Getting Ready to Buy a Renderer

[Diver]

Someone please help! I need some advice from someone that has used VRAY, FINAL RENDER, MENTAL RAY or any others... Currently running VIZ 4 but about to upgrade to Either VIZ 2005 or Max 6.. but before I make that decision, I need recommendations on a 3rd party renderer. I do about 50 percent interior and 50 percent exterior. It is my understanding that Final render has a good GI engine but I have a couple of cebas plugins that are crap and some that are great.. Mental Ray looks complicated, and VRAY I hear causes crashes.. PLEASE HELP!! - Thanks

[Christopher Nichols]

Everything crashes. Even MAX crashes... there is NO perfect solution. If you look on this forum, or the cgtalk forum, you will see that this discussion has been made 1000s of times. I would recommend that you do some searches of those beforehand. Also note that for every rendering engine that you look into there will always be at least one person that praises it and one person that hates it. The chances that you get an unbiased opinion is very unlikely.

[Bugga_Guy]

Well I have good news for you - if you buy viz2005 or max6 it already comes with mental ray.

However, I personally like final render, the interface is pretty easy to use, and the render speed is pretty good (well depending on your model). I haven't used vray - but I have seen some promising result with that as well

[Diver]

Thanks guys much appreciated and yes, I knew I would recieve mixed results. Still an informed decisions is always a better one. I HAVE researched them all and just wanted some inside user info. Still looks like final render is the right choice bang for the buck wise.
I did NOT, however know that mental ray came bundled with the new VIZ package as I haven't gotten that far in my quest for upgrading. Good to know though.

Thanks again !

[akzit]

Diver, I have been using Brazil with Viz4 and I like it a lot. And I am barley starting to use MR in Max6 but the integration in Max6 is great!

Also look into the new wunderkid in town "Maxwell render":

http://www.maxwellrender.com/indexeng.html

Also check what this guys from Spain are doing:

http://www.keytoon.com/

It looks like a great renderer, and I personally like the images from Vray, they to me look bettet than MR or Brazil but it also depends on the operator...

Good Luck!

[mbr]

They are all good.

I am a Final Render user and am happy with it. If you can, download demos of them all and give them a shot. It's the only way to really know.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

i am a vray user myself, and have experienced very few crashes caused by vray.

but anyway, the reason i am chiming in is that one of the reasons we decided to go with vray at our firm was unlimited render nodes. which, depending on how many machines you have acess to, and what size your projects are, can save time and money.

...but any decent render will produce beautiful images if you know how to use it, and use it wisely.

[pixelperfectg]

Why not just download the demo versions (Vray and even Brazil...does FR have a demo?) and see which one works best for you?

[Sawyer]

The biggest mistake is to look at the best images done in the software galleries and say "GEE I could do that". You could do that but you'll probably do something different. All of the software is wonderful, not a single software will be a bad investment. What I have found happens is a software may be inaccessable, it may be uninspiring and you don't play with it enough to get over the hump so you can do good images. I use VRAY and I visit the online community which is really good, very helpful and I am able to work out the problems I have. I was able to learn Max by tooling around but I wanted to play with it. I took 2.5 years of cad drafting and I would never have done that on my own. Autocad is painful to learn (I thought), not something I could play with.

[ShaunDon]

Amen Sawyer. I enjoy gawking at the beautiful work that companies advertising being created with the crappiest software. There's no way to know comparatively how many hours it takes to achieve that result, or just how much of the image was Photoshopped.

My experience is with VRay, and for it I have praise and gripes. That'll be the case with any software. With any of the software, be prepared for an increase in render times for GI. We use a combination of five dual-processor machines to render our work -- you may find yourself investing in extra machines. VRay is free to install on render nodes. Brazil is more expensive and the artist license comes with two render node licenses. Mental Ray, at least what's built into the new max, has two render node licenses and from what my friends who use it have told me that cannot be expanded. So you're limited to rendering to three machines.

I'll second MBR as well. Try the demos. Look at the controls, see which one you take to. Any one would be a huge improvement over standard viz, it's all a matter of personal preference which you pick. I've listed the financial reasons. ;-)

Shaun