Why Mental Ray?

[Michael J. Brown]

Just wondering why those of you who have chosen to stick with Mental Ray have done so. I've always used it, but am seriously considering switching over to Vray. I fear the learning curve - especially if I happen to land a big project while I'm smack-dab in the middle of that curve (and re-creating all my materials within Vray.

 

For years I've justified (to myself and my boss) that MR can do whatever VR can do. But the more Vray work I see, the less convinced I am of this. I've spent countless hours (hundreds) learning, applying, experimenting with, fine-tuning, tweaking and bending Mental Ray in efforts to achieve results as good as the very best (interior) VR images I've seen, but to not much avail.

 

So my question to all of you Mental Ray devotees out there is why have you chosen to stick with MR and not go over to the 'dark side'? Is it financial (not wanting to fork over an additional $800 - though I think they've recently raised it to $1,000 - for a 3rd party plug-in)? Or perhaps you take a special pride in being able to produce results similar to the architectural CGI industry standard using a product that most consider inferior. In other words, much like the Detroit Pistons, you not only enjoy being the "under-dog", but you perform your best when everyone else sees you as such.

 

Feedback?

Edited May 8, 2008 by renderhaus

[mattclinch]

MR rocks hard. I first learnt VR, but MR is so much more intuative. The GI / FG combo produces quick and smooth GI solutions in half the time. The mrSun and mrSky are brill. The Photographic Exposure control is intuative and powerfully tweakable. Arch + Design materials are simple to setup and can be done in seconds if you know what to push.

 

All in all a brilliantly powerful renderer, which can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be.

 

M

Edited May 8, 2008 by mattclinch

[Michael J. Brown]

...The GI / FG combo produces quick and smooth GI solutions in half the time. ...M

 

 

Interesting... Because I've been told the exact opposite by many Vray users who once used MR. That Vray produces results quicker than MR.

[AJLynn]

Easy, fast, you can get good results, it's free... in most architecture firms the argument to buy Vray at this point would be hard to make. For an animator, the situation might be different.

[manta]

In my observing the whole debate over the years, I have clearly seen one difference, Chaosgroup has always been right there with us all the way...why...because we the Arch/Viz community has adopted them to a great extent, and that's why we get that kind of treatment from them, in contrast Mental Images has alot more going on in other places, and we are certainly not their bread and butter, I mean why would they even care if we used MR in the first place, its free to us, so its just logical that it would take them much longer to get around to "us", things like charging for network rendering, and proxies and GI presets, things that Vray users have enjoyed for years...just my two cents...

[Claudio Branch]

Just wondering why those of you who have chosen to stick with Mental Ray have done so. I've always used it, but am seriously considering switching over to Vray. I fear the learning curve - especially if I happen to land a big project while I'm smack-dab in the middle of that curve (and re-creating all my materials within Vray).

 

 

I stuck it out with Mental Ray for about 2 years before switching over to V-Ray recently. The learing curve can be significantly reduced with some training. Brian Smith can get you productive FAST.

 

I think Mental Ray is a great tool, it just wasn't great for ME at the time I was using it.

[Nic H]

vray vray vray

great support and a product that is always ahead of the curve

 

learn to use it properly and its no different to MR, just depends what you prefer, pros cons etc.

 

(that said vray is superior)

[SandmanNinja]

This is almost like a religion kind of question.

 

I think BEFORE A&D materials, it was v-ray hands down.

When A&D Version 1 came out, it started getting attention.

Now with a few (quick but) multiple releases under it's belt, I think it can hold it's own with v-ray, and is a question of skill-and-experience versus software capability at this point.

 

What I like about Mental Ray is that, if I make a model in Max 2008 with Mental Ray, and give it to someone with Max 2008, it'll run. I mean, I don't need to worry about a plug-in version (which v-ray is) - it'll just work out of the box.

[Justin Hunt]

Now that Mental ray has Proxies, I have no need to use Vray.

 

Personally mr just sat right with me. If Brazil was a little faster in their development I would be using that over Vray.

 

I gave Vray a real hard go. Did allot of reading , tuts etc but still couldn't get a strong hold on it. I could get good results, but I found to get truly great results the effort and render times were ridiculous.

 

Having trained several people in mr after being devout Vray users, overwhelmingly the response has been great. They could believe how easy it was to get up and running and to produce results.

 

I will also second the sentiment of its free, easy to hand the model to others and very flexible.

 

I disagree the mental images doesn't listen to it users. There is a great open dialog with Master Zap, who writes allot of the shaders and development of mr. For the past 2 releases of Max a large % of the improvements and new features have been mr centric. sure mr has been playing catchup for a while, but I'd say it can now compete head to head with Vray.

 

jhv

[solidbox]

I was in the same situation like you. I spent a lot of time learning both. It is not healthy to do that. Finally, I decided to stick in to one, Mental Ray, and have never regretted.

[vizfx]

Mental Images was aquired by Nvidia and let`s not forget that Nvidia is behind Gelato (GPU rendering system) which is now available for free - including the PRO version. I think MR it will bring us a lot of goodies in the near future.

[peterguthrie]

The support that chaosgroup offer for vray is just incredible. As a freelancer the help that comes from the vray forum is invaluable. I also think Vray is incredibly good value for money when you consider the development from v1 to v1.5 - all free updates. Compare that to Autodesk's policy.....

 

In terms of Vray vs MR, there seems to be a lot of talk about MR these days... can't work out why though ;-)

[odouble]

It all boils down to the artist that's using the tool. It's like the max vs maya thing. Vray and mentalray are just tools. It's like anything else that you have choices with... sedan or hatchback...juice or soda... in this case it's:

 

1. Free renderer with max or $$$ plugin (financial)

2. What is more intuitive to you and how fast can it produce in your own adopted workflow?

 

Vray is the most widely adopted in our industry and for me it's a little easier to get up to speed with and that is not to say mentalray is inferior. Mentalray though has made huge strides of recent with proxies, the A@D materials and optimization of it's engine.

 

I have seen great works from both engines but remember the renderer does not spit out art. It is all in the skill of the artist and not the tool. Remember that the great works that you see have a lot of post work done on them in compositing packages also and are not just a single render.

 

The skill is in the artist's creativity and imagination and not the tool.

[Michael J. Brown]

It all boils down to the artist that's using the tool...The skill is in the artist's creativity and imagination and not the tool.

 

 

I want to agree with that. But it's awfully hard to when I see so many exceptional works produced with V-Ray. Maybe there just aren't enough people posting Mental Ray works.

 

I'll tell you what though, in my 9 years of teaching 3dsMax at 2 different universities (starting initially with 3d Studio VIZ) I can confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that the software is nothing more than a paint brush. It's the one holding it that determines what ends up on canvas.

[odouble]

It's no secret that our industry has adopted vray much more than mentalray.

 

I think some of the other posts had great points about the vray forums and the ease of getting help for anyone learning the package. I don't think that Mentalray does not have help either it's just not geared as much to Arch viz as vray. There is a lot of help for programming shaders and much more complex stuff available for mentalray. The intuitiveness of mentalray in 3ds max has definitely improved with it's newest versions too.

 

But again I have seen great works from the 2 engines and it all was based on the styles and preferences of the artist really (like you said it's they are just paintbrushes) with some great post work to mention. Mentalray is heavily used for VFX in some hollywood studios (probably because of it's widespread programming of custom shaders) and it goes to show that it is a very capable engine.

 

With that said, it's been easier for me to pick up Vray and that's just me. Check out the gallery section for some mentalray work too. They may be few but there is definitely some impressive stuff.

Edited May 30, 2008 by odouble

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

IMO opinion the reason we see better work from Vray than MR is because up until the last few releases MR was the inferior render engine. Now the playing field has equaled out a great deal, but Vray still has its strong foot hold and dedicated users. New people coming into the market look at the imagery being produced, and what engine produced them. Vray still has the advantage in the volume and quality of work out there. So the logical choice for someone trying to make the decision on which to use goes to Vray. The old cliche that a picture speaks a thousand words is working heavily in Vray's favor, and will continue to do so for at least the next year, maybe 2.

[Michael J. Brown]

Okay...That's it then. I think i'm officially going to stick with MR. I've got to learn Vr for the things we're putting out here at work - which is good in that it will make me fluent in both engines. But for my own business, I will continue to master MR. It also helps that I can do distributed rendering without extra licenses with MR.

[Sawyer]

The old cliche that a picture speaks a thousand words is working heavily in Vray's favor, and will continue to do so for at least the next year, maybe 2.

 

Or maybe until Vray reaches 2.0 and we need to pay for an upgrade. I have been very happy with vray but I don't know if I would pay for an upgrade. And I hate to say it because I have been so happy with the development team and the program. But I assume Chaos knows that MR has taken up a bit of the slack and is free so maybe they have some good things in the works.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Or maybe until Vray reaches 2.0 and we need to pay for an upgrade. I have been very happy with vray but I don't know if I would pay for an upgrade. And I hate to say it because I have been so happy with the development team and the program. But I assume Chaos knows that MR has taken up a bit of the slack and is free so maybe they have some good things in the works.

 

I really hope that Vray does. So far I still feel it has more control over the final image, but that could just be because I don't have the full grasp on MR yet. I am guessing that Chaos Group will only recompile Vray for a release or 2 of Max after they introduce version 2.0. But I must say, Vray has been one of the best values on the market. Ever since the released version 1.09 they have been offering free updates on their product. They could have easily saved a lot of these updates and charged for them in version 2.0, but they choose to introduce. I think they know they will always need to stay ahead of MR in order to survive because MR now has an unfair advantage.

[Michael J. Brown]

...But I assume Chaos knows that MR has taken up a bit of the slack and is free so maybe they have some good things in the works.

 

 

I don't know how the minds work there at Chaos, but I'd be very surprised if they were to discount their pricing at all with the next upgrade. Even if MR closes the gap completely, they simply can't 'give' the program away. They've got enough cache built-up in the arch viz industry to last them a good little while before the tables start turning on them (IF they turn). And that's not to say that MR isn't capable of turning the tables. The question is whether or not the users will reflect that turn.

 

An easy analogy, with me being born and raised and educated in the Motor City (Detroit) is the auto industry. Whether people at large want to believe it or not, domestics have made and continue to make huge strides in quality and reliability. So much so that some of them, in certain surveys, tests and comparisons, rank on or above par with the powerhouse imports of reliability such as Honda and Toyota. But if you ask the general public most will still swear to their graves that no domestic product could ever touch a Lexus.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I have always baulked at the accolades that Lexus gets. I feel they are a heavily over rated. Just glorified Toyota's. I agree, domestics reputation is still damaged from the poor build quality of the 80's. Didn't they admit that they were building cars poorly on purpose? I think it is the mentality that people are unable to move past. Building a bad car, and purposely building a bad car are two different things.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Mental Images was aquired by Nvidia and let`s not forget that Nvidia is behind Gelato (GPU rendering system) which is now available for free - including the PRO version. I think MR it will bring us a lot of goodies in the near future.

 

...someone stated on the Chaos Forum that Gelato is dead, and that is why it is free. They will now start playing with MR.

[novelh]

I originally used Scanline up to VIZ4. Then I started to do some renderings for the architecture office I work for and I convinced them to build me a custom computer and purchase Max2008. That's when I discovered Mental Ray. It gave me result immediately and at lightning speed (could have been the new computer too.) When I opened the scanline model I was last working on I adapted the materials and lights for mR. Scanline = 5hrs , mR = 3min! It blew me away.

 

After that it was only natural to begin to dive deeper into the engine. I read a lot about Vray and decided to give it a try since it was so hyped-up but results were not as easily achievable. I tried several times and it wasn't happening for me. Its true that mR has a ton of settings (that can easily ruin the look of a material) but there a lots of good presets to choose from which you can modify without much risk. mR for me!

 

Being that I have no one in the office to turn to for questions I use you guys a lot for support. Thanks

 

 

Here is a sample of my second mR project.

 

This is my first interior rendering.

[zeniamai]

Both are great engines with advantages and disadvantages. I would suggest you master mental ray since you have already have a strong background with it. One advantage of mental ray is that it has better compatibility to other plug-ins compared to vray. If your planning to use a lot of plug-ins with out spending too much time on finding solutions to solve the some compatibility issues Mental ray is better.

So far the plug-ins that I use for my renderings that function in mental ray and which conflict in vray are RPC's and Vue 6. I am not sure if there are updates on this but so far I haven't seen any. Vray is also not compatible with other default max plugins and you would have to learn some plugins for vray in order to replace it.

The advantages for Vray on the other hand is that it has a lot of tutorials for you to learn on. There are just a lot of people using this that it is easy to find solutions to almost all the problems you encounter in vray. For me though I'm using using both mental ray and vray. I usually use mental ray if i need to use the incompatible plug-ins. One reason why I seldom use mental ray is because of the availability of its tutorials. I am having a hard time achieving good results for the interior in mental ray.

[Michael J. Brown]

I have always baulked at the accolades that Lexus gets. I feel they are a heavily over rated. Just glorified Toyota's...

 

 

Not to turn this into a car forum, but Lexus has earned ever single accolade fair and square. They're no more a glorified Toyota than Lincoln is a glorified Ford. I work for Ford, but happen to drive a 15 year old Lexus. And trust me, it has earned every single accolade. After 15 years, the interior cabin still has no squeaks - (not that that's its biggest advantage though).

Edited June 2, 2008 by renderhaus