Difference vray free, basic, advanced?

[Jonathan Sanchez]

Hello guys. I just wanted to ask: What are the benefits that you guys have found in using vray compared to the 3ds scanline renderer. And what are the differences in the vray varieties: free, basic and advanced? I'm looking to getting vray for i've seen superb effects in the finished work at this site and others from pros who are using vray. Also, out of subject, but i'm looking for a program that could render scenes in a 360 degree sphere so that i could look at any angle of a room that i wish. Is there a program like that for 3ds max?

 

Thankyou for your time.

[Jim Mann]

i'm looking for a program that could render scenes in a 360 degree sphere so that i could look at any angle of a room that i wish. Is there a program like that for 3ds max?

 

Yes, Max. Or at least Max 5 and 6 have it. Rendering>Panorama Exporter.

 

With regard to the difference between vray versions, I asked Vray the same question a couple of months ago. It took a long time to get a response but this is culled directly from the e-mail they sent me:

 

As for the free version, here are the features included in it:

The free version includes only:

(*) Antialiasing

(*) Depth of field

(*) GI (brute force and limited irradiance map)

(*) VRayMap for reflections/refractions

 

Features of the Basic package:

· True raytraced reflections and refractions

· Glossy reflections and refractions

· Translucency (with volume fog) for creating wax, marble, smoked glass

· Area shadows (soft shadows). Includes box and sphere emitters.

· Indirect Illumination (global illumination, global lighting). Different

approaches include direct computation (brute force), and irradiance maps.

· Motion Blur. Includes stochastic sampling approach

· Depth-Of-Field camera effect.

· Anti-aliasing. Includes fixed, simple 2 level and adaptive approaches.

· Caustics (Radiosity)

· G-Buffer (RGBA, material/object ID, Z-buffer)

 

VRay Advanced package:

Includes all basic features plus:

· G-buffer based antialiasing.

· Reusable irradiance maps (save and load support). Incremental sampling

for fly-through animations.

· Motion blur with analytic sampling

· True HDRI support. Includes *.hdr, *.rad image loader with proper texture

coordinates handling for both cubic and angular maps support. Map your images

directly without distortions or cropping.

· Built-in area lights for physically correct illumination

· Built-in material for faster materials calculations

· Distributed rendering for utilizing all of your studios computers.

· Different camera types: fish-eye, spherical, cylindrical and cubic cameras

· Internal analytical displacement maps.

· Global photon maps

· Instanced geometry rendering

· Displacement maps based on Chaos Group's personal technology that does not

create additional geometry, thus reducing memory usage.

· Internal Virtual Frame buffer with internal color correction controls

 

I went for the advanced version because of the Irradiance maps.

 

Jim

[Jonathan Sanchez]

So you think the advanced version is worth the upgrade, or can i get almost the same results with basic?

[Jim Mann]

Jon,

 

My thinking was that both the basic and the advanced package would provide similar if not the same results but that the advanced package was faster and offered more control and options. The three things I took note of with regard to Advanced were:

 

- re-useable irradiance maps for animations. I have seen 5 min render times for a first frame drop to less than a minute for subsequent frames. I recently had a 20min render time drop to 3min 30secs for subsequent frames when using the re-usable irradiance maps.

- Photon maps for interiors.

- Vray materials (supposed to be faster but not really tested this yet)

 

Your best bet may be to look through the uploaded images at the Vray forum and ask what version people are using. At the end of the day, the extra cost for the increase in performance and speed through using the advanced version appeared to be a cheaper option than a hardware upgrade.

 

Jim

[Alicja]

sancheuz :http://www.evermotion.org it is very good polish site about vray..

regards

 

Alicja

[Jonathan Sanchez]

That is a really nice site Alicja. Thanks.