Difficulty texturing and rendering in 3ds Max, what is the proper workflow?

[gesybekeyei]

I'm learning realistic offline rendering using mental ray in 3ds Max and really confused. The material creation/testing process is SO slow. I like seeing my work in progress in real time (like in UE4), but in 3ds max its like totally guess work. Its difficult to create something like old glass details or detailed fruits and such, without taking ages to keep rendering the object and being unable to see anything through all the noise issues.

How do you guys do this? Its difficult to predict lighting and get details how I want them without spending so long on rendering and checking and endless tweaking.

At the end I always end up with unfinished work..

[Francisco Penaloza]

Working in 3D Max or any other 3D modeling/animation software is different to work with a game engine such Unreal. One's could complain how painful or long take to unwrap meshes just to render, or how clumsy are the modeling tools if any.

 

If you take your time to learn your 3D application you'll find that the process is not that slow or complex, you'll find yourself setting materials and scenes without the need to render every single time.

[jasonstewart]

Once you have a feel for the different parameters you can get very close on your first or second try. Region rendering is a life saver for tweaking materials.