Why aren't people using Mental Ray

[Sketchrender]

A dodgy Question .......

I use vray, but why aren't people using Mental ray as a general renderer For Max 8 or7.

Is there any real reasonas i have never given it a fare test to be honest.

Is it worth it?

You do have unlimited render nodes with Max 8 I believe.

 

 

phil

[Ricardo Eloy]

Imho, MR is one of the hardest renderers around. It requires a great deal of time and knowledge to handle it, and most of us (archviz peeps) simply need a fast/easy engine. Maybe that's why M~R caught so much attention. We all know it can do amazing stuff, but few have the time to learn it and master it in order to get fast and good results. Although, you see some renderings made with it, but normally people using Maya...

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

one of the main reasons we chose Vray was the licensing issue with Mental ray. i can't remember what the exact specs are, but at some point you have to purchase additional licenses of MR to network render.

 

Vray has unlimited network rendering.

[IceAged]

I use it for most projects. With MAX 8 there's no limit to the number of licenses you can have, so it's no problem to use it on a render farm. Plus it's easy to use other computers to significantly speed up test renders...

 

My first post, btw... been visiting this site for quite a while though. I'm a 3D architectural visualiser primarily working with MAX and Mental Ray

[manta]

yes, I think its a combination of the earlier licencing issuses (like a $1,000 / licence) and its not so user friendliness, when the other renderers came out people just jumped on them, and now I think they have lost their foothold, atleast in this industry (Arch Viz)

[STRAT]

in my experience i think a good proportion of maxers are using MR, it's just Vray has more of an appealing image to users.

[manta]

in my experience i think a good proportion of maxers are using MR, it's just Vray has more of an appealing image to users.

 

Are you speaking of arch viz or just in general, I did a quick search of the gallery, and I know its not a very accurate measurment tool, but there are 1700 images there created with vray, and 120 created with MR...which is pretty much what I expected.

[mtutaj]

I'm using Finalrender. Glad I stuck it out to the new release. What a difference.

 

Mike

[nisus]

Hi,

 

I'm into MR too. I like it. Reason why people find it so hard to use, is because it is TOO simple. Most of us where trained to do all kind of workarounds to get the desired results. MR goes straight to it's goal, so simple that we think we forgot something, or can't believe it's true. So basicly, people make it harder than it should be. And than it becomes slow!

 

To me, the steap learning curve of MR is nothing but the unlearning of all fake tricks that 3d-software is packed with. It's really extremely basic.

BUT MR got the name of being hard, and VR of being easy. Overcoming THAT status seems harder to me...

I just thought without this pre-idea of the renderers:

- why not use a free engine (VR is additional cost)

- why would it be bad, if it is everywhere?

- ...

 

The probs with the licenses has been solved since MR3.4 (i.e. max8).

The lack of documentation is a fact, although there does not NEED to be a lot, because it's so simple. Just DO NOT trust the max user-guide on MR. No exposure control, No daylightsystems,...

 

rgds,

 

nisus

[Joseph Petrino]

In my office we struggled with MR for a few months. We missed deadlines and delivered bad images. We switched to Vray and after the learning curve, life became much better.

[CHE]

The probs with the licenses has been solved since MR3.4 (i.e. max8).

The lack of documentation is a fact, although there does not NEED to be a lot, because it's so simple. Just DO NOT trust the max user-guide on MR. No exposure control, No daylightsystems,...

 

Hi Nisus,

 

I have not use Mental Ray since 3dsmax 6. I basically used it for exterior renderings. I also did some interiors with ambient occlusion (dirt map) but that was about it. I found it to be very slow and the materials a bit complicated. We recently got Viz 2007 at the office and I have been thinking about giving Mental Ray a try again. What have been improved since the 3dsmax6 version? It would be great if you could elaborate a bit more about your work flow with Mental Ray.

 

Thanks,

Ernesto

[nisus]

Hi Che,

 

Well, since max6 MR changed a lot...

m6 - MR3.2 was BAD... colors went crazy etc... rendering times not good (at least, i could not get them good)

m7 - MR3.3 a lot quicker! Change in GI en FG and the way how lights works... a HUGE jump forward imho

m8 - MR3.4 basicly the same as 3.3 with some VERY good changes about memory savings, FG speed, FG bounces etc. the layout how to use it, also makes A LOT more sense...

 

For my workflow: it depends on the projects... I do FG only, sometimes GI when i got the time...

 

- interior: global AO + sunlight (+ sky)

- ext: sunlight + sky

- ext night: sky + omnis + material glare

 

rgds,

 

nisus

[CHE]

Nice, I'll give it a try over the weekend. Thanks for sharing.

[nisus]

to start: use LOW FG settings: i.e. 5 or 10, NOT like in the manuals!!!

 

nisus

[abicalho]

I think people did not use mental ray before because it required extra $ for the licenses.

 

Now that you do not need that extra $, people think mental ray is complicated, because they think they need to use complex shader trees, etc, where in fact all they need to do is use the regular MAX materials and lights. All you have to do is use Arch Mats, Phot Lights and you're done.

[nisus]

Hi Alex,

 

Are you sure about the arch.mats? These gave me loooottts of trouble in MR.

But i did not use photometric lights of course. Imho these were slow.

 

But i do agree with you: MR is that simple that it works perfectly with standard mats and lights. And if you want to go on (nice water, glass, caustics, metals, blurs,...) you have it just as easy...

 

Hard is to get rendering times down, because the defaults are high to test with... I recommend FG values of 5 to 20 to test, works smooth ,-)

 

rgds,

 

nisus

[Justin Hunt]

What is so hard with MR?, to me it has been the shorted, flattest learning curve ever. Even quicker to learn that scanline.

 

AO is the biggest advantage MR has over Vray, Brazil and others. It negates the need to wait hours and hours for full blown GI renders. MR is solid and predictable.

 

Brazil was the next easiest renderer that I learnt , a day. I am in the early stages of learning Vray I am finding it the hardest. There are too many settings in the rendreer and the Vray materials dont offer enough. The results are unpredictable and painfully slow.

 

The reason Vray has become the most used render for arch viz is down to marketing. Brazil, Vray and Finalrender all started more or less around the same time. Finalrender and Brazil got huge acclaim but Vray was slow from the blocks. Shortly later Finalrender started loosing ground as its learning curve was deamed too steep. Brazil got picked up by the movie and FX industry and Vray released Vray Free.

 

Finally people could get a top of the line GI render for free, even if it was a little limited. Much later Brazil Rio came out, but was too limited. Finalrender plodded along and almost dissapeared into the eather.

 

Over time all those who were using Vray free moved onto Vray Advanced and Vray cleaned up the market share.

 

So at the end of the day Vray, Brazil and Finalrender are not better or worse than the each other. There is a sad trend in the Arch Viz industry of "if everyone is using it then it must be good" and "if too many bitch about it then it must be bad". This explains why MR still has the "crap", "too diificult", and "Badly implemented" tags of two to three years ago. We are a bunch of sheep.

 

JHV

[vizwhiz]

if people in the film industry are using mental ray for movies

(read large files lots of frames and lots of rendering hours)

 

Then it should be fairly fast and easy

To render a building That is not moving

 

**

 

i am still learning mental ray but it is more a matter of

consistently spending enough Time using it to understand it

 

randy

[Spacelord]

I've used vray for 2 years and Mental ray for 1 year.

Thats rough on the vray material, I find it one of the easiest materials, everything is there in the one material. You try creating a material like that using mental ray. I'm using XSI and theres a guy that has been trying to recreate a similiar material, you should see the bloody nodes he has put together, its 30 odd nodes

http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=12;action=display;threadid=24985;start=30#lastPost

XSI is ment to have the best implementation of mental ray and it still requires loads of work. Vray has great settings, you want to do some animation with FG, you put the animation setting on, no tweaking fg min and max radius or accuracy, sure with vray you still have the option to tweak if the default settings aren't getting it right.

If there was a vray for XSI I would have it !!

[Justin Hunt]

There is a difference between the impementation of MR in XSI and that of Max.

 

XSI has gone much further in implementing all the features of MR where as Max could be consided a hybrid of MR and Max core.

 

What I meant about Vray Materials is that its too simple, almost one size fits all solution in comparison to the mirriad of setting in the render dialogue. There is too much room for error and too much time is taken up tweeking settings to get the balance of quality to render time. If you get one setting wrong you can spend the next three days working out which one.

 

JHV

[manta]

What is so hard with MR?, to me it has been the shorted, flattest learning curve ever. Even quicker to learn that scanline.

AO is the biggest advantage MR has over Vray, Brazil and others. It negates the need to wait hours and hours for full blown GI renders. MR is solid and predictable.

Brazil was the next easiest renderer that I learnt , a day. I am in the early stages of learning Vray I am finding it the hardest. There are too many settings in the rendreer and the Vray materials dont offer enough. The results are unpredictable and painfully slow.

The reason Vray has become the most used render for arch viz is down to marketing. Brazil, Vray and Finalrender all started more or less around the same time. Finalrender and Brazil got huge acclaim but Vray was slow from the blocks. Shortly later Finalrender started loosing ground as its learning curve was deamed too steep. Brazil got picked up by the movie and FX industry and Vray released Vray Free.

Finally people could get a top of the line GI render for free, even if it was a little limited. Much later Brazil Rio came out, but was too limited. Finalrender plodded along and almost dissapeared into the eather.

Over time all those who were using Vray free moved onto Vray Advanced and Vray cleaned up the market share.

So at the end of the day Vray, Brazil and Finalrender are not better or worse than the each other. There is a sad trend in the Arch Viz industry of "if everyone is using it then it must be good" and "if too many bitch about it then it must be bad". This explains why MR still has the "crap", "too diificult", and "Badly implemented" tags of two to three years ago. We are a bunch of sheep.

JHV

 

I happen to think its a matter of too little too late, very little documentation, licencing issues that were just recently fixed, and the fact that so many people including myself found it too difficult to deal with that we went out and bought something, rather than use something that's free, speaks volumes...

The fact of the matter is that Mental ray is a very robust industry standard renderer much like PRman, it has its own language and shaders, and the people who use it in the film industry are TD's...

 

If you found it to be that easy, (and this is not a dig) maybe you should pursue a career as a TD, I'm sure you would do well...

 

And hey could we see some examples of AO in action, maybe even an animation using AO, and how long each frame took to render, to give us an idea of the time savings...

 

These are my opinions and do not reflect the opinions of the entire human race...Thanx

[Justin Hunt]

manta - don't worry I have thick skin

 

These are using AO, no GI. The exterior shot took 20minutes to render @ A3 300dpi res and the interior 3hrs at same res.

 

I have used the interior to test Brazil and Vray. (I don't have access to those renders at the moment) The Brazil render took 5 hours and I am still stuggling to get the Vray one to render. Once I have come to grips with Vray I will post all the comparisson images and stats.

 

The thing to remeamber with AO is that it is a Fake. You still have to light the scene the old fashioned way. One the whole I can render high res images in minutes rather than hours. I like MR and found it easy, I am not a TD by any stretch of the imagination. I have never done or needed to program a shader, as I can do everything in the Mat editor. 90% of the work I do does not allow the luxury of GI so I have had to find every shotcut under the sun to produce the work in the shortest amount of time, with the quality and flexibility to allow for a constantly changing design. When I do have the time for GI, I still don't want to wait ages for a solution. I am too impatient for that:)

 

JHV

[Spacelord]

Okay gotcha,

Yep things are different once you start using FG and I think most

of the people here will be using FG for Vis. So your more or less comparing

Vrays ambient occlusion with Mental Rays. I don't even know if vray has AO.

MRs and Vrays Final gather are very different beasts to tweek.

 

Vray material doesn't take to long to get use too, once you do its hard to go back.

[nisus]

Hi All,

 

You try creating a material like that using mental ray

Try a MR-material with a DGS-map! Extremely flexible ,-)

 

And hey could we see some examples of AO in action, maybe even an animation using AO, and how long each frame took to render, to give us an idea of the time savings...

 

Even here you got different options:

- AO as light shader

- AO as diffuse multiplier

- AO as baked light solution

- ...

 

For baked light: think minutes to seconds > 5min will go to about 5sec

 

To Justin,

 

How do you apply your AO in your images?

 

rgds,

 

nisus

[Spacelord]

The DGS doesn't do transparencies, IOR values and no fresnel effect.

Its a good start, but the mib_glossy_reflection is better.