Vray - best for Architectural Rendering?

[alexoctagon]

I know these posts are often the start of fierce debate but I would really appreciate some level headed advice on this.

 

I've been using Lightwave for 8 years and it has and continues to be great for raytracing. But for radiosity (architectural viz), it's way to slow. After reading loads of things about Maxwell, Mental Ray, Brazil, they look great but it sounds as if they are too slow for animation work. From what I understand Max/Vray is a very reasonable quality for an acceptable render time - sub 20mins per frame for broadcast?

 

Does this all sound correct?

 

Cheers for any help in advance,

Alex

[mbr]

No, that doesn't sound correct to me. Possible of course, but there are too many things to consider to make a broad generalization. Final Render, Brazil, and Vray are all exceptionally fast, I really don't think you could accurately determine which one is faster. Even Mental Ray can be fast in the hands of an experienced artist.

I'd even consider Pixar's Renderman (the new, cheap one), but I fear that network licensing will kill it (like it's killed Mental Ray, for the most part).

 

I will say that I haven't noticed a huge difference in difficulty between Final Render and Vray, as far as learning goes. People have said Vray was easy to learn, but I am not finding that. I'd guess they are all more or less the same, as far as difficulty goes.

 

One thing I noticed, though, is that Vray has the best support from the community, but I believe that's more to do with 'other' reasons, just as Maxwell was/is in the spotlight recently.

[chuck]

I really like Vray. I'm not sure about maxwell, but it's still beta. I'd be really surprised if it could challenge vray from a speed aspect. Sure it's easier to set up, and "physically accurate", but when you become good at vray and you're rendering animations, setup time becomes a small part of the equation.

 

I've spent some time on mental ray, but vray ended up easier and faster.

 

I wish photometrics didn't kill rendering times in Vray though, not sure how much they effect other renderers...

 

20mins a frame seems reasonable. Glossy reflections really slow things down, but several of my arch renderings (1200x900) take around 5 mins on a dual 3.4 xeon. These are usually exterior shots with a spotlight and GI.

 

This shot took under 10 mins to render at 1200x900, Vray free. There isn't any lighitng other than a spot and GI, but there are a lot of reflections.

 

I'm open to sharing the model if anyone would like to compare renderers and times....

 

Chuck

[AJLynn]

Chuck- can you share the galss and water materials? I didn't realize you could do them that well that quickly in Vray Free (and I told my department computer guy I'd write him a Vray Free w/ Viz 2005 tutorial).

[Devin Johnston]

I'm a current user of Final Render and Maxwell and although Maxwell is painfully slow right now I don't think it's going to be that way once the final version has been released. Most everyone who has a negative comment about Maxwell states it's speed as it's biggest handicap. I'll be the first to admit that as it is today Maxwell is only good as a toy to play with when you have a lot of spare time. Having said that I must point out that all the other render engines are implementing their own features that are designed to directly compete with Maxwell, and the only reason they would do this is because they see the potential threat that it poses to their product. I believe that when the final version of Maxwell is released it will be just as fast as Vray 1.0 was or Final Render Stage 0 which will give it the speed it needs to be used in production. Animation with Maxwell is already possible to a very limited extent but I'm pretty sure that this to will be fixed when it's all said and done. The only problem I see with Maxwell is the licensing scheme they have in place. Currently you get 4 CPU licenses with each copy which means that if you have a 100 CPU render farm you would have to buy 25 copies at $995 per copy to enable your entire render farm to be able to network render with Maxwell. This is something that I hope will change since when Maxwell first came out you only got 2 CPU licenses per copy and after a few months they changed their policy to 4. I will still keep my copy of Final Render around but I hope that 95% of my work will eventually be handled by Maxwell.

[ecastillor]

I really like Vray. I'm not sure about maxwell, but it's still beta. I'd be really surprised if it could challenge vray from a speed aspect. Sure it's easier to set up, and "physically accurate", but when you become good at vray and you're rendering animations, setup time becomes a small part of the equation.

 

I've spent some time on mental ray, but vray ended up easier and faster.

 

I wish photometrics didn't kill rendering times in Vray though, not sure how much they effect other renderers...

 

20mins a frame seems reasonable. Glossy reflections really slow things down, but several of my arch renderings (1200x900) take around 5 mins on a dual 3.4 xeon. These are usually exterior shots with a spotlight and GI.

 

This shot took under 10 mins to render at 1200x900, Vray free. There isn't any lighitng other than a spot and GI, but there are a lot of reflections.

 

I'm open to sharing the model if anyone would like to compare renderers and times....

 

Chuck

 

amazing....how did you get the sky to reflect on the water like that?

[chuck]

to get the water to reflect the environment...you need an environment. i just create a hemisphere and map a sky to it. you'll probably have to play with it's self illumintaion to get it right. looking at the rendering, you can see how the glass reflects the oranges/reds of the horizon too.

 

i'll post the settings when i get a chance...

 

chuck