Need some advice from the PRO's!

[Devin Johnston]

My firm has been trying to break into the national stage for a few years now and it looks like our chance has finally come. I’ve been working by my self as the sole CG person for about 4 years here and I’ve been asked what it would take for our firm to graduate its CG capabilities to the next level. Specifically they want to know what software, hardware, and additional personal I would need in order to be competitive with CG firms that produce high end photorealistic animations.

My dilemma is what software to purchase in order to help me reach my goals. I have Final Render and Maxwell, but I’ve never been able to get a flicker free animation out of Final Render and Maxwell is still not there yet. My two choices for additional software are Vray and Vue 5 Infinite, of which I know very little about either one. I see wonderful stills from Vray all the time but very few animations and I don’t wan to go and purchase new software if it’s going to have similar problems as the software I’m already using. Vue looks great for creating nice exterior environments, but I don’t like the limited render node situation and I’m not convinced that the GI engine it uses is capable of producing nice high end images.

To make things worse I’m expected to hand in a game plan for all of this by Wednesday and I just found out today. I really need some advice from those of you who have had to make these decisions before and know something about the software.

[gfa2]

I'm probably bias, but I'd say you gotta go with Vray. Bake your light for flicker free animations and you are good to go. Plus with the distributed rendering you can get 10 PC's (not CPU's) to all do a cooperative rendering right on your screen while you watch.

 

Not to mention the GI and materials are awesome.

 

Forgot to mention....I'm no pro

[Devin Johnston]

How hard is it to learn Vray, I know with Final Render I spent about a year figuring out how it worked and I'm not very eager to repeat that process but I may not have any choice.

[gfa2]

How hard is it to learn Vray, I know with Final Render I spent about a year figuring out how it worked and I'm not very eager to repeat that process but I may not have any choice.

 

I hear ya, I'm going on about a year and a half with Vray and I'm just getting to where I really know what I'm doing. I'd suggest getting Chris Nichol's DVD's (you can get vray and the DVD's from the Vismaster's store). You'll get up to speed pretty quick with that resource. Plus you already have GI knowledge.

[brianzajac]

Although I can't give you all the answers, I can show you an animation example that was done in VRay recently. Take a look by going here: http://3das.com/gallery_animations.asp. The animation at the top was done in VRay. I've personally shown this animation to many developers, real estate agents, and the general public. Most of them couldn't believe that it is all CG.

 

For a more comprehensive answer on your other questions, you should take a look at Brian Smith's book: http://friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1590595572. He has information on marketing and production tips that might help (near the end of the book).

[Ernest Burden III]

You already use Max, it looks like you have to add vray. I have a collegue who swears by Brazil for being bullet-proof, so that could be an option. But its getting to be a vray world. If you've managed to get anything out of FR then you will probably be OK with vray. I'll be joining you soon, it looks like. FR2 isn't going to cut it (though I am happy with its ability to animate GI, just not fond of crashes) and Maxwell is a parlor game. NeoScape won the 3D Awards (both still and anim) last year with vray...it obviouls works just fine for arch. animation.

 

Probably more important than exactly what software or how many new computers you need is a plan for how you would produce this new work. All the PC power and manpower in the world won't make a studio work by itself.

[tecton3d]

FR2 isn't going to cut it (though I am happy with its ability to animate GI, just not fond of crashes)...

Maxer ~ I'll be interested to see what render engine you end up with ... esp. since you're aware of FR's quirks and inherent risks with trying to base a studio off it

[Devin Johnston]

I have a love hate relationship with FR, I've done some of my best work with it but I had to go through hell in order to get it to do what I wanted. Maxwell was supposed to be my savior and it could still be but I'm very weary when it comes to trusting it when deadlines are looming. Vue looks very interesting, it's the only program I've seen that can handle a massive amount of foliage and not crash. I'm a little worried that the quality of the GI isn't what I'm looking for and I don't like the thought of having to purchase multiple node licenses just to use my render farm. Vray is the only product that I'm attracted to that seems to produce high quality with the minimum of negatives, but I'm not very excited about learning a new program.

[Sawyer]

Vray is the only product that I'm attracted to that seems to produce high quality with the minimum of negatives, but I'm not very excited about learning a new program.

 

But aren't you basically saying that you need to update your workflow and learn something new?

 

Vray is not impossible to learn. I use it daily sometimes even well.

[Devin Johnston]

Yea, I guess I should be excited but when I think about all the time I spent on Maxwell and Final Render it kind of makes me ill to think about starting over with another program.

[Ernest Burden III]

Yea, I guess I should be excited but when I think about all the time I spent on Maxwell and Final Render it kind of makes me ill to think about starting over with another program.

 

I'm with you on that. But I want to be able to get my work done. What is the best way to do that? My current thinking is vRay, so I'm going to learn it, too. I'm not terribly interested in what might be hot soup in ...some days... since now is when I'm a working pro. What works today?

[DavidR]

Well, if you want to do animation, I'd say Vray or mental ray. We use Vray for high-res stills, but animation is another thing, and maybe you need to look at a mature product like mental ray (Max 8 licensing makes mr attractive) and get comfortable with rendering in layers and doing post in Combustion or AE, for example. Vue works with mr, so that might be a big plus. I bought a license of Maxwell because it's soooo frickin cool, but I'm not making money with it -save it for your own brochures and other handouts, where res is lower and you can wait 5 days for a clean 2k render. For production I'd definitely look at proven production renderers, and there aren't many -Vray is starting to make some inroads (check David Rosenman's work=great), so I think from a budget/production POV, that leaves you Vray and mr.

[skogskalle]

Vue looks very interesting, it's the only program I've seen that can handle a massive amount of foliage and not crash.

 

ive never used Vue... but I know that Vray can handle ALOT of foliage too. By converting your trees, bushes (or whatever objects youre working with) to "Vray proxies" you can render many many millions of polys with no problem. They take a little longer to render compared to normal geometry, but look the same and never (atleast for me) crashes. Ive seen examples on the vray forum where people have rendered huge forrests with hundreds or thousands of highpoly trees without problem.

 

Ive used Vray for a couple of years now, and I really like it. Its not perfect, it still has a few bugs, but its fast, produces very good results and is not too hard to learn. And (unlike with maxwell for example) you get great support from the developers.

[AJLynn]

But with Vue, the distributed render technology is called "Infinite Render Cow", which is a big bonus.

[Justin Hunt]

Dont overlook Brazil, it took me a day of playing and working through the manual to get up to speed with it. The image quality is second to none, although it can be a little slow. The thing I like about it is that you are not tied into using only Brazil materials (unlike Vray) it works well with standard materials as well. Brazil2 is very promising and will spark another Render War with Vray.

 

MentalRay for animations, due to the unliumited render nodes and AO. Although if you use RPC's you will need a separate licence for them, crazy but true.

 

I have also thought about Vue, just for the foliage so it would be interesting to hear other opinions on the matter. The other option is Onyx tree.

 

I am in the process of learning Vray, I like the lighting quality and the speed of the GI but I am finding the materials a headake to achieve the results I want. I have been playing for a month now and with the knowlage I have developed from MentalRay and Brazil, VRay isnt that hard, just a little unintuitive. The learning curve is steep but not impossible. I am still undecided if I am going to adopt it into my workflow.

 

As to hardware, it all depends on your budget, get the best you can afford.

 

The people side of things also depends on your current work load and how much you are expecting to increase. The average number, in all the places I have worked, is 4. This is for both In-house and studio. I would recommend having upper managment leadership, support and involvment. This will leave you and your team to concentrate on the 3D and them to bring in and manage to work/clients. It would help if they know and understand all that is involved in 3D, just so that they don't make impossible promises to clients. Get this right and you will be up and running in not time

 

JHV

[Ernest Burden III]

But with Vue, the distributed render technology is called "Infinite Render Cow", which is a big bonus.

 

Really? Then to hell with vray--I'll go with anything called 'Render Cow'. Can Vue make a 'Money Tree'? Well, can it?

[AJLynn]

I didn't say it was a big enough bonus to offset Vray's render technology and Max compatibility I've been trying to use mental ray correctly (right now it's the best thing I have in the office) and it's been making me really appreciate how good Vray is.

[Simon Moir]

Vray, no question. We bought Vue Inf & xStream hoping for great things, but the support and documentation is terrible and import/ export is very clunky. It has the potential to be a great tool, but at the moment it leaves me cold. Vray support & forums are top notch and you can't really fault the quality or speed. These movies http://www.lastpixel.com.au/ recently blew everyone's mind at the forum.

[DavidR]

Dont overlook Brazil The thing I like about it is that you are not tied into using only Brazil materials (unlike Vray) it works well with standard materials as well. Brazil2 is very promising and will spark another Render War with Vray.

JHV

Vray works fine with standard materials if you use a Vray map in the reflection slot instead of a raytrace map. Vray materials are very simple except for when I want sss -I don't use it much, so I find it as confusing as Max's array tool! Are you a Brazil2 beta tester, because I can't find very much info on Brazil2. For arch viz, Brazil lost it's dominance to Vray years ago -ancient history.

[John Dollus]

If you are looking at Vue, then you need to strongly consider Mental Ray as it works great with it. Also, if you are spreading your wings, you need to consider post processing as well. Mental Ray works great with Combustion but Vray still lacks the proper support for RPF channel data (at least in the current point release). With Combustion and Mental Ray, you can handle all of your motion blur and dof effects in post. Rendering those in Vray can be a pita and exteemely time consuming.

If you are wanting to compete on a larger scale, you will need to concentrate on fast, high quality revisions and that extra 15% you get from a great post system.

[Simon Moir]

If you are looking at Vue, then you need to strongly consider Mental Ray as it works great with it. Also, if you are spreading your wings, you need to consider post processing as well. Mental Ray works great with Combustion but Vray still lacks the proper support for RPF channel data (at least in the current point release). With Combustion and Mental Ray, you can handle all of your motion blur and dof effects in post. Rendering those in Vray can be a pita and exteemely time consuming.

If you are wanting to compete on a larger scale, you will need to concentrate on fast, high quality revisions and that extra 15% you get from a great post system.

 

I haven't compared it to a Mental Ray RPF render sequence, so I can't comment on comparative quality, but I add motion blur to Vray sequences in Combustion using (coverage, node, velocity & Z) RPFs no problem. Combustion is to Animations what Photoshop is to Renders, I love it and I'm sure I only use 10% of it's power. It's also silly cheap.

[John Dollus]

Material Id's and UV Coordinates are biggies that have been missing for some time. Have those been fixed in the last public release of Vray? Being able to swap out artwork and other finishes completely in post is great!

 

I was thinking about this a bit over lunch. Many of the concepts from MR, Final Render and Vray are quite interchangeable so it won't be quite like learning something new. Since MR comes at no cost and Vray is the lowest cost of the other options, I would suggest adding it to your budget so your toolbox contains a claw hammer and a ball pean hammer.

Having used Vray for a couple years and now Mental Ray, it really doesn't matter much. You can tune any engine to purr if you put forth the effort. You're success will depend more upon the team you build than the tools you will use.

Vue would be a nice addition for the environmental aspects but it would not replace FR, Vray, Maxwell or Mental Ray by any means.

[Justin Hunt]

Vray works fine with standard materials if you use a Vray map in the reflection slot instead of a raytrace map. Vray materials are very simple except for when I want sss -I don't use it much, so I find it as confusing as Max's array tool! Are you a Brazil2 beta tester, because I can't find very much info on Brazil2. For arch viz, Brazil lost it's dominance to Vray years ago -ancient history.

 

No I am not a tester, I have applied and still waiting to hear back. I am basing my impressions on what "the Orphanage" are doing with Brazil2. They have been using it in production for some time now.

 

As for Vray Materials, they are too simple, if that makes sence. I am beyond slapping glossy reflections on everything and saying it looks good. At the moment I am thinking/working out a very complex material for weathered floorboards that takes into account dusk, wear and tear, splits around the nails, uneven reflections that combine both glossy and sharp reflections, the list goes on.

 

I did a little test with another simple material and the time difference between using a standard material with Vmapfor reflection compared to a full Vray material was astounding, almost double. Vray is great for lighting but falls short in materials.

 

JHV

[edub]

Although I can't give you all the answers, I can show you an animation example that was done in VRay recently. Take a look by going here: http://3das.com/gallery_animations.asp. The animation at the top was done in VRay. I've personally shown this animation to many developers, real estate agents, and the general public. Most of them couldn't believe that it is all CG.

 

For a more comprehensive answer on your other questions, you should take a look at Brian Smith's book: http://friendsofed.com/book.html?isbn=1590595572. He has information on marketing and production tips that might help (near the end of the book).

 

not to hijack this thread, but why is it that you have a quicktime codec which can only be downloaded for PC's? Is there a Mac version of that codec?... I'd be interested to see your animations.

[Nic H]

Vray would be my choice hands down:

 

1.Price - Excellent price point

 

2.Support - Vray has excellent forums and a huge user base, especially amongst those doing arch viz, there is always someonearound on chaos or cgarchitect to help you out.

 

3.Speed + Quality, once you get the hang of the basics you can produce quiet good images very quickly, then incrementally learn the more advanced settings and nuances while working. I find it very easy to use.

 

However I do find the whole process of precalculating IMAPs for animations (camera moving only, every 10th frame etc) really annoying, I wish it was more streamlined in this respect.

 

I have to disagree with Justin re: vray materials being 'to simple'. This sint true, they are basically the same as standard materials but with glossy reflection and glossy highlight slots.

 

Glossies can be disabled to 'dont trace' to get the specular effect without the rednering time. I use 'dont trace reflections' alot in animations to speed thigns up.

 

Just get vray you wont regret it!