Mental Ray Animations: What's the Story?

[landrvr1]

This probably belongs in the MR area, but I figure I'd get a tad more objectivity here.

 

I'm curious as to what the story is with Mental Ray animations. I see lots of talk and examples of still shots, but very little about animations.

 

How easy is it to get an animation out of Mental Ray?

 

How does the process/quality compare with VRay?

 

With Revit now using the MR engine, what's the future for animations with MR - especially if Max may be abandoned?

[SandmanNinja]

I think it's just as good (or incredibly close) as v-ray. I just don't think many people are doing that many animations.

 

I've animated a few animations (3 seconds to 30 seconds) of 'mechs walking around (lost them in a windows crash last year, sadly). I used Mental Ray and it was pretty good looking.

[amer abidi]

I'm rendering a 7 minute walkthrough of a residential city using mental ray... really stable, flicker free, and IMO, MUCH faster than Vray! it's just so easy to bring down render times without compromising as much quality.

 

and this is coming from a Solid 4 year Vray user

[Claudio Branch]

 

I'm rendering a 7 minute walkthrough of a residential city using mental ray...

 

 

Great! When and where will you post it for us?

[amer abidi]

=) i'll finish it tonight, will post a link once client ok's that.

[John Dollus]

Mental Ray has always produced some of the most flicker free animations around even dating back to Max 3.1 but it has become a lot easier to achieve with the latest incarnations. Like Amer said above, you can tweak the scenes to be very efficient without compromising the look.

[milfora]

HI,

 

I'm also curious about Mental Ray animations. I'm just starting to look at dumping the scanline renderer in favour of MR. I animate a lot of roadways, and I find there is usually a bit of flicker.

 

Do you have to save out your FG map prior to doing a successful animation?

 

Any help on the process (especially how to reduce render times!) would be greatly appreciated

 

Thanks in advance

 

AM

[Justin Hunt]

Suprisingly animation with mr is simpler than still rendering.

 

You can use rediculously low fg photon settings which makes light calculations very fast.

 

Only gripe I have is you have to have high image sampling to get rid of moire effects and very small detail can flicker even with high AA.

 

I have done quite a few mr animations (mainly shoping malls) and been very pleased with the results.

 

Yes you do have to pre-save the FG , but only every nth frame. there are a few threads covering this so do a search

 

jhv

[milfora]

Justin,

 

Thanks for the info. Just another quick question.

With the pre-saving of FG, is that done with all the materials applied? or just a generic material (ie. plain white) overriding?

 

AM

[Adrian Bold]

Justin, not sure what you mean by animation is easier in mr than a static.

 

Only ever used MentalRay for architectural rendering. Flickering in MR is still possible when FG and GI are used together, my studio has had problems with interiors in the past, but the latest MR engine solves this FINALLY with a simple 'optimise for animation' tickbox. Yay!

 

Milford, we pre-save FG only if we don't have objects in motion or the time of day isn't changing. Not sure if there is any difference in presaving with materials or not performance wise.

Edited May 8, 2008 by Adrian Bold

[Adrian Bold]

I think it's just as good (or incredibly close) as v-ray. I just don't think many people are doing that many animations.

 

I'm not convinced vray can do better shadows, they always seem too washy, and most images i've seen using vray lack depth and true blacks. I guess we're moving into subjective territory though.

 

Given Maya's profileration with the top end of vfx and film, wouldn't Mental ray would be the tool of choice for for a vast bulk of rendering in the film industry, which is animation, no? I can think of only a few other tailored rendering engines used in specific houses as part of their IP.

[Justin Hunt]

Justin,

 

Thanks for the info. Just another quick question.

With the pre-saving of FG, is that done with all the materials applied? or just a generic material (ie. plain white) overriding?

 

AM

 

If you want, bear in mind though you wont get realistic colour bleed

 

Adrian Bold - only in that you can get away with really low fg settings as they interpolated over the whole animation. ie less fg points per frame add up to a detailed solution for the all the frames.

 

Is the "optimise for animation" tick box a maya thing? because its not in Max

 

Why do you only presave the FG for moving objects? Are you saying that you calculate FG for every frame? If so thats why you get flickering. One time for not pre-saving is when the camera isn't moving as once FG samples exist and subsequent samples that fall on the same place will be skiped, hence you will only get a solution for the first frame.

 

jhv

[manta]

Given Maya's profileration with the top end of vfx and film, wouldn't Mental ray would be the tool of choice for for a vast bulk of rendering in the film industry, which is animation, no? I can think of only a few other tailored rendering engines used in specific houses as part of their IP.

 

 

The vast bulk is done with PRMan...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_made_involving_PhotoRealistic_RenderMan

Edited May 8, 2008 by manta