What renderer do you recommend for indie vfx production (logo animations,small intros/outros, etc), only few computers avialable for rendering (up to 4).
There seem to be quite many, and all of them seem to produce quality renderings, so which one is best for use with Maya in your opintion? Vray, MentalRay, Arnold, Maxwell, Rendernman, … ? Is there any open source renderer up to task?
Obviously, the cheapest one. MentalRay comes with Maya for free(if you dont have render farm) and allow to achieve awesome results.
Vray. Its the easiest to setup to use for satellite rendering (multiple computers rendering one frame together) than the others. It is also the best time vs quality and easiest to learn of all the engines. I’ve used all of the engines in production for final output over a twenty year career.
Vray just tops the tier. There are those who argue Arnold but as much I think Arnold is powerful I am quite surprised at all the people who “own” a license considering the tough process for it to be accepted for use at a facility. Arnold is great at lookdev because of its previewer but the moment of truth comes when you get into long render times to get a really final image. This is where Arnold becomes clearly for large facilities with TDs and lots of render nodes.
Renderman and Vray is a toss up for me. I love them both dearly. The new renderman that just came out is powerful but in RIS mode there are times where I clearly see that Vray is just much much faster and easier to get the desired look.
Though Renderman’s new features are amazing and show a great sign of things to come in Renderman I think where renderman shines is still its classic Reyes mode. Its way fast. Also has a nice real time previewer that’s really fast for lookdev. For logos and and titles your best bet may very well be Renderman in Reyes mode. Absolutley blazing fast for even neat SSS effects. DoF. Displacements. Motion blur. All quite faster than all the others. In its new RIS mode it can get the Vray look but can start to slow down when you get into glass materials and anything requiring blurry refractions.
The neat thing is that Renderman 19 will be free to use after the new year. I am testing with it now and really like everything about it. The only thing is that nothing can really beat Vray for look vs time. It has the best look with using defaults and some light and shader samples (subdiv) tuning and is the easiest one I’ve used over my own home network. It just starts up and works. Everything else is a bit more effort.
Mental Ray does come with Maya and has improved so much over the years. There are times when people go back to mental ray for fluid smoke or particle passes. There are many looks that can be done in mental ray that are ready to go. But. I don’t like Mental Ray when I have other options because I feel its speed is way far behind when you try to get anything similar in Renderman or vray or even Arnold. Mental Ray has many exception cases where you need to hook up things or setup things specifically. Then the render times get higher and higher. Motion blur is a no no in mental ray such that there are many tutorials on how to get out of it and do it in post. This is where Vray and Renderman (Rman particulalry) shine. Motion blur add little to your render time in Vray or Rman.
I’f its purely nice little logos I’d use Rman in Reyes mode and use the RMS shaders that come packaged. Its very similar to the Vray look and you can get large sequences out on a single machine in Reyes mode.
he he,
of course redshift,
on the CPU side definitely
arnold for quality of its lights
and better energy conservation,
didnt try vray 3 though
Oh. Yeah Redshift. That would be ideal. Last I tested it was quite new. Now it looks like it has more ready features. For small production it’d be great.
I have a small shop with 5 nodes an getting vary working didn’t take more than just installing an hooking up the comps to a small switch an done. runs like a tank no issues. 3.0 cost a bit more for getting more nodes, but it will pay for itself
