mental ray vs. VRay for beginner?

[danshewan]

I'm wondering if purchasing a license for VRay would be a worthwhile investment (both financially and time-wise) for someone trying to get a solid grasp of rendering in 3ds Max?

 

I've used mental ray before - not extensively, but a little. I'm not a complete beginner, but I'm new enough to rendering that I'm keen to develop good habits and choose a renderer that will add to my skill set and ultimately, enhance my work and employment prospects as a 3D artist.

 

Should I start with mental ray, then progress to VRay, or just dive right in and purchase a VRay license?

 

Thanks in advance.

[notamondayfan]

I think vray is only really industry standard because for many years mental ray was a lot slower, but recently the speed gap isn't that noticable, so I guess it's down to costs, preference, features, etc. I haven't used mental ray properly so I can't really compare the two.

[Lutz1973]

To be honest: mr can be a bit "tricky" to use sometimes and you'll find more tutorials for vray on the web.

On the other hand, using mr you don't have to pay additional 1000.-€ for a plugin that doesn't differ that much from mr concerning speed and output quality.

Just register to the chaosgroup website, install the lite/demo version of vRay, play with both renderers and make your own decision.

In the end you should use the renderer you feel more familiar with and that fits your workflow.

[xEndlessxUrbiax]

If you are using 3ds Max 2012 I suggest you use iRay if your computer can handle it. It is a very intuitive unbiased rendering method with minimal settings to change. I've had good results with it, having previously using mental ray. As long as you set up your scene correctly you should have some good results, and it uses most mental ray materials and all that. If you do decide to use mental ray, find a couple basic tutorials on the web to help you get a grasp of the basic parameters and settings. You'll need to do a lot of test renders to understand what settings do what. I have never used vRay but have seen many great results with it.

[Brodie Geers]

After years of sitting on the fence in the great VR vs MR debate and pointing out that each have their strengths and weaknesses, (which they do) I am afraid that I have come to realise that there is just 'too much' that doesn't work properly about MR for it to compete with Vray.

If you are wanting to pick just ONE renderer and stick with it I would definately say pick vray, so long as the extra money isn't a big problem!

 

Regards

Bri

 

Any specifics on what doesn't work in MR that you can do in Vray?

 

-Brodie

[erickdt]

I have to agree with Brian. I've been using Mental Ray for the past few weeks at my new job while I await approval for the funds to purchase VRay (which is what I had previously been using) and I have to say that I find Mental Ray to be a buggy POS.

 

E

[danshewan]

Thanks very much for all the input, guys - much appreciated.

[Chris MacDonald]

I began on Mental Ray and found that it can indeed produce the same quality results as VRay, however I always had issues with memory usage on large models, so switched to VRay which handled them with ease. I can safely say that VRay for me has been far more stable/reliable and actually I (for reasons I can't explain) simply feel more at home in VRay and have done since day one.

[AubreyM]

Any specifics on what doesn't work in MR that you can do in Vray?

 

-Brodie

 

Plugins like Afterburn and FumeFx do not work with MR but work well in Vray. I have heard that the newer versions do but I am not sure.

[erickdt]

In my admittedly limited experience with MR I've found there to be numerous bugs. I've been having real issues with getting render elements to display correctly and save via. batch rendering. Also, for me, AO in MR is a real pain in the ass to tweak. I still haven't been able to render out a decent AO pass. That's some of the stuff that should work and doesn't.

 

Features available in VRay that aren't in MR (as far as I know) are VRay objects and lights. VRay plane lights and dome lights are unbelievably easy to set up and tweak. I also use the VRay plane alot. Environment refract and reflect override is also a valuable tool. The VRay Properties quad menu is really helpful as well. All of your reflect, refract and alpha settings available in one easy to use dialogue.

 

While VRay is an additional cost on top of the cost of MAX itself to me it's totally worth it. Of course it's true that I find it easier because I've been using it for 6 years but for me it is far more intuitive and controlable than MR.

 

E

[erkutacar]

if u have great hardware (meaning 2 tesla cards or 1 tesla 1 quadro) get iray

[Vegeta_DTX]

That is all great, they are all right, and I agree Mental Ray is way below VRay when it comes to stability and reliability...

BUT! From my long experience as a spectator of various architectural renders, and from my own experience with Mental and Vray(which is not to extensive I admit) I still believe that Mental Ray has significantly more realistic lighting.

 

That is just my personal experience, and based on it I believe hat you cannot get this kind of result with Vray(or at least nobody so far did):

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/2151/bathroomlrg.jpg

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/883/fig102.jpg

 

Most of the time Vray will make such scenes look a bit more high contrast, dark, moody and give them kind of plastic look...and I am not the only one to have notice that.

 

When I see, for example, such a realistic sofa rendered with VRay, I will most likely switch to Vray that same moment, but till then I'll rest my case.

Edited October 29, 2011 by Vegeta_DTX

[AubreyM]

I still believe that Mental Ray has significantly more realistic lighting.

 

That is just my personal experience, and based on it I believe hat you cannot get this kind of result with Vray(or at least nobody so far did):

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/2151/bathroomlrg.jpg

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/883/fig102.jpg

 

Most of the time Vray will make such scenes look a bit more high contrast, dark, moody and give them kind of plastic look...and I am not the only one to have notice that.

 

When I see, for example, such a realistic sofa rendered with VRay, I will most likely switch to Vray that same moment, but till then I'll rest my case.

 

I can't let that one go. Have you seen some of the renders on this forum? 90% of them are Vray and the lighting on some of them is better than the examples you posted. I'm not saying MR can't render a quality image, it can. Just don't try and tell me that you can't get realistic lighting with Vray. That is just wrong.

 

Getting a realistic result has less to do with the render engine than it does the person behind the keyboard.

[Vegeta_DTX]

^Don't worry I'm not an aggressive person, I won't start a MR vs VR war right now, I respect your opinion.....but I disagree :D

 

better than the examples you posted

Ok maybe I am wrong, post some Vray rendered stuff that involves furniture like in second picture...because like I said I'd be glad I'm wrong.

And remember that just because the scene is more complex and has more details doesn't meant its more realistically rendered.

 

And of course it all depends mostly on the artist...but you'll agree that the technical differences still exist, and to some picky individuals they might be extremely important, such as to me

[Brian Smith]

don't forget that the final renderings you are comparing may not be 100% a result of vray or mr. there could be, and probably more often than not is, significant post work performed outside either renderer. i personally believe that they are both equal in terms of what can be made. speed, ease of use, and community/vendor support still seems to be in vray's corner imo.

[erkutacar]

i agree with AudreyM, it depends on the person.. the level of detail in the model, materials that r used and lighting(especially lighting) affects the output a lot..

[erkutacar]

here is an interior im working on and its not near to final at all, its like half quality render that took 2hours.. its still pretty good for a night scene with low settings.. oh btw its MR but vray can do some really serious stuff..

[ATTACH=CONFIG]45487[/ATTACH]

[Scott Schroeder]

You'll never win or even come close to finding the answer if you compare these engines by render output alone. So it's just a pointless act to even try.

 

It's the artist, not the engine. Shoot, I can find some Maxwell or FryRender images that are just as good or better than most Mental Ray or Vray images.

 

You want to compare? Speed versus quality and the user-controlled customization of that. That's what separates the boys from the men in rendering images. Mental Delay can't come close to allowing users the freedom of customization that Vray offers. That's a point that cannot be argued in Mental Ray's favor. Just look at Mental Ray's sampling options, all fixed numbers. Vray has 3 different sampling solutions, Mental Ray has one, and you can actually input numbers into it rather than select numbers like in Mental Ray.

 

There's no point in creating a flawless image if you can't render it on time.

[Justin Hunt]

mentalray also gives you three sampling options, the default Min/Max samples per pixel, Fast Rasterizer and the new unified sampling. On top of that it is possible (through a third party shader) to have sampling on a per object basis, although this is not widely used and to varying levels of success.

 

I also find your comment on the lack of customization quite funny, as this used to be one of the biggest arguments againts mentalray, being too customizable therefore too confusing.

 

Now that Master Zap has come aboard Autodesk, there should be an improvment in the implementation into Max. Which has been its biggest problem, being hamstrung by autodesk.

 

jhv

[Vegeta_DTX]

People don't seem to listen to me carefully. I am the first one to always say that everything mostly depends on the artist...BUT you can be the most talented artist of all times and you WON'T make a photorealistic render with Maya Software render or some other low-realistic renderer.

And even if you could do it by rendering separate elements and then combining them all together in Photoshop(practically painting the picture), why would you put years into doing something that you can do in a day?

 

That was my point.

The last thing I want to do is to push my opinion on other people...but I really think that significant differences do exist and I'd definitely like to see more side by side comparisons of the same scene.

 

As for the post effects changing things drastically...I wouldn't say so. When I say - I believe that Mental Ray is more realistic renderer than Vray, I think of the literal quality itself, not of shiny effects or such...I am talking about the way

shadows/occlusion are placed, their intersection, reflection, refraction, the way object edges deal with the background, the whole ambience. I don't think someone would really draw shadows in post work or paste refracted stuff into refractive surface and then reshape it so it fits the object...

 

Here is one decent comparison I found so far:

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs39/i/2008/345/6/0/Mental_ray_Vs_Vray_by_threedegree03.jpg

Take a close look and honestly say if this scene was real, would it look like the MR one or like VR one, IMO MR one all the way. But whichever is your choice, the clear difference does exist.

 

BTW Erkutacar, very nice work!

Edited October 31, 2011 by Vegeta_DTX

[mattclinch]

uuuggghhhhh....really? is this still being picked over? why do any of you care? just use whatever you are best with. this is such a massive non-issue.

[erkutacar]

Thnx a lot Vegeta_DTX. The L sofa is temporary, couldnt find a good design to model that will suit this room. I guess i will have to design it myself like everything in this scene

[David Arbogast]

Here is one decent comparison I found so far:

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs39/i/2008/345/6/0/Mental_ray_Vs_Vray_by_threedegree03.jpg

Take a close look and honestly say if this scene was real, would it look like the MR one or like VR one, IMO MR one all the way. But whichever is your choice, the clear difference does exist.

Not a "decent comparison". The vray version lacks good reflectivity in the stone material, exterior sunlight solution, and ambient occlusion. Anything such as these that are lacking in the Vray comparitive rendering is due to the inabilities of the artist, not of the Vray renderer.

Edited October 31, 2011 by David Arbogast

[Vegeta_DTX]

Ok I agree...And that's why I'd be excited to see some good comparison by some amazing artist who is very familiar with both MR and VR. Hopefully I'll find such comparison soon or will learn Vray enough so I can do the comparison myself. I don't see any bad sides of side by side comparing, all of us can just gain from it IMO.

Edited October 31, 2011 by Vegeta_DTX

[Bruce Hart]

Well that comparison above just goes to show how subjective things are. The MR one looks rather dirty to me. Do you think the ceiling recess would look that grimey in real life? Compare the contact shadowing of the mirror on the wall. Notice the folds on the curtains.

 

After several years of using MR in production, I switched to Vray for the lighting quality. I found it much easier to obtain smooth soft shadow contacts on areas that are not in direct light. In MR, unless you are prepared to use high settings and long render times it's often manditory to use Ambient Occlusion so that objects don't appear to float. Ambient Occlusion is not that realistic to my eye, and it contributes to a "dirty" look in many cases. (IMO). If you want to do a test - get a box, greeble it and light it with a skylight only (with no AO). Compare the soft shadowing in the crevices. Note the render times.

 

As an in house modeller, speed is important. One of the many things I like about Vray is how quickly you can see a preview render in the Light Cache - as opposed to Final Gather. I find test rendering much less painful these days, and I get to a where I want faster. I also spend much less time fiddling with render settings.

 

For me Vray: does nicer lighting, renders faster, crashes less. In other words - it allows me to produce a nicer image faster. What more could I want

 

Some argue that MR is free - which is true. IMO the the quality of Vray is well worth it. If you can afford a license of Max, Revit, AutoCAD, After Effects etc. I don't think the cost of Vray is a big deal. If it is an issue - then perhaps 3D is not for you.

 

As mentioned - the issue of quality is very subjective. Many people will side with one renderer or another because it's their pet software that they "know". In some cases people will say that the other renderer can or can't do this or that, but in reality they may just be mis-informed or just don't know. This understandably can be difficult for people to admit when they have many years of CG experience.

 

You can do nice renders in both engines. If you like the look of MR - go for it

 

I REALLY think this subject has been well and truly covered

Edited November 1, 2011 by Bruce Hart