.

best is to have both of course.
also learning rendering does not really depend so much on one engine.

the first engine to learn is the most difficult one. so it is good to start with one, and then add one or several other to see different concepts and learn more.
after the second you can render fast in any engine you like;-)

if you once learned the "physical workflow" you can render in fry, maxwell and vray with quite identical thinking p.e. and so on...
there very basic principle of rendering is the same in all.
only the process and cabapilities in details differ.

cheers
stefan
vrayforc4d.com

p.s.: adri as i know you a bit and know you have at least 3 good engines. i personally would recommend you concentrate on overall render concepts, that might help you most and keep you flexible. good to learn is about light, photographic concepts, color perceptions and of which part a real material consists.

[AAAron]

That said, Vray can be faster and it does have some things AR doesn't (lens distortion, IES lights ... ?).

..and it handles glossy reflections fast.
I still say the "specular layer" is vray´s strong point. The "wow" ;)

[NicoAdri]

@ stefan.

Thanks for that stefan. I've got Jeremy Birn's excellent book on rendering and that has quite a bit on compositing, photo techniques, lighting techniques, colour theory etc etc.

I even try to pick it up and read it every now and again....;-)

It is actually a bit of a drawback having 3 render engines. Can't decide on which one to concentrate on...

Cheers

Adri

[lllab]

the most easy is of course AR as it is most integrated naturally as beeing the internal engine.

as good jeremy birns book is, that only covers a tiny bit of what makes rendering i think. this topic will be hardly managed in one book.

cheers
stefan

[Mr.Tyler Durden]

there are certainly many artists achieving awsem results with AR, even before version 3.

so to name only one, Marcondes, see-> marcondes.tv

some of the most stunning images in overall look, and most of them ( if not all) are plain AR renders. ( the cherries I know for sure)

best example of an artist who knows its tool.

so I wouldn't recommend any different engine as long as you are not fairly as good, and deep into the whole art, including lighting and shading skills btw ;)

cheers

Tyler

[tonyg3d]

..and it handles glossy reflections fast.
I still say the "specular layer" is vray´s strong point. The "wow" ;)

I've been following this thread and i'm intrigued? Anyone got any image examples of the same shot in different renderers to show the difference?

[Simon Wicker]

I've been following this thread and i'm intrigued? Anyone got any image examples of the same shot in different renderers to show the difference?

it isn't so much the quality more the fact that they are usable.

glossy reflections in cinema are nice quality but they are dog slow, try a scene using GI and glossy reflections in AR and I think the world would have been consumed by our sun turning into a red giant before cinema would have finished rendering.

in vray glossy reflections are rendered incredibly quickly and are layered within a material so you can easily build up very subtle effects with soft and sharp reflections. in vray you can actually use glossy reflections for all specular effects and mix them with standard phong/blinn highlights. in this sense they are production ready (can be freely used in a job) where the cinema glossy reflections are too slow to be used except under extreme circumstances - you can use them but if you need to produce multiple iterations of a scene because of client changes you can easily run out of time.

cheers, simon w.

[NicoAdri]

hey,

why has this thread been moved? and where has it been moved to?

it seems relevant to c4d to me so why move it???

TIA

Adri

[Per-Anders]

hey,

why has this thread been moved? and where has it been moved to?

it seems relevant to c4d to me so why move it???

TIA

Adri
You can see what forum you are in by simply looking at the top of the page. It has been moved to the Cinema 4D Lighting & Rendering forum because this is more relevant to that than to C4D in general.

[AAAron]

I've been following this thread and i'm intrigued? Anyone got any image examples of the same shot in different renderers to show the difference?

Besides speed, the main difference is that the vray material got the option use an image or a shader to control the level of glossiness in addition to just control the transparency of the reflective layer. It´s also possible to mix serveral layers with different reflection glossiness within one material.

Below is my attempt to demonstrate a tiny bit of those capabilities. No lights or GI are involved what you se on the floor are just reflections nothing else. Just one material for the floor. The picture is not meant to be artistic just to demonstrate what I think is a part of that vray "wow" some talk about.



http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8441/vraygloss.th.png (http://img11.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vraygloss.png)

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.