Vray vs Mental Ray - But a Different Type of Question

[ivanjay]

I know the typical question of which is better, mental ray or vray is pointless as each artist has their skillet and likes. And I know both can produce equally impressive results.

 

 

I have been using mental ray for a long time and can produce pretty good results. However, my machine at work is 32 bit and I cannot get around this. mental ray crashes CONSTANTLY. At home on 64 bit, smooth as can be!

 

I am debating on whether it is time to buy vray, take the plunge, and learn it. All of my renderings are architectural interiors.

 

My question is different.... Not which one is better. Since Max comes standard with mental ray (as of late years) it seems odd that users are spending additional money for an alternate rendering plugin, if a good one is included for free.

 

What makes vray so good that it is worth purchasing additional money for it?

And, what specifically are the advantages to vray compared to mental ray, if any... Not looking for opinion. More of a this exists in vray but not in mray.

[AJLynn]

Vray is certainly different, and when iray and Vray GPU go public maybe they'll be more differentiated than they are now, but if you know one of them well I don't see a heck of a lot of reason to switch. It looks like the real problem here is 32 bit vs. 64 bit, and changing renderers won't fix that problem. Can you get the office machine upgraded to 64 bit? That's the first priority. If it's completely impossible, there are some other tricks - for example, get more of the memory accessible by using the /USERVA switch in boot.ini. Google it - but don't be too aggressive. /USERVA=3000 would be equivalent to the /3GB switch, which can take away too much RAM from system and make drivers (especially video drivers) fail to load, but something like /USERVA=2700 can work well and give you 700MB more headroom. (2000 is default.) Also, there are a lot of memory management tricks we used to use but have been lazy about since everybody got on 64 bit. Like Xrefs displayed as box, proxy objects, putting displacement only where necessary, turning off the render frame buffer, doing foliage in post instead of as geometry, etc.

[Tommy L]

there must be some way of getting onto 64bit. especially if you are considering dropping a grand on a render engine you've never used. You could get a 64 bit node for that.

[Jonathan Sanchez]

I know this was not your question Ivan, but I must also agree with above comments, your priority should be to get office system to 64 bits. It makes a world of difference. Most systems nowadays are 64 bit ready, if your is not, it probably means its time for you to upgrade hardware anyways. I think this would be wiser for you, rather then going through the learning curve for vray.

 

About your question, seriously, the main advantage I see of vray is that it is soooo popular, that alot of the tutorials, textures and models you find online, are vray files.

[Fernando Lino]

I agree with Tommy, but in my case I really like Vray and they have an extremely acive forum and super customer service...to me, those 2 thing already payoff of the extra money I paid....Vray 2 is comming soon and you will have several years of top quality service without paying a cent.....I got mine way back in 2004 and vray 2 will be the only charge i'll get in 6 almost 7 years.

 

Fernando

[ivanjay]

Thanks for the feedback all. The reason I am stuck on 32 bit is due to compatibility issues. We use Architectural Desktop 2007 for all of our CAD work (and I model in CAD and bring it into max). Arch Desktop 2007 is not compatible with 64 bit machines. So to start the upgrade process we would be investing in 10 new seats of arch desktop to bring us all up to the new version. It is cost prohibitive. Our IT guy is very big on keeping everyone on the same platform for support and compatibility reasons so I will not be the only upgrade. It is all or nothing.

[Tommy L]

You need to have a chat with your IT guy. The benefit of just you having a 64bit machine far outweighs the good feeling he gets inside when he thinks about his nice clean 32 bit network.

[AJLynn]

Despite not being officially supported, ADT 2007 does run on XP64. I've done it myself. It does not run on Vista 64 or Windows 7 64. (I don't know about Windows 7 Pro in XP compatibility mode.)

 

What you have here is a classic problem - IT getting in the way of work. My approach has always been to nudge IT until they relent, and if they don't, point out to my managing partner that this would all work better with an OS upgrade. IT guys love to not have to do anything extra to support you, but in truth it would take maybe an extra half hour on printer drivers and things like that to get an XP64 box playing nice with an XP32 network. You could always add a 64-bit midrange workstation as a 3DSMax box alongside your XP box that's running ADT. On 32-bit you have no way to let Max use more than about 2700MB of memory space. Without the 64-bit upgrade there's little or nothing to be gained from switching to Vray.

[ivanjay]

Sorry for not getting back earlier all. I appreciate the feedback and recommendations. And I totally understand and agree that the benefits to switching to 64 bit are tenfold. However, this is one of those things out of my control. I can beg and scream all day but unless the IT budget opens up and the IT people wanna do it, it is not going to happen.

 

However, they are willing to switch my node only to 64 bit if ADT 2007 would work. AJLynn, can you tell me how you got it to work?

 

Otherwise, back to the question at hand.... I have heard that vray is far more stable than mental ray. Hence the reason I am thinking I will have less issues.... If we can answer the question knowing I am stuck on 32 bit it would be appreciated.

[AJLynn]

I just installed it and it worked...

 

WRT the question at hand, if you want to be sure about how it would go on your PC you can go ahead and download a Vray demo, see if it does run better for you.

[AJLynn]

One thing I saw:

 

Autodesk does not support 2009 and older versions of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT on Windows 7. If you choose to run such versions of AutoCAD on the Windows 7 operating system, you may opt to use Windows compatibility mode.

 

from: http://cad.amsystems.com/products/docs/autocad_2011/autocad_2011_windows_7_white_paper.pdf

 

Two choices and I can't rightly sat which is best: the consensus among people like me who did this a few years ago when Autocad/ADT 2007 was new and we were using XP64, is that it works. You can try that. Alternatively, install Windows 7 Professional and the compatibility mode for XP32 and install ADT on that. See: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-xp-mode

[ivanjay]

I just installed it and it worked...

 

WRT the question at hand, if you want to be sure about how it would go on your PC you can go ahead and download a Vray demo, see if it does run better for you.

 

I did but I am really new to Vray and the setting are going to take some learning to get it down. Hence the reason I was looking for the answers here...