adding Mental Ray to my skillset

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Currently I am on Vray, but I am taking Mental Ray classes the next couple of days. The firm I am working for is pushing to get everyone on the same page. I do not think I will drop Vray completely, but I am taking on Mental Ray also. I like the idea of having it as a company standard to allow for mass production of certain pieces of projects while I can focus on polishing other parts of the project. Though I am a bit concerned because I don’t feel Mental ray is the equivalent of Vray, but that is why I am posting here. I am hoping someone can help me on the answers to some of these questions, because I know how instructions can tend to only focus on the benefits of the app they are teaching, and not give good feedback when comparing different apps. So, does Mental Ray do, can anyone help me determining if Mental ray has the equivelant of the following which are deeply ingrained in my Vray work flow…

 

Vray Proxies

Vray Displacement

Physical Camera

LWF work flow in the same manner that Vray has embraced it

 

I am assuming it has most other things that I like about Vray. I, like many people, have the general impression that Vray does a better job, but I don’t know if that is because I only look at people doing arch viz, and Vray seems to rule the arch viz world.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Travis.

[Justin Hunt]

All yes except for proxies. The mentalray equivilent is also call proxies but works in a different way. It only loads the geomerty as that bucket needs it and then unloads it. It as simple as a switch. Not as powerful as Vrays though.

 

We too push for an office standard and for various reasons mentalray is it. Everytime we have someone new start they always push for Vray. Mainly because its what they know. However once I give them a basic but intensive run though they are very impressed at how simple it really is and are up and running in no time at all.

 

Before we started we waisted too much time trying to translate models from on renderer to the other and even on app to an other. The other office ran on Viz with vray whilst we ran on Max with mentalray. Now it is possible to pick up any job from any office and run with it. Works really well.

 

There are many concepts in Vray which can easily be applied to mentalray so its not that much of a leap.

 

If you need any help just ask.

 

JHV

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

....thanks for the reply. that is good to hear. i don't expect to be good at it for awhile, that is why i am not dropping Vray.

[Justin Hunt]

give it a week of intensive tutorials (the ones that ship with Max) and playing and you will be right

 

JHV

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Hi Travis,

Proxies - There has been talk of shader dev that would give

the same functionality to MR, but as Justin says, at this moment

the answer would be no. So massive scenes such as those poss

with Vray Proxies would be hard to do.

 

this is the one that i am most concerned with. i like me some onyx trees converted to vray proxies. i kind populate a scene with 600 or more fairly nice trees and render out only using about 3.3 or so gigs of ram. this is definetly going to be a problem for me if i can't find a smooth way to take care of it.

 

Phys Cam - By default the photographic controls for MR are done

through the exposure controls dialogue. Works very nicely indeed

but does not have the 'camera related' controls that are found

in Vrays phys cam. 9Personally prefer the level of control in the

Vray Phys cam) There are scripts and MR phenomenon now

available that tie the exposure and camera controls all into one

handy set of controls ala Vray.

 

the instructor briefly jumped over the camera settings yesterday. after i get into this for a couple of weeks, i will probably search for that scriot to test out.

 

That is assuming they themselves don't use AND teach both

renderers.

 

she asked what type of shaders i have been using. i said vray, and she said, no, i mean what kind of sha.... then rolled her eyes, and said oh ya, i forgot vray came with its own shaders.

 

...i am guessing she doesn't appreciate vray a great deal. so far i have gotten the feeling that she is pro everything autodesk and autodesk related. though she did give props to photoshop yesterday.

 

in all yesterday was a very basic class over viewing 3damax. there are about 6 of us in the class. others have little max experience, so more than anything it was an introduction to the tool set and work flow for them. today we are going more into Mental Ray. ....though I have a deadline this morning, tomorrow afternoon, and thursday on top of the classes, so hopefully I can make it all work.

[JamesTaylor]

interesting thread!... and it'll be interesting to hear your thoughts on the difficulty of transition between the 2 engines and which you prefer once you get to grips with MR.

 

i've been thinking about having a play with MR recently for a no. of unimportant reasons lately. Mainly because it ships free so is always available and for that reason would be worth knowing, i've always thought that when pushed to the limits that MR is probably a better engine than VRay, can't say i'm basing that on anything more than it was around before VRay but was very difficult to use compared to VRay, hence the reason VRay beccame so popular.

 

As i understand it MR has become much more user friendly in the recent releases and the images i've seen recently produced with it have a nice feel to it... different to that VRay feel that every image has nowadays!!

[neko]

 

As always, do the Max tutorials and you can get a reasonable

feel for the toolset. (Or of course some good quality 3rd party

training. )

 

Regards

Bri

 

....of which i highly recommend.

 

good product and excellent price.

[Ernest Burden III]

Travis

 

I suggest you look at what method you can most easily use to get excellence from everybody else in your firm. If you go beyond your local office, that's a lot of people. We know you can do amazing work with just about anything. The question is, can others? And what will it require of you to make it so they can?

 

Thinking that way, I would bet that a more basic approach like MR would be the best direction, even if you are giving up some fancy features of vray. You'll need to be able to write a manual and teach it. And not always to artists.

[Justin Hunt]

Other good resourses for mentalray are

 

http://www.mymentalray.com

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/

 

http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/

 

and if you can read german (even if you cant its a good source of info) http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/index.php?sid=382fab5b44b2f58c09306e7f8b3ca962 , you may have to register

 

and http://www.mentalboutmax.com/

 

JHV

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Travis

 

I suggest you look at what method you can most easily use to get excellence from everybody else in your firm. If you go beyond your local office, that's a lot of people. We know you can do amazing work with just about anything. The question is, can others? And what will it require of you to make it so they can?

 

Thinking that way, I would bet that a more basic approach like MR would be the best direction, even if you are giving up some fancy features of vray. You'll need to be able to write a manual and teach it. And not always to artists.

 

That is along the mindset I am taking.

 

The company is interested in educating people in Mental Ray, and while I love Vray, I am all on board for picking up Mental Ray. That means there will be more people to pull into projects and easier for everyone one to work on things. And eliminate the need to recreate all the materials, cameras, etc… when someone else needs to work on a project. The hamster wheel in my head is liking the possibilities this might open.

 

….this goes along the lines of why I want to conquer the SketchUp to Max workflow without creating a bottle neck link between the two. Most people don’t have the time to learn Max, but many can knock out ideas and concepts in SketchUp with ease. If I can seamlessly tie the two together, and effectively eliminate hours spent re-importing and such and also increase the number of hands that can work on a project.

[Justin Hunt]

This is exactly the rational behind our workflow and it does work really well. The interiors people model in Sketchup, the drafties and some designers are moving to Revit. The best side effect of this is the 3D dept is freed up to concentrate on the beautiful work. 3D guys are charged out three times the hourly rate of the junior drafties, who are now doing the donkey 3d work, our clients are happy too. The drafties model up and explore the 100's of design options the architects want, then hand over the model to us to render. As a result the time spent of projects is shorter and more effectivly used.

 

We have several offices around the country and overseas, so a common base is needed when passing work around the differnt offices. This is happening more and more.

 

Also factoring in the cost of yearly upgrades for both Max and Vray it adds up very quickly. Considering in our office alone we hold 7 seats of Max. $$$$$$'s big time.

 

What I also like about the mr workflow is that you can choose if you want to go full GI or not. As a render in general mr if very fast and flexible. So much so I havn't used scanline in years.

 

The quality is very comparible if not better than vray in some areas, just take a look at nisus, no-jey ,tweety, togahang and others in the mymentalray gallery http://mymentalray.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=32

 

JHV

[landrvr1]

Hmm.

 

VRay posts @ CGarchitect = 12,658

Mental Ray posts @ CGarchitect = 1,627

 

LOL.

 

I suspect that difference may be in large part due to the past history of MR, but - c'mon people - Mental Ray is free, yet VRay continues to be more popular. In a year from now, long after most folks will hear of MR's improvements, I'm willing to bet that VRay will still dominate the architectural scene. This has more to do with the fact that VRay is the incumbent, rather than VRay being a superior platform. Except.....

 

Animations.

 

I've only just started dabbling in MR, so I'm by no means an expert. True side-by-side comparisons are difficult, because it's rare to find people who are equally skilled in both VR and MR. 99% of the time you are dealing with brand loyalty as opposed to factual comparisons. Of the 10 or so people I know who really jam in MR, only 2 are as equally proficient in VRay. Both of them say that creating stills in MR is no different than VRay; perhaps a bit easier. They also both agree that creating animations in VRay is much easier; more flexible, less setup time, better results vs total time invested in setting up a scene, etc.

 

I'm by no means loyal to VRay. I'm loyal to whatever platform is going to make my job easier, faster, and give me as good or better results than what I'm currently getting. At this point, switching to Mental Ray (or any other platform) just wouldn't be worth it. Learning new software takes a helluva lot of precious time away from projects, family, etc.

 

Now, if MR were able to cut my rendertimes down by 30% or more, I'd burn my VRay dongle today.

[WAcky]

I've just moved from MR to Vray over the last two weeks and i'm loving it. After going postal with Mr not handling my big scenes, i can throw anything at vray and its rock solid. I've only had 2 crashes which was really a torture test compared to the countless crashes i had with MR even with low settings.

 

I'll be interested to see how max 2009 and the new MR version with proxies stacks up but at the moment i'm a happy Vray convert.

 

I must say that getting you head around the settings is rather daunting in vray and the A&D shader for MR is alot easier to use but i would say more basic.

 

If you're good at Vray, don't stress you'll pick up Mental Ray easily.

[manta]

I think alot of it has to do with MR not being focused on our community, but focused in alot of other places, where as Vray is very focused on us, and it shows, Vray gives us the tools we need, the bug fixes and free updates, and MR throws us a bone now and then, and it shows...

[gfa2]

I think alot of it has to do with MR not being focused on our community

 

I'm not so sure about that. I'm an avid Vray user, but MR does have the A&D shader...Vray doesn't have anything with the word architectural in it. I think MR has made a pretty big effort to gear towards the architectural community. If you read the Vray forums, there are a ton of people using Vray that don't do ArchVis, so I don't feel that Vray necessarily has a focus on ArchVis.

[Justin Hunt]

I have also read on other forums how non architectural people using mentalray are miffed that too much focus is being placed and the arch viz industry. This is in regards to the Max2009 partial feature list.

 

Quote "Hmm.

 

VRay posts @ CGarchitect = 12,658

Mental Ray posts @ CGarchitect = 1,627"

 

remeamber mentalray has only been truley usable in max since version8, yes it was in 7 and 6 but wasnt good enough. I'd say max9 was the first truely properly incorporated version. In that relivily short time mr has taken a significan bite out of the Vray market share. Max2009 will take even more.

 

In the same light it is only relativly recently where Vray has broken out of the arch viz market to take a bite out of mr's share of the vfx industry.

 

Its all balancing out as the distinction between the two are becoming more blurred.

 

Quote "I'm by no means loyal to VRay. I'm loyal to whatever platform is going to make my job easier, faster, and give me as good or better results than what I'm currently getting. At this point, switching to Mental Ray (or any other platform) just wouldn't be worth it. Learning new software takes a helluva lot of precious time away from projects, family, etc."

 

LOL, if you are loyal to which ever platform make life easier but you dont want to spend the time to learn another platform, then how will you know if it will make you life easier or not?

 

JHV

[manta]

I'm not so sure about that. I'm an avid Vray user, but MR does have the A&D shader...Vray doesn't have anything with the word architectural in it. I think MR has made a pretty big effort to gear towards the architectural community. If you read the Vray forums, there are a ton of people using Vray that don't do ArchVis, so I don't feel that Vray necessarily has a focus on ArchVis.

 

Really...well it took them 3 versions(MAX9) to give you the A&D shaders, and any kind of easily usable GI, not very responsive in my opinion,not to mention their licensing policies until recently... and you don't feel that Vray has its focus on Arch Viz, what planet are you from, where else is Vray being used ?

[AJLynn]

All historical. What's more important - how useful the software was 4 years ago or how useful it is now? In Max7 it was easy to write off mr and decide we needed some 3rd party software, but it's come a very long way since then. A lot of us are using it, saving the money and finding it just as useful as Vray (though in slightly different ways).

[manta]

All historical. What's more important - how useful the software was 4 years ago or how useful it is now? In Max7 it was easy to write off mr and decide we needed some 3rd party software, but it's come a very long way since then. A lot of us are using it, saving the money and finding it just as useful as Vray (though in slightly different ways).

 

History can teach us alot, just because someone decides to pay attention to me for a few minutes, does not make them my best friend, I agree that MR is much much better now, and people will be doing great things with it, but with that said, I'll let history be the judge of what is to come...

[manta]

Hey William,

 

Plenty of VFX/TV work is being done with VRay, trawling

round the net reveals many interesting things being done

with it.

 

Really...I didn't find anything, not even on the Chaos site, I would think they would want to brag about being used in a movie or TV show, maybe I missed something...

[manta]

Oh ya...I think I remember reading that about 5 years ago...I wonder if those 3 studios still use Vray...

[Justin Hunt]

Sure keep an eye on history, but base your arguments on current information. Take a look at the licencing in 2008, unlimited render nodes, 8 bucket DBR (although somehow I have managed to get 12 over two machines) now look at the licencing for 2009, 512 bucket DBR. Yes the licencing in max6 and 7 was a joke which didn't help.

 

Over the past year or so I have seen a significant increase in mentalray use and activity on the forums. Interestingly it took around 6 month after the release of 2008 for alot of Neebies to start asking questions. I think this is down to the 6 month delay between Viz and Max.There has also been a big increase in people offering advice and help with mentalray questions. This indicates that "experienced user" base is steadily increasing.

 

With the dropping of Viz and the incorporation of mentalray (lite) into Revit I see yet another increase in the user base and more pressure on Vray to come up with something new and improoved. Which is a good thing.

 

I am still not sure about the direction mentalray under the NVidia umbrella. Possibly a greater shift into realtime and GPU rendering. Time will tell.

 

Intersting times ahead

 

JHV

[mesht]

i stumble upon mr only 4 years ago, all along relying on Radiosity to create realism, which is too slow and cumbersome. eversince then, i'm stick to mr for production quality works. to be frank, mr is seriously a challenge to vray, as i've seen renderings just as good as vray, espcially with the new improved version. it's all on how the user control the render engine, same goes for vray.

 

to me, only drawback for mr is crashing when rendering very heavy scenes. with the new features for proxies in the upcoming max 2009, hope that will reduce this issue. i've seen people rendering heavy scenes with hundreds of lights in vray with less chances of crashing than mr.

[alias_marks]

Our office is going through the same transition and may be moving to mr based to the recent advancements and similarities to vray over the past couple years.

 

One HUGE factor that will probably influence our decision is the integration of Metnal Ray into Revit. As for now, I'm going to consider it a rumor, but I've heard from someone pretty close in the Autodesk circle that this is indeed going to be a feature of the next Revit.

 

Time for the day of the mental ray?!

[Justin Hunt]

Yes it is in Revit, a couple of guys in the office had a preview presentation of Revit2009 a couple of days ago.

 

I think it is a similar intergration as to whats in Autodesk Architecture, ie basic and raw, no to little shader intergation. Basically FG and GI and a few odds and ends. A step up from accurender.

 

I too am interested in the depth of the intergration into Revit.

 

JHV