Trying not to whip the horse: mental ray vs. V-ray: Friday Discussion

[TomD_Arch]

Some 8 years ago I realized when looking at my architecture school portfolio that my renderings suxed. I started to self-teach myself modeling in 3ds Max and quickly realized I had to make a choice between learning mental ray(mr) or V-ray. I didn't have the time to learn both. I decided to go with mr because I knew that no matter what I would always have access to it if asked to do renderings in 3dsMax.

 

Now, 8 years later I am moving more towards a career path in architecture as a visualization artist. I am at a fork with learning. However, I keep running into roadblocks when looking for online tutorials and blog posts. EVERYTHING IS V-RAY! And, I try to reproduce the material set-ups, lighting techniques, etc.

 

Some 8 years ago I realized when looking at my architecture school portfolio that my renderings suxed. I started to self-teach myself modeling in 3ds Max and quickly realized I had to make a choice between learning mental ray(mr) or V-ray. I didn't have the time to learn both. I decided to go with mr because I knew that no matter what I would always have access to it if asked to do renderings in 3dsMax.

 

Now, 8 years later I am moving more towards a career path in architecture as a visualization artist. I am at a fork with learning. However, I keep running into roadblocks when looking for online tutorials and blog posts. EVERYTHING IS V-RAY! And, I try to reproduce the material set-ups, lighting techniques, etc.

 

EXAMPLE:

http://bertrand-benoit.com/blog/nakagin-photoreal-road-tutorial/comment-page-1/#hash_comment-81863

 

Now, this is not to say you can't create a PBM roadway in mr, but i just wish there were some tutorials to reference that ended up with as beautiful of a road.

 

So, now I am left with having to face the realization. I should probably be at a point where I am proficient in more then one render engine. I should probably take the time to learn V-ray, and in reality make it my "goto". I am just anxious about diving down that rabbit hole. How long will it take me to get upto speed? What is the learning curve going to be? How discouraged will I become that first time I run up against "Well I could do this in mr, I knew I should have just stuck to it!"

 

I guess I need a good strong push out the door.

[TomD_Arch]

In the time it took you to write that you could of learnt the basics! ;-) - honestly find the dilemma hard to understand, it's just a renderer, it's not like you're going from one piece of software to a completely different one, as a 3d visualiser you should be learning new software/plugins/renderers all the time, at least to some extent, at the moment I'm learning Unreal Engine and Fabrics Rhino to Unreal plugin, also want to look into Octane, amongst other renderers. Just do it.

 

I totally see your point and agree. For me Visualization is still just a after-work en devour. I work full-time as an architect, that gets to do rendering once or twice a year at the job. My self-education in visualization is a series of projects. For example, I am building my first render farm node for personal use at home from scratch this summer. Clearly my next project should be V-ray. And yes, I bet if I spent this three-day weekend doing nothing but, I would have a good foundation.

[TomD_Arch]

No, it's not just a hobby. It's a goal I am striving for in the next year to be working full-time as a visualization artist. But, your point is a great recommendation and the kind of response I am fishing for by opening this discussion. Part of my hope was to get people talking about their own experiences and path of education.

[Justin Hunt]

if you are concerned about the learning curve, then maybe look into Corona, there are next to no setting to fiddle with and the default settings tend to work for most situations. The output is as good and in some hands better than Vrays. One of the best things is its licensing options, very good for those who use it every now and then.

 

Vray is still king and if you really want to work full time in a studio, then its a absolute must. The learning curve is much easier these days so switching over will be fairly straight forward.

 

Interestingly enough mentalray is slowly being fazed out in favor of iray, so now would be as good a time as any to expand your rendering expertise.

 

As a little down time exercise I have been playing with a scene to see how easy it is to convert from FStorm, Corona and vray. What surprised me was how similar the renders were ( there are differences but mainly down to how each render sets up materials). The biggest surprise was how much easier it was to set up Fstorm and Corona compared to Vray. I put this mainly down to the interactive renders in FStorm and corona making material and lighting tweaks on the fly and getting immediate feedback is great. VrayRT just didn't cut it.

 

Render times between FStorm and Corona were very comparable although Vray is struggling for some reason , up to X3 time slower with the recommended BF+IC but X2 faster with LC+IC. I think I am doing some thing wrong somewhere

 

As a follow up, I was doing something wrong (still dont know what though) reverted back to default settings but still with LC+IC and it rendered in minutes. BF+IC is still slow (hours)

Edited September 7, 2016 by Justin Hunt

[Chris MacDonald]

I would say jump ship.

 

It's not that mental ray is a bad render enginer per se, it's that the lack of support (which you touched upon) and snails pace development are worlds apart from VRay (and other similar render engines) - you really will feel like you've gone from something that hasn't changed in decades to something that is gaining new features every month, and the support is second to none. Unlike Autodesk you really can talk to the actual developers/software engineers and have them listen to what you want, which in itself justifies the price.

 

As for the learning curve a huge amount of what you've learned can be applied to any other rendering engine straight out of the box - a bump map is still a bump map, reflection glossiness is still just that. It's far easier these days to open up a renderer and get fairly decent results with the default settings. Do not be put off by learning a new render engine. The past year or two has seen VRay focus mainly on streamlining workflow by hiding a lot of the settings and giving you just a handful of parameters to tweak to enable you to adjust quality.

 

Just last week I gave one of our juniors a spare licence to play around with, but didn't have any time to show him how to do anything. This week he's produced some not-far-off-usable interior shots.

 

It's not that difficult.

[joneytran]

I am fishing for by opening this discussion. Part of my hope was to get people talking about their own experiences and path of education.

[SkylineArch]

MentalRay and V-Ray are not as far apart as you may think, the concepts and "math" are all the same. Shaders are shaders, lights are lights, polygons are polygons.

 

I started with MR and moved to V-Ray when the job required... just like I went from VIS to Max to Maya as the job required. You roll with it and keep improving.

[innerdream]

Personally I don't like Vray renders I prefer Maxwell, Corona, and other unbiased engines. But, since most studios are Vray users you'll need to know it to work in a studio.

[Scott Dombrowski]

I'll give another plug for Corona. I started off with mental ray and found that I was spending more time fiddling with settings to tweak the render than I wanted to. Corona just works, it's fast, the licensing options are very friendly, and the developers are very responsive. I switched over 2 years ago and honestly have not looked back.