Mental Ray??

[deanomagino]

The Epic discussion between vray and mental ray suggests to me that vray is the better option for arch viz???

All i hear is how great vray is but i would like to know why would an amature use mental ray instead??

[AJLynn]

You don't have to pay extra for it.

[deanomagino]

You don't have to pay extra for it.

 

if money was no object???

[mskin]

if money is no object, than why render at all?

 

I have been rendering with mental ray since i got my first version of max. I love it. i see great renders with both Vray and MR. MR is becoming easier for newbies to figure out than it was before, i mean now, there are only three settings i need to worry about to get a decent render - and its bundled with max. To me, getting vray seams like buying a house that comes with a corvette and going out to buy a porsche. but im an idiot.... just ask clarence.

 

Vray however appears to have some great features i am envious of.... its handling of proxies for instance. There is a lot written here in this forum compairing the two renderers - i would suggest doing a search on that

[alrawli]

Having just spent the last week setting up a couple of 2 minute animations all lit with mental ray id say definately go for vray. Ive had lots of problems with bad artifacts, huge problems with opacitys and just a lot of mucking about. Some of my colleages have been rendering a much bigger and more complex scene with V-Ray and have had a fraction of the problems. Its V-Ray for me from now on.

[louis.cho]

MR can do what VRay do. MR come with majors software bundle. New MR arch Viz shader is very good.

 

Its just another way to work. This topic was discuss on softwares of all kind and there is absolutly no answer. You like VRay more, go on it. I seen awsome rendering done with scanline and very bad with vray.

[Justin Hunt]

Totally agree with Brian, having just done an animatoin with MR it was simple as, qick and clean.

 

On thing most people forget is that when Vray came out there wasnt a real alternitive (other than Lightscape) to do GI. It is only since Max8 that Mentalray was really available and usable for the masses. So Mentalray has a lot of catching up in terms of market share. But dont believe for one minute that it is the poor cousin of Vray.

 

The only true way to end the argument is to try both and decide for your self.

 

JHV

[alrawli]

Our timescale for setting the lighting and getting the scene rendered has been a quite tight, also i suspect a few hardware issues have contributed to the problems. The issues ive had relate to raytraced shadows on opacitys. The scene is around 800000 polys with close to 5000 objects with particle effects and a large area of water so fairly complex. Ill have a look at the settings in a bit more detail now that ive got time. We also rendered a series of A0 posters for a recent exhibition using mental ray and encountered lots of problems with running out of memory due to textures that may be down to settings aswell.

 

Ive no doubt that without the issues ive had it would be more than usefull as a renderer. Ive just been discouraged from it.

[alrawli]

That makes alot of sense, in hind sight i think i is probably down to shaders and i can see why this is causing alot of the problems that were running into.

[louis.cho]

MR's 'shaders are everything'

methodolgy can seem like hard work at first but in reality it

is where the power and flexibility are. Bri

 

interresting, I want to know more

[deanomagino]

essentially your saying that mental ray is just as good or better than vray?? just harder grasp initially...

[AJLynn]

They've been using mental ray in movies for years. The Matrix, House of Flying Daggers, etc. It's industrial strength. However, getting it to that level requires a lot of learning and set up work, and if we're comparing to Vray, Vray's probably still got the edge in terms of the quality one guy can do with a GI still and a more moderate amount of learning. But the updates for mental ray in Max9 did a lot - better exposure control, new sun/sky rig and most of all the Arch&Design material, which is flexible and "demystified".

[Justin Hunt]

excatly, Max9 has really changed the game. This is evident in the amount of Mental render appearing.

 

I tend to dissagree that Vray is initially easy to learn. I have heard from quite of few people and experienced myself the rather steep and long learning curve associated with Vray. One of the guys I work with has been using Vray for a few years. When he joined us he had to switch over to Mental and in no time at all he was producing excellent images with the minimun of fuss.

 

Inturn I decided to learn Vray, to see what all the fuss was about. I read and reread the help files, did many tutorials asked many questions and after six months put it back on the shelf as it was taking too long to get to grips with.

 

Sure I could get acceptable results rather quickly with out the box settings, but the effort and rendertimes needed to get good / up to scratch images was too costly. We dont have the luxury of 6 hour renders, its more like 20 minutes to an hour max.

 

I found that with Mental the shaders are flexible and powerful enough to get the results I want. I make the choices on how I can get there. With Vray I found that more often than not I needed brute force to get results.

 

Yes I would love to see Proxie objects in Mental, and I would love to see Vray handle clip maps better. (sure I can have 100's of 3D trees with vray, but try rendering them with a decent leaf map)

 

Dont get me wrong, I like Vray, I think it a fantastic package, it just that Mental sits better in our workflow and feel right to me. Each to his own. So make an educated decision and try both.

 

JHV

[mskin]

They've been using mental ray in movies for years. The Matrix, House of Flying Daggers, etc. /QUOTE]

 

 

AND THE HULK

[Justin Hunt]

"AND THE HULK"

 

but we'll keep that one to ourselves;)

[mskin]

i know.... i didn't even see it.

[RyanSpaulding]

I actually liked it. The Hulk looked fake (WETA Digital > ILM), but I loved the style of the film. Could have used a good villian.

 

And IMO, Jennifer Connelly is one of the most beautiful women on the planet.