Vizpark HDR skies in mental ray vs. Vray

I have the entire 30 sky collection from Vizpark. Up until this week I had just been using them in mental ray, They are o.k., but to be honest I have always felt like they could be a bit more colorful when you compare them to the images of rendered house scene on the website and in the .pdf catalogue. Well this week for the first time I have a chance to render one of the pre-set scenes in Vray. WOW!!! Is was like night and day. The Vray looks just like the website and pdf images.

I then spent a few hours tinkering with settings, hping maybe a little adjustment to the Gamma here, a little saturation bump there, brighten the sky a little...nothing. Nothing got me even close.

Has anyone else used the Vizpark HDR skies in mental ray and been successful with getting them to look right? I was in contact with Vizpark, but they have gone dark in terms of responding to me. Hopefully I haven't annoyed them.

What version of Max are you running.

V Ray GI calculation is different to Mental Ray, only the latest release of max will generate better IBL. Other than that, a correct exposure and White balance should produce similar results.

3ds max 2014

You're correct in that you're not going to get the same results between V-Ray and Mental Ray when it comes to using HDRs. This is one area that Mental Ray really suffers. V-Ray, on the other hand, generates really nice results in terms of lighting AND cast shadows from the Sun. In Mental Ray, you always have to supplement the HDR sky with a Sunlight source, if only to generate shadows, and the lighting solution is sub-par at best (and I'm a big fan of Mental Ray).

I think the owner of Vizpark is located in the UK, so I'd give him some time to get back to you. I don't think he "went dark." Also, check out Peter Guthrie's Skies. People are asking the same question over there and some have offered different techniques for using HDRs in Mental Ray. I've yet to see a good workflow though.

Joel

O.k., so I started to play around last night with a standard directional light added to the mental ray scene setup.

This first image is from the Vizpark sight and is what I was hoping to emulate...

This is the image produced out of the box from the Vray setup scene...

Here is the mental ray out of the box...

mental ray with Standard Directional light added and tweaked.

mental ray with Bitmap Output Gamma set to 2.2

I did hear back from Martin at VizPark. He's a great guy and has been helpful in offering suggestions. When I sent him the final mr image he commented that it looked pretty nice, but that the light under the porch looked a bit unrealistic.

In looking at the vray version I am wondering why there is no shadow and if there SHOULD be some light bouncing to the underside of that porch since the sun is right at the horizone and the material is flat and grey. I think this is still a work in progress and is only one sky out of the 30 VizPark offers. I would really appreciate some feed-back, comment, suggestions, anything that can help us explore and refine please.

I am not in my computer now, but what I can tell is, Mental Ray 2014 didnt have a proper IBL system. Compared to VRay that already has. That's why you barely get GI from the skylight in Mental Ray. One way to compensate this, would be only using Final Gather and give around 5 bounces and increase you point of density around 1 about 260 rays or more and adjust interpolation as need it, maybe 150.

This will render a lot slower than VRay of course. Only on Max 2016 and above Mental Ray received a new IBL system that let you use in a better what that type of lighting.

Eddit:

One way to fix this in Max 2014 was making enabled importance from Mental Ray. I wont be in my computer until Monday but you could google importance on Max 2014 and youll find what to eddit on Mental Ray code.

Then youll get a better IBL.

The process was not refined on that version of Max but it made good progress.

Well I setup a quick scene with a similar house model I found on 3dwarehouse. Even tho I don't get the same results than comparing with V Ray, because all thing I explained earlier. My result is not as dark of with little GI like yours.

I am using a free HDRI and Max 2016, but I am not using the new IBL engine, Old FG Skylight, the same from Max 2014.

I am using only a skylight, with the values below:

Point of density =2

Rays= 250

Interpolation=30

Bounces =4

everything else as default.

I applied AO on the base material, just because, you can in Mental Ray