Why v-ray is better than mental ray

[Ramy Hanna]

Ok. I've been working on an animation for the last several months using mental ray. I've been really happy with the lighting results, but totally frustrated with the sampling. I switched over to unified sampling in mental ray hoping it would work faster...it did, but even with the noise in the image I was still getting 30min / frame @ 800px.

It was just too slow for an animation. So I thought I'd switch everything over to v-ray. WOW. Off the bat I was getting crazy fast rendering times with very comparable results.

I will say that the materials and lighting in mr are more "physically accurate", the results in v-ray are great considering the render times.

Here are my results...



If you want to know more about my sampling tests here are the links:
DMC vs. Unified
Unified sampling

happy rendering!

[Rafael Lopez]

Hello Ramy

Thanks for sharing these point or differences between Mental Ray and Vray. I started with Mental Ray, has the same issues too. I now work with Vray, but I am considering to work back with Mental Ray. Thanks for sharing. Love your work.

[Jim Buchanan]

Hey Ramy,
interesting comparison - thanks.
Have you tried iray? Easier to set up than both, but needs some serious graphics
card(s).
Check out Jeff Patton's site: http://jeffpatton.net/

[Chris MacDonald]

I too started with Mental Ray, and I didn't switch because of the render times, or even image quality really because I think it's just as capable. I switched because when I hit my memory limit in mental ray (which was 6gb at the time) then it would crash the render. Vray however just carries on (albeit a bit slower because it has to cache things to HD, presumably) and means that I never have to worry about coming in to work in the morning to a failed render. THAT is why I love VRay... Oh and that people can suggest something on their forums and they go away and implement it ASAP! Wonderful tech support.

[Pete Sedlacek]

I'm new on this forum, but what in the world is causing that MR render to take 30 minutes? There is no way that should take more than 5-10 tops, with no noise at all. Are you trying to brute force the Final Gather? I would love to get my hands on the scene and check it out.

[Justin Hunt]

I'd also like to see your mr set-up because other than the unified sampling issue there is something funky going on. I suspect its the lights, especially the portal light?? and the pendant lights above the counter.

I know Ramy does know how to set up a mr scene efficiently so its more out of curiosity than anything else.

jhv

[Ramy Hanna]

Guys thanks for the comments. I did some test scenes for testing sampling between mr unified sampling and vr DMC and in a simple test scene didn't really notice a difference. However in a production environment (the example above) they were no where close. A little about the renderings on this thread:

MR image: GI and FG were precalculated, so render above is reading them from file. There is 1 mrSkyPortal (above opening on left), and the rest are photometric lights; The rectangle lights above each have 2 shadow samples. The pendant lights are actually point shapes. 3 ies over the menus. Sampling is using unified with min:1, max:100, quality: 0.5, threshold: 0.04.

VR image: LC and IR were precaluclated, and render is reading from file as well. All lights are vray lights. 1 rectangle light for opening with outdoor setting. Rectangular lights on ceiling are straight forward. The pendant lights are actually vray light spheres. Sampling is using Adaptive DMC with min:1, max:6. DMC sampler at default values.

If anything, based on the lights, the mr should go faster. This is a huge scene with a building that is modeled inside and out, with 3 floors and alot of entourage. The only thing that I can think of is that vray simply handles what is immediately at hand better than mr with really large scenes. Was really surprised to see this as I've been using mr for years and usually get comparable results. Guess not this time.

[Justin Hunt]

which is why I think there is something funky going on.

[_ _]

no real surprise.

mental ray is autodesk so doesn't get developed at all - if anything it gets slower and less flexible.

vray is actively developed by a responsive and talented development team resulting in a very flexible and fast product.

that said i couldn't tell the difference between them visually in the right hands and im not sure a small render speed difference on one scene should sway your choice between the two.

[Thorsten Hartmann]

Hi

the answer of your question is in your images. You have knowledge about Vray, and it looks good, but have not enough knowledge about mental ray and it looks bad. Your Setting about Unified Sampling is wrong. look here at my easy Workflow: http://www.infinity-vision.de/blog/u...-at-3dsmax2013

mfg
hot chip