MIR and LUXIGON USE MENTAL RAY OR VRAY OR BOTH?

[kbeck199]

Our firm is thinking of switching from Vray to Mental Ray just because of the added cost of Vray. Since they are entrusting that I help make the decision, and i'm in love with MIR as a rendering firm, I was wondering if they use Mental Ray because I seem to come up short with the quantity of examples of rendering of Mental Ray. I mean when you search Vray rendering, you get a bazillion matches. This could also turn into a discussion of Mental Ray vs. Vray too

[BrianKitts]

There's enough vray vs. mental ray threads on the forums, just start searching.

 

As for MIR/LUXIGON, so much of their work is photoshop post production that the original engine is almost illrelevant. The right artist could create that level of work with either engine, heck I wouldn't be surprised if they have guys who use both.

[kbeck199]

I guess I'm specifically referring to MIR, since most of their images are very crisp and do have post production but not to the extent of LUXIGON.

[jinsley]

last I knew... MIR was Lightwave.

[d_mccreadie]

Taken from an interview with Trond Greve Andersen in March.

 

Can you tell us about the software you use in the studio?

For the 3d stuff we use Lightwave, modo and 3dsMax. VRay for 3dsmax and FPrime (or native) with Lightwave. For post work we use Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. I think that in my daily work I use mostly Lightwave with FPrime, HDinstances and a Photoshop actions that MIR ex-employee Kristian made to save clipart on our server.

[mattclinch]

there are plenty of studios who are MR based. we are one of them.

[beestee]

We are in the same boat as you Kalan. I think the main motivating factor behind this consideration for us, is the nitrous viewports in Max 2012, and only VRay 2.0 will be getting compatibility with them. On one hand we do not know if it is worth paying to upgrade to VRay 2.0 with Mental Ray seeing a new release with every version of Max that we are already paying for on Subscription. On the other, we are very comfortable with VRay and would have to re-invent our workflow to incorporate Mental Ray.

 

I did some tests to see if we could transition, and I am certain we could, but I feel that some of the features of VRay that we relied upon to achieve the quality that we are currently at cannot be matched by Mental Ray. Most notably, Mental Ray falls short when rendering strictly with HDR lighting, so much so that I feel it is nearly pointless to have the feature. Also, our material library makes extensive use of the Bercon Procedurals, which are far and away superior to the native procedurals of Max, but are not compatible with Mental Ray. These two things don't necessarily break the deal since there are many other ways to handle both lighting and materials, but it would affect our quality and productivity, at least until we became comfortable with Mental Ray.

[arkinadamesref]

As you guys had have said before MIR use Lightwave,

 

However regardless of which render engine you use I think the skill still comes down to the individual artist and what they feel most comfortable with and works best for them,

 

Especially as MIR / Luxigon do so much post work in Photoshop, I think the same result is possible no matter what rendering engine you use...