Newbie: whats diff between 3dsmax and viz?

[mooingmilk]

Hi there All,

 

I'm new to this forum so excuse me if my questions are silly.

 

But currently at work we are thinking of moving over to new software. Originally we were thinging about moving to 3dsmax .. But I heard that Autodesk Viz Is exactly the same but with out all the character animation and particals and stuff and is ideal for building house ( Which is what we do mainly at work )

 

Can anyone clarify this ? Is Viz the same as Max?

 

Also how good is Vis at getting realistic renders? and on average how long do render take ? I know that is a hard Q but a rough guide will help

 

Many thanks in advance

 

Moo

[gfa2]

I used VIZ from version 2 to version 2005 and when coupled with vray, you can get just as amazing renderings from VIZ as max. You are correct about not getting the particles and character stuff VIZ. The other main difference is the lack of sub-object animation in VIZ...which is actually why I recently switched to max. If you are wanting to render houses, VIZ sounds perfect for you, plus it is like $1500 cheaper (at least in the US).

 

Rendering times obviously would vary on what you are doing, how complex, material settings, lighting settings. But I've done residential house renderings (model, materials and lighting) in a day.

[Devin Johnston]

One big difference in Viz and Max that made me switch to Max was Maxes ability to handle large amounts of information when network rendering. The last copy of Viz I used was Viz 4 and it had a limit of about 300MB when transferring information during network rendering. Basically when you send a job out and the compressed package is over 300MB Viz couldn’t deal with it and would never complete the operation. Max on the other hand didn't have this limit and can handle large data packets.

[Devin Johnston]

One other thing I forgot was that Max seems to be better optimized than Viz is. When I switched over to Max I was amazed to see that Max would render out the same scene a little faster than Viz did. I don't know if this is the case with Viz2005 but it may be.

[Sawyer]

Moo,

I have been using VIZ regularly for several years and I use MAX also. Nobody mentioned yet what the VIZ advantage is for Architectural Visualization so here I go:

Built-in AEC Components - Window, Wall, Door and Stair making tools with features for Railings & Fencing. These tools really speed the quick development of buildings. Some Foliage and usually some additional models & sample content (RPC) on the CD.

.

 

 

Actually all of that stuff now comes with Max. Althou I don't like using the wall object as the booleans are odd and I have found the geometry unstable.

 

I learned Viz 3 and I bought Max 4 back in the day. Only because all of the rumers were about how they (autodesk) were about to drop viz. Personally I still think they might as they have no real direction for their arch vis department it seems to me.

[mooingmilk]

Hi All,

 

Thank you very much for all your replys they were gratefully received

 

Daniel Bourbonnais Mentioned frustrating bugs with VIZ, I was wondering if anyone knows if there are alot of bugs with the latest version of VIZ.

 

The situation in our office at the moment is that We have been getting alot of formZ bugs and we want a piece of software that is stable. THis is a big move for our department so trying to find out what is best

 

We will be moving from Macs to PC and since we are doing this move we are considering 3dsmax too. In the long run do you think its wise to go for max or VIZ? 3dsmax is £1000 more but might be worth it if it is more stable and can give results faster. And especially when sawyer said that Autodesk might drop VIZ . We want this to be an investment for the future.

 

Again any advice will be of great help

 

Thanks again

 

Moo

 

Are these rumor true at all ?

[Sawyer]

OK I don't know what A.Desk is doing or thing about arch viz stuff. Many times in the past I have kicked myself for paying the extra cash for stuff I really don't use. So I don't want anyone to think I created this rumor. I would have bought viz 4 years ago it hasn't been dropped and I would have saved about $1200. Really one thing that struck me then was people I knew called viz "max light". I didn't want that, thats where my mindset was at at the time. I wanted to play with the big boys which is not something to put in your mission statment. not a great reason to make decisions. But thats me

 

If A.Desk dropped viz (I dont think they will) they would offer a crossgrade price to keep people in the game.