What a Confused World..MR & V-ray

[Nic H]

vray is better

[Brian Smith]

as biased as i am towards vray, i sure would love to find the time to do a legitimate, unbiased comparison between the two. basically create the same renderings with both renderers, while comparing the speed, ease of use, ability of features, and stability. i think if it was done properly, checked by a couple of experts on both sides of the fences, and done to enough scenes, it would help clarify some nagging issues.

[art.chitect]

WTF. I do not like your boss.

 

Your work on that web site is pretty good. Were you using mental ray for it?

 

I just start learn to use MR on my Interior Scene..

The Other I just use Scanline...

 

I'll keep on trying.... to learn V-ray....

I know that actually when we learn something, we'll got something for ourself...But when somebody force You to learn just in case to do "duel" with other people in order to got the position.... I CAN'T ACCEPT IT...

[DavidR]

as biased as i am towards vray, i sure would love to find the time to do a legitimate, unbiased comparison between the two. basically create the same renderings with both renderers, while comparing the speed, ease of use, ability of features, and stability. i think if it was done properly, checked by a couple of experts on both sides of the fences, and done to enough scenes, it would help clarify some nagging issues.

 

MR is still 100% photons, so you could compare MR to Vray photon mapping, but who uses that? I think Vray only includes photons for caustics. I'm not sure what tech FG uses, but it's not like LC, and I finf FG-only renders (now that there's multi-bounce FG) don't look as good or render as quickly as GI + FG. I'm absolutely convinced that you can't come close to Vray quality or speed with MR when it comes to interiors, especially when you only use ambient light coming through small windows (mostly 2ndary illumination). I like MR for exteriors too (I don't have Vray at home), and find it's fine for interiors with large windows, like appartments.

[Brian Smith]

MR is still 100% photons, so you could compare MR to Vray photon mapping, but who uses that? I think Vray only includes photons for caustics. I'm not sure what tech FG uses, but it's not like LC, and I finf FG-only renders (now that there's multi-bounce FG) don't look as good or render as quickly as GI + FG. I'm absolutely convinced that you can't come close to Vray quality or speed with MR when it comes to interiors, especially when you only use ambient light coming through small windows (mostly 2ndary illumination). I like MR for exteriors too (I don't have Vray at home), and find it's fine for interiors with large windows, like appartments.

 

i'm not talking about comparing vray photon mapping (GI) with mental ray photon mapping....that would be a waste of time because vray photon mapping is outdated and useless for everything but caustics. all i'm saying is create the same image (color, GI, aesthetics, everything) with both renderers. create it the fastest way possible with both using whatever tools are available and compare the results.

[DavidR]

No, I know you probably wouldn't waste your time like that. I'm thinking that you could get close in the end, but times would be hugely different. btw I find it hard to get contact shadows in MR -just thought it shows a difference in the tech behind them.

[Brian Smith]

No, I know you probably wouldn't waste your time like that. I'm thinking that you could get close in the end, but times would be hugely different. btw I find it hard to get contact shadows in MR -just thought it shows a difference in the tech behind them.

 

what do you mean 'hugely different' and 'contact shadows'?

[DavidR]

what do you mean 'hugely different' and 'contact shadows'?

 

Of course it's going to be scene dependant, but I find MR 2-3 times longer than Vray, and I don't think it's just me. Contact shadows are the shadows where things touch the ground -I'm not talking about ceiling/wall joints, but more like table legs meeting the floor; the shadows there are really easy to completely lose with MR. eg: you set up your scene and start testing with GI, set the lights to emit x photons (doesn't work with skylight or HDR enviro! unless FG is activated), then once the GI is OK, you activate FG and voila! -contact shadows are gone! If you only render with FG and set the bounces to 2, 3 or more, it's slower and darker and dirtier than a GI/FG combo, but getting a GI/FG combo just right is hell on earth -I spent 6 months with it and switched to Vray because it a: gave me near-instant feedback with LC, b:never lost contact shadows; c: was WAAAAYY faster, and d: was very easy to learn well enough to be production-ready. By all means play with MR -the materials are great, caustics are easy, a crazy number of map types to play with, really good anim rendering (no flicker is easy and fast for walkthroughs -not sure about moving objects), and it's just good to know more than 1 renderer, but Vray is my favourite (well, Maxwell actually).

[Brian Smith]

Of course it's going to be scene dependant, but I find MR 2-3 times longer than Vray, and I don't think it's just me. Contact shadows are the shadows where things touch the ground -I'm not talking about ceiling/wall joints, but more like table legs meeting the floor; the shadows there are really easy to completely lose with MR. eg: you set up your scene and start testing with GI, set the lights to emit x photons (doesn't work with skylight or HDR enviro! unless FG is activated), then once the GI is OK, you activate FG and voila! -contact shadows are gone! If you only render with FG and set the bounces to 2, 3 or more, it's slower and darker and dirtier than a GI/FG combo, but getting a GI/FG combo just right is hell on earth -I spent 6 months with it and switched to Vray because it a: gave me near-instant feedback with LC, b:never lost contact shadows; c: was WAAAAYY faster, and d: was very easy to learn well enough to be production-ready. By all means play with MR -the materials are great, caustics are easy, a crazy number of map types to play with, really good anim rendering (no flicker is easy and fast for walkthroughs -not sure about moving objects), and it's just good to know more than 1 renderer, but Vray is my favourite (well, Maxwell actually).

 

you say you like Maxwell...have you ever tried Progressive Path Tracing in VRay...very similar and perfect render quality if you can afford to wait

[DavidR]

you say you like Maxwell...have you ever tried Progressive Path Tracing in VRay...very similar and perfect render quality if you can afford to wait

 

The problem is that I already bought Maxwell before Vlado added ppt to Vray, and I saw some people's tests with it which were less convincing than Maxwell's. The diff. is that Maxwell has physically-correct materials, so you don't have to do a complex Lele conversion to prevent Vray sun from blowing out your scene, eg. I think I'd still have to do too much tweaking with ppt to match Maxwell output, so I stick with Vray std Irrad/LC for production and Maxwell for low-res stuff with long lead times, like brochures. Do you use ppt, or is it pretty much a curiosity (for now)?

[Brian Smith]

The problem is that I already bought Maxwell before Vlado added ppt to Vray, and I saw some people's tests with it which were less convincing than Maxwell's. The diff. is that Maxwell has physically-correct materials, so you don't have to do a complex Lele conversion to prevent Vray sun from blowing out your scene, eg. I think I'd still have to do too much tweaking with ppt to match Maxwell output, so I stick with Vray std Irrad/LC for production and Maxwell for low-res stuff with long lead times, like brochures. Do you use ppt, or is it pretty much a curiosity (for now)?

 

well i dont agree that you have to do any complex conversion or LWF if you follow some general rules, so to me that's not an issue. PPT is great for three reasons...first if you're a new user that doesn't know the nuances of every setting, you can use PPT and not worry about 1 single quality setting (not appearance or composition settings such color mapping). second, it can show you what you will get if you use the highest possible render settings....eg if you want to see if it's possible to even see that 1 inch grout line from 100meters out. third, since you have a rendering almost immediately, you can stop the 'cooking' process whenever you want, and if time is of little concern, then let it go.

 

that being said, you have to know 1 basic thing. in order to get a noiseless image, you will need to shoot 1000 rays per pixel. therefore, you will need to figure out the Subdivs value that gets you that 1000rays (ie, take the square of total pixels X 1000) and use that so that the timer will show you how long you have to get that noiseless image. you could always set Subdivs to the maximum 65000, but that won't tell you how long you have to get noiseless.

 

so to answer your question, yes i use it on occasion.

[manta]

Well I have just started testing MR proxies and so far I'm not at all impressed, they had all this time to make it happen and its a huge memory hog...

I'll keep testing, but I don't think its going to make me smile...

[Justin Hunt]

Mr proxies work great, one thing thats not obvoiuse is switching the BSB2 and turning Scanline OFF. These handle the flushing of memory much better.

 

I have very succsissfully rendered of 100's of proxies with no headacke at all. One of my latest projects include 50 houses and around 300+ trees and bushes. All were proxied and instanced around. Never went over 900mb Ram.

 

jhv

[kbotnen]

I read almost the whole thread, here is my 2[insert currency here].

 

- If you are the (only) 3D/Viz/Renderguy and your boss doesnt listen to your advices, that would scared me a bit. You are the one that is suppose to carry out recomandation to her, not the other way. You are the guy who know this, its your job to know this stuff and advice your bosses about what opportunities (pros and cons) that is out there.

- Someone should tell your boss that the quality of the images is not due to the technical solution, but about the artist who makes them. But that would maybe not be the best quareer move if you tell her (it basically states that the other artist are better than you).

 

- I dont know where you get your model sources from, but the fact that Revit now exports with MR shaders make using Vray abit more complex if you get models from that application. At least for me its been a troublesome affair to work with Revit exports, or that would have been faster if I did MR.

- For me Vray's ability to render distributed with a fast and easy setup have been a major reason to stick with it. I dont do animation, only stills.

- The Irr.map + LC solution also have worked very fast and flawless for me, compared to MR final gather and GI. But I must add that I know Vray better, and would probable have could made the same speed and quality if I learned MR a bit better.

- Pro materials, archshaders etc in max do favour a MR solution.

- Community, tutorials, material collection and other activities on the net favour Vray.

- The fact that MR is included with Revit and Max favors MR. And maybe the Nvidia + MentalImages combo yield some nice GPU accelarated solutions in the future? Who knows

 

And so on. But as other points out. If you know one solution, converting to another will be fast and easy.

 

-K-