Is V-Ray worth the purchase?

[manta]

Well I have to say I just really don't understand...when MR came out with Max9...sorry I don't remember the version number of MR...it came with the new Arch and design materials and the new FG presets...and so I gave it another try after swearing it off forever (I know, Dramatic) and I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I picked up on it...and the first thing that came to my mind was that there was going to be an absolute flood of incredible renderings coming out of MR very soon...and so I waited....and waited...and I'm thinking where are they....sure the people already heavily invested in vray might not jump ship...but how about all the new emerging talent...how about all the more experienced MR users...everywhere I look I see absolutely stunning work done with Vray...I mentioned that in a post about a month ago...and said where is all the great MR work...and this one person pointed me to this one website where this one artist had his work...like 4 renders...I was underwhelmed to say the least...

[REMOTE-RENDER]

I personally won't go as far as saying that "great work" can't be done with Max/MR but as a render farm, we render 9:1 Max/V-Ray.

 

So while it "must" be possible to do great things with Max/MR, it seems that the true pros have long settled on V-Ray.

 

Seeing the render times generate by Max/MR and the results that come out, I can understand why most companies/professionals would go for V-Ray.

 

In the end, there's an economic factor that one simply cannot overlook. It seems to take twice the money to produce quality work in Max/MR, without quite reaching the level of quality that V-Ray offers.

 

We once did a conversion for a customer in Portugal, taking his Max/MR scene, rendering at the rate of roughly an hour per frame, and, after converting it to V-Ray, we had flicker and noise freedom at around 6-7 mins per frame.

 

While it may be true that, initially, Max/MR is cheaper as it requires no additional licenses, in the long run, however, one pays a dear price. Lesser productivity, lesser quality and higher render costs simply do not justify sticking with Max/MR. A V-Ray license would be amortized in fewer than 1500 render hours.

 

Add to that the fact that one can get a V-Ray for free - under certain conditions - then it becomes clear that Max/MR doesn't make economic sense.

 

I say it's in the pudding...

[Justin Hunt]

As I said, I had several people check my settings because like you said something must be wrong. Sadly nothing was out of the ordinary. Quite standard to say the least.

 

Granted I am first to admit that Vray confuses the hell out of me and that with a bit more time and effort me and Vray could become friends.

 

At the end of the day mental has proven itself many times over to me. It does everything I want it to do, quickly, reliably.

 

The other consideration is cost, I just cant justify both to myself and the powers that its worth forking out for several Vray seats when I dont have to with mental.

 

I have been through the process of evaluating variouse renders many times. So far the two that have really impressed me are mental and Brazil. Unfortunatly Brazil was just tooo slow in both rendering and development that it was dropped from our pipeline.

 

As to sharing the test scene. The scene I was refering to in my post is locked down under a NDA so I'll have to put together something else that can be shared. I would love to know where I am going wrong.

 

jhv

[REMOTE-RENDER]

Justin,

 

My offer stands. Take me up on it whenever you're ready.

 

Best,

Bob

[Justin Hunt]

"In the end, there's an economic factor that one simply cannot overlook. It seems to take twice the money to produce quality work in Max/MR, without quite reaching the level of quality that V-Ray offers." , how so? Purely render time?

 

One of the big time saving workflow changes that was implemented in Max2010, mr 3.6 is the ability to calculate FG for an animation once. ie By dividing the animation path up the FGM is calculated from those points and does so at the same time. Rather than the old way of calculating it at every nth frame. It has literally saved me hours in both tweaking and final generation. I can see the whole path at the same time which make it very easy to identify problem areas.

 

As to your Portugal client, like me he was probably doing something wrong. I have done the same , except converting Vray to mental.

 

Often I see settings posted that just make me scratch my head, thinking, have you actually read the manual? Having said that, does anyone else find that allot of the tutorials you find on the net contradict each other and more importantly the shipped official tutorials?

 

jhv

[Justin Hunt]

Justin,

 

My offer stands. Take me up on it whenever you're ready.

 

Best,

Bob

 

Will do

[REMOTE-RENDER]

Justin,

 

Every scene is different and there is no unique, patent solution. Until that is understood, we will continue to find conflicting tutorials.

 

As to the economic factor mentioned in my previous, yes, render times play a role, specifically the direct costs associated with rendering, but also at the design level. I want to leave it at that lest we get into theology, one believer's creed against another. Obviously, users have different levels of proficiency with the tools they use and may compensate for whatever deficiencies their tools of choice may have.

 

V-Ray offers a lot more controls over the design and rendering process than MR. What could be a bonus to some, could be an onus to others. Being able to do more also carries the responsibility to learn it. Users do that in varying degrees. Saying that Joe got it right with MR and Jack failed with V-Ray could be a story of apples and oranges, so it's difficult to really judge.

 

I see renders from all parts of the world every day and I speak/chat with designers every day. When problems arise, if I ask "Have you tried it with V-Ray?", the usual answer is "the boss won't pay for it, but it's what I use at home". From such answers, as well as observing the projects that roll out of the render farm, I am convinced that most fare better with V-Ray, at least the ones who do this kind of work commercially.

 

Besides being a render farm, we also do local projects for real estate developers. We have tried working with nearly every product "out there". And always, we came back home to V-Ray.

 

We regularly have local Costa Rican college students doing the equivalent of internships with us. They come with MR and leave with V-Ray.

 

And so on...

 

To summarize it as fairly as I can, I will just say that my observation is that (1) our commercial clients use V-Ray 9:1 over MR, (2) that of those who do not use V-Ray would "usually" prefer to use it, and (3) pixel for pixel in "similar" scenes, V-Ray renders faster, cheaper and usually at a higher quality than MR.

 

All this is empiric, so to say, based on what I see in my render farm. Yet, there are render farms who don't carry V-Ray so my observations may not be the ultimate, universal truth. Just my local truth.

[Justin Hunt]

you have hit the nail one the head right there, it all comes down to user preference and their commitment to learning and implementing that knowlage.

 

For every "Use Vray" argument presented, I have tried to illustrate the same point in reverse holds true. More to balance the comparison rather than prove any one wrong.

 

Dont get me wrong, Vray is a fantastic product. Well proven in the industry, as is mental. What really get my goat are the outdated and mis-informed statments such as "you need to write your own shaders to get a decent result" and (sorry Manta) "I havn't seen a decent image done by mental so therefore it must be crap".

 

jhv

[WAcky]

For me personally, it was Vray's superior memory handling vs MR but more so the fact that Vray is pushing the boundaries and MR always seems to be one release behind.

 

Well worth the $$ IMHO.

 

Also that huge Vray bible is 50% off atm which is a pretty good deal.

[Thablanch]

I wouldn't call Mental Mill being one step behind!!

 

regards

Bri

 

I think that statement was true in the last few years.. MR has done their homeworks, and now we are comparing really similar/competitive products..

[Justin Hunt]

I am quite excited about mental mill, mental images has just begun a library of materials specially for this. I am testing for the next few days.

 

I tend to agree with Brian re the control vray offers. There are certainly alot of settings. One thing that has always bothered me is the effect changing a certain setting has over many other settings. Especially when it comes to noise reduction. I find I can quite easily get to a certain point but to go that extra step to really clean up my renders takes either alot of settings tweaking or very long render times.

 

Yes mental has taken alot of cues from chaos, although it adds more to that fuctionallity. eg mr proxies could be animated before vray proxies could. At the same time Chaos has taken on board what mental does, eg the ability to render A&D materials. Which in itself is a very powerful shader. Now if only mental could do displacement as well as Vray.

 

jhv

[Thablanch]

At the same time Chaos has taken on board what mental does, eg the ability to render A&D materials. Which in itself is a very powerful shader. Now if only mental could do displacement as well as Vray.

 

jhv

 

I would not see that as a feature.. Vray shaders are quite as powerfull..

Vray has always been really attentive to what their userbase wanted.. the reason taht Vray can read MR A&D is, for vray users to remain in vray and to save the conversion time.

Lots of things in Vray are direct implementation of user request, or just a plain time saver, like this one. So I do not think they took what MR was doing, they just made their product more versatile..

[Justin Hunt]

I'd call it a feature, the a&D shader can do so much more than the vray shader, built in AO, rounded corners, more control over the BDRF curve, Cut Out, more control over glossy reflections such as the high detail distance, to name a few.

 

Now if only Autodesk would implement the A&D shader into Revit and ACad and finally get righ of the awful architectural material I will be a very happy camper.

 

 

jhv

[WAcky]

It's a feature yes, but Vray does it too