Render engine comparisons

[Adehus]

Absurd is in the eye of the beholder, but in my opinion, 'absurd' is soft peddling it... the render times for interiors I've tested have been so far beyond acceptable that it's frankly laughable... and this is with a 1024x768 resolution. I'm talking about 60-100 hr waits and still having very pronounced noise in the scene. 1.1 is supposed to be a bit quicker (haven't used it yet) but I haven't seen anything that would suggest it's significantly more useable.

 

At this point, I think the best solution for using Maxwell for interiors is to get to know either Maxer or Daros and their renderfarms.

[Ernest Burden III]

I'm pretty sure that the more the light bounces around inside of a scene, the longer it takes to clear up.

 

That's true of every other product I've used for GI. So is more computers = faster results, wait two years for better hardware. Anything that speeds up Maxwell should speed up the rest, too.

 

Now what's interesting is the promise of 600 lights not SLOWING the engine down. That's new.

[Adehus]

That's true of every other product I've used for GI. So is more computers = faster results, wait two years for better hardware. Anything that speeds up Maxwell should speed up the rest, too..

 

I suppose that's true (re bounces in interiors) but with most other programs you can usually control the number of bounces (either directly or indirectly) to minimize the time hit, can't you?

 

It irritates me to no end that NL removed bounce control from the app.

[kwistenbiebel]

It irritates me to no end that NL removed bounce control from the app.

 

That's not 100% correct.

The RS-0 engine still let's you preset bounces.

In studio add -RS:0 to the console.

Actually RS0 renders highlights and bumpmaps faster. It also seems to enhance contrast to the resulting image. Renderings with the default RS1 engine seam to give more 'washed out' results.(imho)

[Adehus]

That's not 100% correct.

The RS-0 engine still let's you preset bounces.

In studio add -RS:0 to the console.

Actually RS0 renders highlights and bumpmaps faster. It also seems to enhance contrast to the resulting image. Renderings with the default RS1 engine seam to give more 'washed out' results.(imho)

 

Interesting... so do you have to set bounces in the console as well? If so, could you tell me how?

 

If you've used RS0 for final rendering much, could you expand a bit on your experiences with it, in terms of speed, quality, and how it interprets materials?

[santiago]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Someone mentioned that Maxwell and Vray work differently, and therefore shouldn't be compared. I disagree in the sense that you can choose either one for to achieve the same thing, and each may have different approaches to achieve the same goal, but it's still the same goal.

 

For what I understand so far, Maxwell tries to act like a photographic camera. This is probably the way to go in the coming years, I can only say this as an educated guess, nothing is written in stone for the future of CG technology for sure. But there is a point to realize, to date CG is used to approximate reality, as opposed to represent it accurately, and Vray is a great example of this. Some may also call this "faking" or "cheating" reality, but I rather just call it an approximation. I've tested Vray before, and it seemed that every control offered is a means to approximate towards reality, or also an artisitc result as well of course, but I'm mainly interested in protraying reality, and Vray is an approximation tool for this. The same happens with 3dsmax or Viz for that matter, we approximate 3D objects with surfaces made of polygons.

If we really wanted reality, the software we use would calculate based on molecular structure, but our computers aren't fast enough yet for that approach, so that's for the future. For this reason I am ok with approximation, and so I really don't find anything faulty with Vray as is, it can be used to make pretty decent approximations, and the setup time as far as I've tested it were not so long.

But I do like Maxwell's approach.

 

The info on Maxwell not being practical for animation is extremely important. That spec alone is enough to make my decision for Vray at this moment.

Having said that, I think even though we purchase Vray, which would be very soon, I'll continually keep an eye on Maxwell, its price and that of Vray are not too high for the kind of software they are, perhaps somewhere in the $400 to $500 range would be more fair comparing it to other graphics programs, in terms of usefulness and impact on company bottom line for its currently most important markets.

 

I use Inventor for my architectural models, so I'd only be using Vray for renders when each project I work in is close to or at completion. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that neither Maxwell nor Vray work with Inventor, so we'll also be purchasing Autodesk VIZ, I haven't seen any reasons for purchasing 3dsmax, if any of you have any valid reasons for purchasing 3dsmax, please let me know, if this is not the forum section to answer that, perhaps you could point me to a forum topic that may be more appropriate for that topic.

 

Again thanks for the responses, this forum is extremely helpful!

[AJLynn]

To be fair, there are things that will speed up a Maxwell render. For example, if your light is from emitters, the larger the emitter, the faster the render - which is why it works so well for the product vis guys and anybody else lighting with a diffuse box. I recently had to do renders of an interior where the entire ceiling was luminous (backlit translucent) and used a huge planar light source for it - that would have rendered fast in Maxwell. (But most interiors don't have a full luminous ceiling.)

[Adehus]

There are techniques to speed up rendering, but not without compromising the integrity of your image/design (unless your design does call for an illuminated ceiling...)

 

I can speed it up by removing walls that aren't visible in my view (and let the light just bounce out into space...), but then I have a completely unrealistic light simulation. It may be unbiased in terms of MWR's light calculations, but lets face it, it couldn't be more biased in terms of final output vs actual intent. At that point, any other GI solution is more accurate.

 

Don't take it like I'm just being irritable... I'd really like to see if someone has a good method for speeding up interiors. I was intrigued by kwistenbiebel's suggestion, not having ever used RS0 for anything.

 

But until I can see some reason for optimism, the answer to the question, "how fast is it?" will always be- "not at all!" I can't imagine how anyone else's answer could be any different.

[AJLynn]

I think RS0 is fast because it's limited in what calculations it does - limited bounces, doesn't do all your caustics, etc. RS0 is what you get when you hit preview in MXST.