Look At Who's the Newest Member in the VRay Forum

[marcdevon]

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/

 

It's our old buddy Thomas An. Do you think that he's given up on Maxwell?

[Ernest Burden III]

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/

It's our old buddy Thomas An. Do you think that he's given up on Maxwell?

 

Not necessarily. I was reading some of his posts a few days ago as I, too, was checking out vRay for Rhino. Maybe he just likes betatesting renderers.

[Christopher Nichols]

Who is this Thomas character?

[Ernest Burden III]

Who is this Thomas character?

 

BigStoneFace (avatar reference). He used to chase me around the Maxwell forum deleting every post I wrote that annoyed him (which were most of them, it seemed). Other than that he's just a guy, like any other guy. I think he became disallusioned with the NextLimit crew, though. Don't they all... he went underground, seems to have re-appeared on the vRay/Rhino forum posting nice images.

 

Hey Chris--where's my vRay for Cinema, man? How's about Vlado throws us a bone.

[Brian Cassil]

Hey Chris--where's my vRay for Cinema, man? How's about Vlado throws us a bone.

 

Are you not happy with Final Render?

[Ernest Burden III]

Are you not happy with Final Render?

 

When it's not crashing a DR bucket, I love it. It's a v1.0 and has it's flaws. Unfortunately every time I am about to use it for a big, paying render, I find a bug that prevents me. Overall, it's great. But let's just say that knowing a little about vRay is becomeing industry-standard.

[Devin Johnston]

Ernest I wish I had gone with Vray instead of Final Render because honestly I think Vray images are much better looking and easier to create. I've invested so much time though in learning Final Render I can't make my self move over to Vray. Maxwell was going to be my way out but that hasn't happened yet.

[Christopher Nichols]

Ernest I wish I had gone with Vray instead of Final Render because honestly I think Vray images are much better looking and easier to create. I've invested so much time though in learning Final Render I can't make my self move over to Vray. Maxwell was going to be my way out but that hasn't happened yet.

 

To be honest.. Making the jump between brazil, vray, final render, even turtle, etc.. is not that hard. They all have roots in the same Siggraph paper so conceptually it is very similar. Arnold sorta started it all, and from what I can see, Maxwell is a blatant rip off of Arnold.

[Ernest Burden III]

To be honest.. Making the jump between brazil, vray, final render, even turtle, etc.. is not that hard. They all have roots in the same Siggraph paper so conceptually it is very similar. Arnold sorta started it all, and from what I can see, Maxwell is a blatant rip off of Arnold.

 

That's my take as well. FRstage2 has lots of confusing settings, three ways to calc GI, + physical sky but renders nicely and does buckets. In those ways I would think its like vRay.

 

Now Maxwell was going to take me in the opposite direction from those mega-parameters back to the logical simplicity of Lightscape. The way Maxwell works just makes sense, while samples, biases, threshold dials and such do not. But unfortunately Lightscape was killed by Autodesk and Maxwell is being killed by NextLimit.

[Fran]

I kind of bristle when people ask me why I've switched renderers. I don't mind if they say, "Hey, I see you're using [insert renderer here] now. How do you like it?"

 

Thomas, like many people, is probably just looking for a viable, high-quality render plug-in for Rhino. Either that, or the perfect caustic. Good luck with that.

[Devin Johnston]

The settings are the single biggest headache I have on a daily basis. It's almost like every scene has to have custom settings in order for it to look right, materials even seem to look different scene to scene even with the same lighting setup. Cebas assumes that you have used Final Render before and they design their tutorials with this in mind. Anyone who is starting off fresh with Final Render is in a world of hurt because the learning curve is so high and the tutorials really don't explain much at all. My hope was that Maxwell being so simple to setup would save me at least 1/3 to 1/2 the time I usually spend tweaking lights and settings. This is still true but the penalty is you've got render times that are extremely long. Although I will say that Final Render isn't fast at all if you’re only using it with one PC. In fact I doubt that I could finish a single image over night using Final Render if it weren’t for distributed rendering. Has anyone ever compared how slow Maxwell is to Final Render without using distributed rendering and with the AA settings cranked up? I'd be willing to bet it's almost as slow as Maxwell.

[Ernest Burden III]

Has anyone ever compared how slow Maxwell is to Final Render without using distributed rendering and with the AA settings cranked up? I'd be willing to bet it's almost as slow as Maxwell.

I haven't, but FR2st2 (which version are you using) produces very pleasing results with fairly low settings. AdamT described it as "blending the snot out of the samples", hey, it works. And, there are three main GI methods plus two for the secondary bounces, so that's six ways to render. But the settings are beyond me.

I would love to get Chris Nichols vRay DVDs, I bet I could learn just as much about FR2 as vRay. And since I want to learn more about vRay I would have that, too.

[Brian Cassil]

Devin has pretty much described the way 90% of FR users feel. I too now feel somewhat reluctant to switch over to VRAY because of all the pain that went into learning FR, but now that I have it down (for the most part), I do like it.

 

I am going to get VRAY though get comfortable with it, partly because of what Ernest said and that being it has become the industry standard.

[Christopher Nichols]

I haven't, but FR2st2 (which version are you using) produces very pleasing results with fairly low settings. AdamT described it as "blending the snot out of the samples", hey, it works. And, there are three main GI methods plus two for the secondary bounces, so that's six ways to render. But the settings are beyond me.

I would love to get Chris Nichols vRay DVDs, I bet I could learn just as much about FR2 as vRay. And since I want to learn more about vRay I would have that, too.

 

BTW... Vray has just as many ways to do GI. QMC, Irradiance, Photon, and LightCache... Primary and Secondary. There are reasons to use each one. Like I said, they all copy eachother. Even Maxwell, which seems unique, seems to be a copy of Arnold.

[AdamT]

I also use fR-2. It is a bit daunting, but maybe not quite so foreign to Cinema users because Cinema's GI is based on early Cebas GI algorithms.

 

Can't compare speeds of fR-1 vs. fR-2, but judging from Maxer's comments it sounds like fR-2 is a *lot* faster. I can do decent (not great) GI interiors with no artifacts in under 10 minutes. Like most engines times start to multiply when you push for the best quality, but I can't imagine having to wait overnight.

[Devin Johnston]

With 10 CPU's working on an image I can get a 5000x3000 pixel image out in less than 10 hours. If Maxwell can produce a relatively noise free image in 100 hours then with cooperative rendering it should be possible to get the same sized image out in 10 hours with 10 CPU's working on it. If this is the case then I'll definitely be using Maxwell to do most of my work since I've already got the dedicated machines.

 

Just a side note to those using Final Render and distributed rendering, if you using 10 distributed rendering nodes you may find it interesting that the efficiency of each render node is effectively cut in half for every node you use. For instance a dual processor system can render a scene in 5.8 minutes, adding and additional dual core system (now you have 4 CPU's) brings the time down to 3.4 minutes, that's 72% faster than it was before. Adding a 3rd machine reduces your render time by 34%, a 4th machine yields 20%. The big shocker is adding a 5th machine; it will only give you a 5% increase in over all speed. I found this to be a very ineffective way to spend your money, we purchased 4 renderboxxes and the 4th box really seems to do very little for the money. These numbers may not be true in every case, a very large scene may be able to take advantage of the 3rd and 4th box better than a small scene could.

[Christopher Nichols]

I don't understand why Maxwell uses their distributed rendering as an time comparisons against other renderings without distributed rendering. Most of them offer distributed rendering: MR, Vray, FR... it is not an apple to apple comparison.

[Ernest Burden III]

I don't understand why Maxwell uses their distributed rendering as an time comparisons against other renderings without distributed rendering. Most of them offer distributed rendering: MR, Vray, FR... it is not an apple to apple comparison.

 

I agree, you should compare two numbers--a render on ONE CPU, then on as many CPUs/cores as ONE licence buys. With Maxwell that would be four cores, with FR2 its ten. I suppose for technical comparison it would be better then to do four vs four. But when you look at performance/dollar, you want to know what you get per licence.

[Devin Johnston]

Once Maxwell's cooperative rendering is working I plan on doing some comparisons. Right now I think that Final Render is still going to be faster by a little bit but won't it be a big shock if Maxwell winds up being faster.

[Ernest Burden III]

but won't it be a big shock if Maxwell winds up being faster.

 

Maxwell's rs2 is supposed to be really fast on complex scenes. Big poly counts, big light counts. That could come in handy. If it even comes to hand.

[vodka79]

Whats rs2? ver 1.0 or 2.0?

 

Anyone wanting to try using macs as rendering farm? say, mac mini? It has duo cores now and the price is definitely attractive.

[Fran]

I don't understand why Maxwell uses their distributed rendering as an time comparisons against other renderings without distributed rendering. Most of them offer distributed rendering: MR, Vray, FR... it is not an apple to apple comparison.

 

They don't. They compare render times with and without cooperative rendering.

 

As an aside, I've noticed that there is no mention on the Maxwellrender site of patches or bug fixes being included in the pre-order agreement. I wouldn't get my hopes up of ever seeing this miracle RS2 engine without a paid upgrade. Gee, how come I feel this way?

[Guest imanobody]

Whats rs2? ver 1.0 or 2.0?

RS1 was their first render engine that was used in the alpha and beta, but is very limited. RS2 is a totally different engine that is supposed to fix all of RS1's problems, but you're not supposed to see it till ver 2.0. If it has taken this long to get RS1 up and running, you can pretty much guess that it's going to be at least another 2 years before you'll see RS2.

[_PopArt]

Yes i think many people overlook this. Is it normal that this company insists on releasing 1.0 with an engine that they have admitted is a cul-de-sac? I think it would be normal that all of this time was put into a 1.0 release with the best engine they have, there should be only one engine which is released. I know that they have to release something with alot of features and call it 1.0 to make all their obligations to customers, but I think that 2.0 and the new engine is very far off, and because they cannot do all of the features that promised, they're adding on lots of stuff so be able to say 'ok, 1.0 is released, we have no further obligations to our customers'

[Ernest Burden III]

they're adding on lots of stuff so be able to say 'ok, 1.0 is released, we have no further obligations to our customers'

 

How long has it been since they seemed to show any obligation to their customers?

 

 

I've never used MWR alph, beta or so-called RC for anything (a few quick tests only). I used to wonder why there was a pull-down choice for rendering with "rs1 or rs2" but only one of them was working--rs1. Does this indicate how long ago they knew they were going to need to develop a second engine? What else explains that, and it goes back to MAY 2005?

 

EDIT: Actully, both the rs1 and rs2 options are functional. I cannot tell if they actually produce different results. maybe whichever you choose uses the same engine. Odd. That is the beta 1.2.2 under C4D