RJL Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 Hello all, I'm new to these forums so here goes my first post. I wanted to hear some feedback about Mental Ray vs. Final Render from those of you here with the real practical experience. I use VIZ and Max, and now that I'm getting pretty nimble with it I wanted to try and push the envelope a bit and experiment with some new rendering engines to improve the quality of my images. I'm particularly curious about things like learning curve, GI vs physically based lighting, etc. Any feedback would be appreciated. Also, please instruct me as to whether this is posted in the correct forum. Thanks in advance. Rod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plastic Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 mental ray for max sucks badly. i'm also not really impressed with finalrender. i think the best renderer for max is brazil, right now. vray is ok, but its like a 90% perfect brazil ripoff, with a lot of additional features. unfortunately the remaining 10% are very important for me, mainly lighting and AA quality. i suggest waiting for a few additional weeks, finalrender stage-1 is around the corner, and it might be great. personally i will decide between finalrender stage-1 and brazil. the reason i don't buy brazil now is that its very expensive, especially if you want to use network rendering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kid Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 vray is ok, but its like a 90% perfect brazil ripoff...[/QB]LOL...apart from the fact they both work in Max I can't see a whole lot in common with the two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asim Harbas Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 ...what is with InSight from Integra?? http://www.integra.jp/insight/forum/both.jpg Asim [ September 13, 2002, 08:21 AM: Message edited by: Asim Harbas ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plastic Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 >>LOL...apart from the fact they both work in Max I can't see a whole lot in common with the two. the whole interface, render dialog...when the first vray betas came out i had a hard time to distinguish between the brazil beta and the vray beta. from the cgarchitect brazil interview: "Others have attempted to copy our UI and our workflow. These attempts are purely superficial." he is surely refering to vray, and i have to agree. vray is a fine renderer, but it lacks own style. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 You forgot to mention the fact that vray is faster . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 I'm not sure that discreet is really even pushing mental ray anymore. I mean I know its available for purchase but I don't know anyone who uses it. If you're question is about which of those two renderers is better suited for architecture, then final-render is the answer. If you're question is which renderer out there is the best... well that's a point of serious debate. IMHO it depends on what type of work you do. Brazil R/S has the best features if you plan on doing animation, but finalrender has some very nice tools for speeding things up for still image rendering, and like someone else mentioned final render stage 1 could be VERY nice. I have heard nice things about V-ray but have never used it myself so I can't really say much about that. As for myself, I've jumped on the finalrender train and I hope it pays off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted September 13, 2002 Share Posted September 13, 2002 ever considered cinema 4d? about the same price as Brazil r/s Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacob Hutson Posted September 17, 2002 Share Posted September 17, 2002 Vray has very fast and clean GI. You can do animated GI scenes with moving light objects. Final Render has very good settings for raytracing. Its GI is good but takes alot of time to master the settings. There are alot of them to master. Its worth the learning curve. Mental Ray 3 looks great but there is no interface to max yet ( Mental Ray 2 is ok, no decent GI, and no real access to shaders. Brazil, well, they finally managed to release brazil of which im glad. I have yet to see someone post rendertimes from the release version which makes me suspect its not really faster than the demo version. It does nice renders though, but they seem to be targetting film companies who will pay through the nose for network rendering and licences. Im not one of those people. I think network rendering should be free. Vray and FR both offer network rendering both are working on distributed rendering so you can render the same frame on 20 computers. Which is really neat. take your pick, there is lots to choose from. FR stage-1 and the next version of Vray I think will up the ante even more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted September 18, 2002 Share Posted September 18, 2002 That is a good point about having to pay for rendering servers with brazil. I forgot about that. I work in an office where I have access to 80 machines so that totally kills brazil as an option for me. Why would I pay for render slaves on 80 machines when I can do it for free with final-render? I'm really anctious to get stage-1 when it comes out though because right now animations aren't really an option with stage-0, because I can't seem to net-render without flickering, unless someone can show me otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Buchhofer Posted September 18, 2002 Share Posted September 18, 2002 I've pretty much shelved final render for anything other then Raytracing at this point (Blurry reflections are fairly quick..) hoping with fingers crossed that Stage 1 is better. from what was demo'd at siggraph, it looks like they're going in the right direction. But i dont know how well suited to the strange features architects need though.. Oh to be a beta tester. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
easy Posted November 4, 2002 Share Posted November 4, 2002 My money's on Finalrender stage-1. It looks like it will offer that little bit more with good network rendering and will be fast. Brazil is good though but the network rendering liecenses and distributed rendering is not really something i'd expect after waiting so long. http://www.trinity3d.com/productinfo/siggraph2002/Sig_MovieGallery.shtml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted November 4, 2002 Share Posted November 4, 2002 Stop with the... this is faster/better then that crap... it never goes anywhere. In terms of who ripped off who... they all "ripped off" this guy: Henrik Wann Jensen: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~henrik/ All of their rendering engines are based on his research, which is public... They are all similar for that reason. In fact, Arnold, which I'm sure NONE of you have, started before all of this stuff... Just be happy you have options and who the hell cares if Joe Blow is using finalRender or Brazil... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nisus Posted November 4, 2002 Share Posted November 4, 2002 Hi all, My 50$ pencil is 2mm thicker than your 2$ pencil and therefore I can draw better and faster! Does this makes sense? Of course not! So does this battle of the renderers... (Good thinking Christopher!) I wonder when people will realise it's all about skills, not applications! rgds nisus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted November 4, 2002 Share Posted November 4, 2002 All you need to do is look at this: http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/finding_nemo/ ... to realize that even an "old" tired rendering system looks amazing under the hands of the God artists that exists at Pixar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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