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Help selecting a rendering package!!!


Dave Bond
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Hello everyone!!

I am in the market for a GOOD 3rd party rendering addon to max and VIZ. These are my choices that I have to choose from based on the money that my company will flip the bill for.

The package must be compatible to work standalone or with both 3DVIZ 4.2sp2 and 3DMAX 6.0.

Here's the choices:

 

Finalrender

Brazil R/S

VRAY

Mental RAY (now included with MAX 6.0)

And last..OKINO NUGRAF RENDERING v2.2.3

 

We do alot of high poly count images Architectural mainly in nature.

We use the following software CADD packages for most modeling: Microstation v8 and TRIFORMA v8

Autocad 2004, 3DVIZ 4.2 with spak2 and lastly

3DMAX 6.0. WHew!!

 

Please help with narrowing down a recommendation.

I only get one shot at asking the bean counters for the money...they always seem to turn requests down if it is not researched well before presenting for purchase!!

 

Thanks!!

 

Dave

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I'm not 100% percent certain why, but v-ray seems to have grabbed hold of the architectural rendering scene pretty tight. As for myself I use Final Render however I do have some problems with it. Don't get me wrong, It works alright there are just somethings that don't work AS WELL as I would like them to. I would like to give v-ray a try just to be able to compare. Brasil is just too expensive for me especially considering you have to buy seperate license for net rendering.

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Originally posted by Brian Cassil:

I'm not 100% percent certain why, but v-ray seems to have grabbed hold of the architectural rendering scene pretty tight. As for myself I use Final Render however I do have some problems with it. Don't get me wrong, It works alright there are just somethings that don't work AS WELL as I would like them to. I would like to give v-ray a try just to be able to compare. Brasil is just too expensive for me especially considering you have to buy seperate license for net rendering.

I thought that it comes with one working license and 3 rendering licenses?
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I've personally been blown away with the quality of the support team at splutterfish. They have a 24 hour icq board, I don't really know when they sleep, but if you have a tech question they'll give you a reply. Like 2:00 am.

The program is very solid and hard to crash, it has a good learning curve too. With a ton of tutorials online, something like 50. They're working on a better distributed rendering plugin right now too.

On the down side brazil is not discreet certified meaning that some plugins won't work well with it, (shave and haircut), but I don't think you need that for arch viz.

-joe

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Basically, you get what you pay for. Vray can do some neat tricks, but Brazil is a much richer program (reference Brazil being used in major motion pictures, for one). Check the respective sites for comparison, images, etc. And yes, Splutterfish's support is unmatched, in my experience with software of any kind.

 

Nick

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I am liking fR, but I really think it's just going to be a matter of taste and experience. All of them produce incredible images in the right hands.

 

As for Brazil being in motion pictures, I'd guess that has as much to do with politics as anything, just as fR being part of the Discreet program (although I guess that's nice if you use more plugins). It was also immediately compatible with Max 6.

 

Look around, you'll find people that love each one. You can't go wrong with fR, Brazil, or VRay.

 

Final Toon looks like fun, but I've yet to try it.

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I think it depends on what Vray and Brazil guys are read to launch, and how much you can wait.

By now I think FinalRender is a little bit ahead.

It has a good price (like vray advanced) and offers a distributed render wich works very fine.

This mean you can render one image in many computers in a fraction of time. The setup is very easy.(Brazil doesn´t / Vray I think doesn´t too)

 

Also (very important)the floating license allows you to work on any machine you want in your network.(please check this feature in vray)

Brazil has the same kind of license.

Brazil comes with to render lisences.

This means you can work in a scene while you are rendering two other scenes in two machines

FinalRender.........hummmmm I don´t know, I have to ask Victor(he works with FR), but I think you can only work or render in one machine at a time.

 

I think FinalRender is faster than Brazil as it offers very good results in no time.Although Brazil has some FANTASTIC shaders (velvet,wax,glass are great).

 

Then comes the learning curve.

Brazil has a lot of parameters and each one affects the other.(as we could expect!)

So adjusting a scene is a game of pacience, experience and knowledge.

After some time you are having good results.

But it isn´t easy and good results take time to render.

Brazil comes with a tecnical manual and no tutorials or video.(although you have many tutorials on Splutterfish site)For the price you pay, I think they could pay more attention at the inicial lessons at least.

FinalRender comes with a good video explanation, which works better than tutorials cause explain how and when you should use a parameter.

It has less parameters and features.

The leaning curve is fast and you have good results in a day or two.

 

We don´t use vray, but I have seen very good images, hera at CGARCHITECT.

Looking Chaosgroup site I saw many tutorials and you can find many free vray materials in the internet.

I think Vray in gaing popularit among users for its speed, easy of use(?), knowledge base.

You can download (and use !!!) the free version and play serious with the demo version.

Also the standard version has a good price.

 

We use Brazil and FinalRender stage-1 (w/ patch)

here at office.

 

If you can, I would wait to see what Brazil and

Vray will offer after stage-1 hit the market.

(Don´t forget MAX 6!)

They probably will attack with same features and others. Maybe we can expect for some dropping price coming from splluterfish to spark the fight.

 

[ November 16, 2003, 03:42 PM: Message edited by: Tuninho ]

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Originally posted by Nakadate:

Basically, you get what you pay for. Vray can do some neat tricks, but Brazil is a much richer program (reference Brazil being used in major motion pictures, for one). Check the respective sites for comparison, images, etc. And yes, Splutterfish's support is unmatched, in my experience with software of any kind.

 

Nick

If that was really true, Renderman would be 10 times better then Brazil... not true.

 

Also think about overhead. Sofia Bulgeria most likely has a lot less overhead then Venice California or Germany.

 

Also both Vray and finalRender have also been used in major motion pictures. So has elastic reality (see pod races from episode 1).

 

Not to say that your statment is wrong, but saying that something is better because it is more expensive and has been used in movies is a bit BS. Sorry Nick, you can beat me up next time you see me.

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  • 3 years later...

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