AR?....I give up!

[D.B.]

OK, OK, I give up...I've had enough of AR..... I need something that is faster and more accurate.

 

Is Vray the only answer? Maybe some other renderer can make the cut? I'd like to hear from users of other software...

 

D.B.

[AJLynn]

Vray, finalRender, Maxwell and fryrender are the main options. Each has its advantages, but if you want speed neither Maxwell nor Fry is the answer (especially if you do any interiors). Vray is the safe bet. With fR it can be trickier to nail down the output you're looking for, though I kind of like it myself.

 

Unfortunately you can't have mental ray

[STRAT]

i'd master the AR first before giving up on it. other than it's lack of animated gi functions it's still highly fantastic. if it wasn't for vray i'd still be using it over the other 3 softwares that Andrew mentioned

 

so yes, vray gets my vote. not because of it's superior image quality (which, imo, it hasn't got) but because of it's no fuss userbility, and is most nube friendly. and yes, it is considerably faster than the AR where gi/radiosity is concerned.

[D.B.]

AJLynn and STRAT..

 

I've been using AR for a few years, but the projects keep growing in scale and complexity. The latest has seemed to overwhelm both the program and my abilty to tune the settings...And I have 5 more, even larger ones to do.

 

I recently ran a large test file with Max 8 and Mental Ray, and though it rendered faster than AR, I had some issues with it crashing. I'm not familiar enough with the program to know if I was doing something wrong or if Max can't handle memory very well. Cinema doesn't seem to mind working with a few million polygons, and has a much nicer interface.

 

Let's rule out Maxwell and fryrender due to speed issues. I could just as well use the Stochastic render in AR if I want to go slow.

 

That leaves finalRender, and of course Vray to test.

 

My thanks to both of you!

[Ernest Burden III]

I recently ran a large test file with Max 8 and Mental Ray, and though it rendered faster than AR, I had some issues with it crashing.

 

Issues with crashing? In a few years of daily rendering work, I don't think C4D has crashed rendering ever. FR2 has, sometimes you run out of memory and it (C4D) refuses to complete something (like a highpoly boolean) but almost never crashes outright.

 

FR2 is very much like vray and currently is better integrated, but Cebas has not been the friendliest company to deal with. I have not been happy with how they have responded to issues I've raised, so I'm not planning to upgrade FR2 when they offer a new version. I haven't used it since I bought vray, and the reason is them, not the product. But it works and does a great job.

[D.B.]

Ernest,

 

Thanks for you input on finalRender. That information helps decide the issue.

 

I used Viz from the beginning until release 4, which crashed ..sometimes several time a day. The only help and advice Autodesk could offer was to "save often"!..... I immediately removed Viz and installed Cinema, which has been a very stable program.

 

I certainly don't want to deal an unresponsive company again.

[Ernest Burden III]

I certainly don't want to deal an unresponsive company again.

 

Unresponsive would have been an improvement. But again--the FR2 product is really quite good. The licensing scheme is annoying--it locks to a network device, usually your computer's adapter. Rendering on other machines requires they be able to see the license server, and sometimes they don't for no apparent reason. Then they just sit there and don't render. Sometimes they do see it and don't render anyway. No-one could ever explain why, other than to accuse me of trying to pirate their software. Nice.

 

Now I have not yet tried to network render with vray, since I bought an 8-core machine, but others say it works. And the license is a number tied to your C4D numbers, so its easier to work with than Cebas' system.

 

Right now its easier to work with material in FR2 than vray--FR2 will render standard C4D mats, vray won't.

 

Also, FR2 works in 64bit while vray still must be used with the 32bit build of Cinema, though the 64bit vray build should be out fairly soon (PC only--no 64bit C4D on Mac OS due to some Apple issue).

[D.B.]

Ernest..thanks again.

 

It's good to know the positive aspects of finalRender, and perhaps I shouldn't discount it whithout a much closer look. Though rendering on other machines may not be an immediate problem for me, it could be in the near future, the way business looks now.