illegalalieninbeijing Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 (edited) Here's a great reference that convinced me that mental ray can do what vray can do. I don't even think that vray has came up with a reference book like this. Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds Max and Mental Rray by Roger Cusson & Jamie Cardoso Another good tutorial reference was featured recently in 3D World Magazine issue no. 93 titled: Photorealism with Mentay Ray 3.5 by Chris Bullen I started out using vray with my old employer. Since I moved to my current office about 2 years ago, I had trouble convincing my boss to get us a copy of vray. Wanting to get renders out, I was forced to learn & use mental ray as quick as possible. I was surprised that it was way easier to learn & understand compared to vray ( which until now i probably know less than half of it ). I haven't used vray since. Edited June 3, 2008 by illegalalieninbeijing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 I find my renderings coming full circle - I used to use Vray, then I got a job that involved some rendering at a company that didn't have Vray and I started using mental ray. Now my mental ray rendering looks like what everybody else thinks Vray rendering looks like, and I'm dubious about there being that much real difference. Quick one I did recently for one of our projects: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael J. Brown Posted June 3, 2008 Author Share Posted June 3, 2008 Well, I'm now learning VRay. My employer recently became convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that VRay was superior to MR in terms of lighting capabilities and is having us all switch to using it. I'll tell you what though. One thing I'm really liking baout it is how well the displacement mapping works for things like carpet. And it renders those displacements a lot quicker than MR ever could. Can't wait to try it with a large patch of grass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odouble Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 I find my renderings coming full circle - I used to use Vray, then I got a job that involved some rendering at a company that didn't have Vray and I started using mental ray. Now my mental ray rendering looks like what everybody else thinks Vray rendering looks like, and I'm dubious about there being that much real difference. Quick one I did recently for one of our projects: This is where the skill of the artist comes to play. I must say i would not be able to tell if you didn't say it was from MR. I think you should have made us all guess first:) Hey AJ, how much post did you do on the image and what is the biggest change to your own workflow from vray to MR? thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 The glossies are a giveaway. Since they introduced the A&D shader with its interpolation, damn near any mr render you look at, you'll see that somewhere and if you've used it a lot you'll always spot it. The image had pretty minimal post. There's some writing on the whiteboard that you can't make out so well here - I think I screwed it up when I flattened the image - and the windows were edited to remove the brown horizon. Since it was quick I didn't get the real background. Also I did the screen-layer-brightening I mentioned in the mental ray bedroom thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odouble Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 I just took a look at the image again and can just make out the writing. By the way do you happen to go to the 3ds max user group in boston? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Yeah. I'm Andy from KMW. I missed the last one but I'll be at the next one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odouble Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Yeah. I'm Andy from KMW. I missed the last one but I'll be at the next one. See you there then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nelpiper Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 Hi guys. This thread's got my attention 'cause I use Vray at the studio I work from but for my personal projects I use MR. I think MR is as excellent as Vray and I'd dear to say the the A&D materials are superior to any of the materials Vray can offer. One thing that annoys me very much in Vray is that the exposure controls are built in the camera. So, if you want to see the same scene by another angle, you have to create other camera otherwise the render is gonna be blown out. MR has the exposure control independent of the camera, so you can render in the perpective view and everything will be fine. I'm a MR believer. See us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 One thing that annoys me very much in Vray is that the exposure controls are built in the camera. So, if you want to see the same scene by another angle, you have to create other camera otherwise the render is gonna be blown out. This is one thing that annoys me about MR, the exposure controls are not built into the camera. Which is where they should be. If I am shooting multiple shots in the same scene, and one camera is in shade, and one cameras is facing the sun, then I must change the camera settings between renderings. If the camera controls are built into the camera, then I can simply set the exposure on each camera, and forget about it. You miight want to try Lele's tools. He has a script which allows you to copy and paste camera settings to other cameras when using Vray. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter M. Gruhn Posted January 2, 2009 Share Posted January 2, 2009 > wondering why those of you who have chosen to stick with Mental Ray have Free. > I fear the learning curve Always something to fear. My understanding from watching other people is that V-Ray is less of a learning curve from Mental than Mental was from Default Scanline. Depends, of course, to some degree on how many renderers you've been through and how conversant you are with general rendering topics. I demoed V-Ray for a couple hours (yeah, I really put some effort in to it ;-) and was impressed (iirc) that I could make a model, chuck in a light and get a result. So many renderers you do that and get blackness and wonder why. Having an actual result that I could look at from the get go was 1) reassuring; 2) helpful in terms of "OK, what seems off. Now I can go look for that to fix." I think what happened next was I got into a noisy situation and was left floundering (as is so often the case these days) wondering "OK now, which button or combo thereof, is causing that noise." At which point I decided it didn't really matter so I bailed. At this point I'm getting results from Mental that clients are willing to accept but I'm not yet willing to post here. So I've got more to learn from Mental. One thing that would lean me towards V-Ray is - Dude, look at .cgarchitect. pretty much everybody is using it. Sure, maybe they're jumping off a cliff or maybe, just maybe, the market is talking and we should listen. > 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. Don't switch a project mid-stream unless you really really have to. Work in with what you are comfortable. V-Ray will have to be something you do on small projects or in your spare time until you are more comfortable. Continuing education: you can work it in to your overhead, but you can't really expect to bill clients for it up front. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artassoc Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 We use mental ray and I would love to have camera based exposure. Althogh I would agree that you should be able to save exposure settings to be reused later. Can't you just copy a vray camera to get the same exposure on the new one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 yes just shift drag the vray camera and adjust teh f-stop - easy. dont see why you would want to render outside of cameras anyhow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 yes just shift drag the vray camera and adjust teh f-stop - easy. dont see why you would want to render outside of cameras anyhow? Actually that is the only time having a global exposure tool is useful. If you are doing a model of something, and want to check it in a GI environment, you have to setup a camera with Vray. With MR you can just hit render. This is also nice because you can easily render true straight on elevations, or orthogonal renderings with no perspective. So, I guess not having the exposure associated with the camera isn't always bad. ...it is only bad 75% of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 hmm hadnt thought of that. should be a eays thing to implement as well. i can see it being useful if you were working in an architecture office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artassoc Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 The best way would be to have a radio button to choose between "local exposure" and "global exposure", similar to shadows, but exposure should still have it's "home base" in the environment rollout. But that'sj ust my opinion... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaneis Posted January 8, 2009 Share Posted January 8, 2009 ... i can see it being useful if you were working in an architecture office... It is! I use Mental Ray for Maya and have produced a few of these images for logos/ "illustrations" and the like. Work flow is easy - build model, add lights, apply ambient Occ material, render orthogonal. It's real fast and makes a great base for illustrative photoshop work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spacelord Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 I'm all for having exposure set to each camera. It makes it so much easier when you have multiply cameras in the scene and a different exposure for each one. Also for Day and nighttime renders its easier to have 2 cameras with different exposures. Or have a pass system setup like in XSI where you can have different environment settings for each pass. cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 Also for Day and nighttime renders its easier to have 2 cameras with different exposures. Or have a pass system setup like in XSI where you can have different environment settings for each pass. cheers I don't know how you are handling this now, but typically if I knew I needed to different lighting conditions I would keep the building in one Max model, then Xref that into two separate Max models, one with day light, one with night light. The interior light would also reside in the day and night files so that they can be adjusted accordingly for each condition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spacelord Posted January 9, 2009 Share Posted January 9, 2009 Hi Travis, thanks for your idea, it sounds inventive, but I'd prefer not to light 2 different scenes. Becomes a problem when you change props, adjust models, etc.. I started to play with the Lpass Manager script a while back when it was free and the photostudio script, with these 2 scripts it made it possible to setup up passes similar to XSI. Now I just write down the exposure settings, camera aspect ratio, sun settings, for each different lighting scenario. It would also be good to have aspect ratio set to each camera instead of render globals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chasteen Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 If you are using Max, why not use Tools>Manage Scene States...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spacelord Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 Hi Dan, Last time I try scene states it didn't save exposure controls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dotunmabo Posted January 15, 2009 Share Posted January 15, 2009 er..justin, where do i sign up? ....for real... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted January 16, 2009 Share Posted January 16, 2009 I posted so long ago that I forgot what I said. The training I do is in the office, for new emplyees, where its important to get people up to speed quickly. The finess can come later. jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clong Posted January 29, 2009 Share Posted January 29, 2009 sir Justin, please help how to use MR Proxies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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