Viz/Max

[antonio_frias]

For someone like myself who only uses max for modeling and rendering architectural vizualisations, what exactly are the diferences between 3ds Max and Autodesk Viz? Does Vray work with Viz?

I'm asking all of these questions because I'm thinking of becoming a freelancer and Viz is a hell of a lot cheaper than Max!

[jophus14]

I work with Max at home and VIZ at work. Max has more animation options available such as Reactor and some lighting options like Lightracer for instance. There are a lot more but it depends on what you are using the software for, that will determine whether it will effect you or not. I just do still architectural images or simple fly-bys. I'm able to pretty much do what I need with either software package. Just make sure that they are compatible with one another. I use VIZ 2007 at work so I have to have Max 8 at home in order to transfer files back and forth. Same goes for rendering engines. I'm not sure if you plan on using Vray, Maxwell, etc, but take that into account as well.

[AJLynn]

Vray works with Viz, and Viz is getting updated some time this month. The advantages I see with Max are almost all in animation, and in the development cycle - Max is always 6 months ahead of Viz, so Viz users have had to wait 6 months longer for 64-bit and mental ray 3.5. (At least, I assume 64-bit and mr 3.5 are included in the next version...)