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

[emti]

Well, yes it does, but it depends on scene (number of details, sort of materials, etc. ...) Anyway vray seems to be the best choice for fast and good quality arch. animations

[IC]

Alex, are you using Fprime?

If so, you should be able to get broadcast res. frames in well below 20 minutes-even with radiosity. And it won't set you back more than £200!

 

My advice is stick with LW at least until release 9. It's going to be almost a complete rewrite and rendering speed is, apparently, going to be a major improvement. The renderer is already a seperate .dll file (not many people noticed as it was done so subtly) which opens up possibilities for using other renderers.

 

You can already use Maxwell with LW but you won't get an increase in render times-far from it. Kray is another, faster option.

 

When you see the amazing results people get using VRay, even with substandard models, it is tempting to change but at the moment, that means changing to the Autodesk stable and everything that brings with it (not least cost!)

 

Check out all the options if you want to change e.g Cinema 4D. It's steadily gaining popularity among the non-Max people.

[mbr]

From my experience using Final Render and a little Vray, they both can do amazing things quickly. But it all depends on the scene, particularly the AA needed.

 

But they all can do amazing things - fR, Vray, Brazil, even Mental Ray. Pixar will have it's $1000 Renderman out soon (although network licenses will probably kill it, like it has MR). It all depends on the user/artist.

 

Also, Vray and Final Render will be standalone renderers for the next release, so you should be able to use them with almost any 3D package. Should be cool.

[alexoctagon]

IC:

Yes, I do use FPrime but I find that it takes hours to get rid of the noise in the renders.

 

I am definately interested in what LW9 will do. The blurb says that there will be good advance in rendering speed, and Ben Vost has emailed me saying that he thinks this will apply to GI rendering as well as raytracing.

 

I certainly am not ecstatic at the thought of learning a new 3D program, particularly because for most of my work Lightwave is perfect, it's just this architectural rendering. I've played with the 3ds Max demo and although it's obviously a good program it does feel totally alien after Lightwave. And of course it costs 5 times as much!

 

MBR:

 

VRay and Final render to be standalone, do you have any more info on this?

[IC]

Alex

Hope you don't think I was being condescending. It's just you didn't mention FPrime.

 

The number of Monte Carlo bounces is the critical thing I find. If I leave it at 1 and boost the ambient light, I can get really fast, clean results.

If I put it to 2 or 3 bounces I get Still quality images but exponentially longer render times.

FPrime is getting much faster already though, which I didn't expect.

 

I tried Max before anything else and didn't like it so I'll wait for the standalone VRay before I think about dumping LW (but it has been promised for a while now!)