gdamaso88 Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 I've been working with 3dviz 2005 and mental ray for the past 6 months. I've gotten to the point where I know what I am doing and I know how to get the scene rendered well with materials, lighting and all. But my problem is time. I have found that for myself that mental ray seems a bit time consuming. I've been looking at other posts to see what the opinions are about vray and mental ray and I haven't found too much. I found that there is a preference for vray over mental ray on a poll on this site, but I would like to hear some opinions about the production time of vray vs. mental ray, as well as the it's pros and cons, learning curve etc. I downloaded the free version and found it somewhat simple to navigate through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbr Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 Can't say for Vray, at least not yet, but I am currently beginning comparisons between Final Render, Mental Ray, VRay, and, eventually, Brazil. So far, Final Render is just faster to render and faster to set up (which pretty much confirms what everyone is saying - MR is slower and mroe complex). But I've only played with MR for a few days, so it'll take more to make a conclusion. I'd try VRay free/demo, or what ever they have, and ask Turbo Squid for a Final Render demo (fully functional 30 day demo). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fernando Lino Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 Hi Eugene, I am using finalRender and Vray, both are great tools. fR is pretty fast, you have easier settings to control quality and speed and they are pretty clear, Vray has the way to control that but they have their own vocabulary..., so it took me more time to understand it....Vray has an excellent displacement, and fR has great shaders..I prefer fR for interiors and vray for exteriors...I have tried to use MR, but it's very very slow, and two engines for GI is enought for me! Good luck!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kicks Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdamaso88 Posted December 27, 2004 Author Share Posted December 27, 2004 Thanks guys for replying to my post. It's interesting because i before you fernando and markus replied, I didn't consider using fR at all. I haven't heard or seen too much on it. It seems to me that Vray is a bit more popular and accessible. But it definitely sounds like if I'm looking to increase my speed that I should dump mental ray. I still have a question about the materials/shaders that come with fR and Vray. Are they equivalent to mental ray shaders? Are they as complex as mr shaders? What is the learning curve like for the two renderers? ... how similar is it to mental ray?... i guess I still have alot of question that could probably be answered by getting demo versions of each and trying them out...that sounds like alot of time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbr Posted December 27, 2004 Share Posted December 27, 2004 You could try posting on their forums. fR has a 'paid' section and a 'not paid section', so keep in mind that the one you don't see is more extensive than the one that is accessible to everyone. Here's fR's forum: http://www.cebas.com/forums/cebas/ Shader post: http://www.cebas.com/forums/cebas/viewtopic.php?t=1665 Recent renderings I"ve done: http://www.cebas.com/forums/cebas/viewtopic.php?t=1559 http://www.cebas.com/forums/cebas/viewtopic.php?t=1551 I used standard fR materials, which are simple to set up. I've not tried the fR materials that now ship with it (they were available for purchase after I bought it, but I've seen some very nice things with them). I think VRays' forum is http://www.chaoticdimension.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdamaso88 Posted December 29, 2004 Author Share Posted December 29, 2004 I don't hear any objection from mr users about the time factor in mr vs. vray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aflack Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 I've been using MR for about 6 months now but I am really struggling with it. I can get pretty decent results but it doesn't seem to matter how many photons I use I can never get a really clean solution especially on Internal Images. I too am looking at VRay, its good to read other peoples opinions though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 both will produce great results, so you are not going to lose choosing one over the other. however, if you are going to network render, especially if your farm has any size to it, vray will be the better choice based on no additional cost for netwrok render nodes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bebkadsah Posted January 4, 2005 Share Posted January 4, 2005 hi. i've downloaded teh vray109 on its own page.but it does not have materials and lights. can anyone write me any link??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F10 Posted March 2, 2005 Share Posted March 2, 2005 vray free doesnt come with lights, only shadows. and it does have vraymtl, which is all u need to make your own mats. Vray rules when it comes to rendering and you be better to buy a license like i did. Their beta 1.46.10 absolutely rocks and has loads of features. Like someone previously said, they have their own language and terms but once u spend a few minutes at their forums, u quickly understand the terms and will never regret buying it. I have all the renderers,fr,brazil,mr,etc. I find vray to be the quickest to set up and play. Did I mentioned, its so damn fast too, if u know how to use it right! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 Although MR is a great renderer, its really not for everyone, its strengths are in motion picture rendering, like Prman, the studios have people who just do rendering, they know how to code shaders, and optimize the full potential of the renderer, the studios also have the money to equipt a renderfarm with the necessary licences... For the rest of us who don't have the manpower or the huge amount of money to do this, there are tools like Vray, its not a one button solution, but it takes much less time, both in terms of learning it ,and setting up your scenes, as well as rendering time, that is why it is prefered... And from what I've read about MR, as far as plugin support, it will never support plugins, because of the way it renders, so if you want to use things like RPC, afterburn, dreamscape, etc... it just ain't gonna happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted March 5, 2005 Share Posted March 5, 2005 And just to make another point : Discreet and Mental Images missed the ball. if they had incorporated MR in Max 4, with satalite render nodes, and flooded us with tutorials and information, we would all probably be using it right now, but they waited till version 6, when we had all kinds of options, and now we've invested in these options... When you get an industry standard renderer with your 3D package, and you're still looking at other alternatives, that has to tell you something... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voltaire_ira Posted April 10, 2005 Share Posted April 10, 2005 mr has a very steep learning curve and requires a lot of patience. vray is fairly easy to learn in less amount of time. both can produce great results but i prefer mentalray over vray in terms of lighting distribution and quality. it can even render faster ( scene dependent, of course) compared to vray in some cases. its a personal preference..stay with vray and master it, then you'll be good with it. stick with mr and do the same, you'll be as good in no time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Alexander Posted April 11, 2005 Share Posted April 11, 2005 ..stay with vray and master it, then you'll be good with it. stick with mr and do the same, you'll be as good in no time. John makes sense adn is right, imho. Max's implemention of MR, as in the shaders is where it really is kind of poor. Maya' set up makes more sense and XSI has a shader tree (render nodes) set up for the shaders where you can build shaders without coding. You can follow the 'rendering with MR' book/s verbatum.... Stick with mental ray if you plan to work outside of max, just to get a good feel for it. WDA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanSpaulding Posted April 11, 2005 Share Posted April 11, 2005 How is God's name do you people have enough $$$ to try all these renderers??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted April 13, 2005 Share Posted April 13, 2005 How is God's name do you people have enough $$$ to try all these renderers??? Vray free, FR Demo, and MR comes with Max... $0.00 lots of time spent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paraganek Posted January 17, 2006 Share Posted January 17, 2006 Hi guys, just read this thread, I have been trying to compare those two as well, whoever is interested check my two threads at Vray forum http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14092 http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13966 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psv1 Posted January 22, 2006 Share Posted January 22, 2006 mental ray can be fast , verry fast , if you know how to do it.... it`s greatest strengt resides in it`s shaders, and in mental ray a shader is much , much more than a surface atribute for a material like in vray , fr , brazil etc. bear in mind that almoust every `cool`or usefull shader developed for maya, or oftimage XSI can be ported to 3ds max....and are plenty of them. it is supperior in light distribution , better than vray on that, and in the aspect of rendered and filtered bitmaps..semms more natural... contrary of popular belief mental ray can do a verry good job for interiors, and fast..... but it`s a `user based `rendering engine .... and it`s free , that`s cool enough .... cheers Sorin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirallah Posted July 29, 2006 Share Posted July 29, 2006 Brazil has a free demo too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karlfucious Posted August 1, 2006 Share Posted August 1, 2006 Mental ray's only downfall is that it isnt verry easy to learn. Also out of the box certain things like blurry reflections can be a little on the slow side. Once you introduce custom shaders that people have wrote such as ctrl_shading by francescaluce over at CG talk blurry reflections are the fastest of any of the render engines ive seen. Irradiance mapping In vray is more advanced than Final Gather but is by no means faster. Acually since it does multiple passes it is considerably slower unless you go crazy with the settings in Mental ray. Also Mental ray is probably the best option for film work when GI/Raytracing is needed due to it's standalone package for renderfarms and its custom coding ability. Vray is a great render and what it does well it does better than probably any other package. If all you need is stills Vray is probably your best option due to its ease of use and overall great quality but mental ray is pretty close for that and it does a lot that vray doesnt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted August 1, 2006 Share Posted August 1, 2006 Isn't ctrl_shading for Maya ? Can we use it in Max ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psv1 Posted August 1, 2006 Share Posted August 1, 2006 maybe is not the case to use francesca`s shaders ,, though are great:D http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=7684178 watch the mental ray video.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Realmind Posted August 7, 2006 Share Posted August 7, 2006 I've been working with 3dviz 2005 and mental ray for the past 6 months. I've gotten to the point where I know what I am doing and I know how to get the scene rendered well with materials, lighting and all. But my problem is time. I have found that for myself that mental ray seems a bit time consuming. I've been looking at other posts to see what the opinions are about vray and mental ray and I haven't found too much. I found that there is a preference for vray over mental ray on a poll on this site, but I would like to hear some opinions about the production time of vray vs. mental ray, as well as the it's pros and cons, learning curve etc. I downloaded the free version and found it somewhat simple to navigate through. I am an architect and prefer Vray because vray is very fast an easy to learn but mental ray in terms of material and shader is more powerful than vray but I prefer vray.vray is perfect! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted August 7, 2006 Share Posted August 7, 2006 It is going to be interesting once Max9 comes out. It seems that they have taken onboard the way Vray works The new Design and Arch materials are very similar to Vray materials with the added bonus of AO and beveled edges at shader level, (both of which can be done now with a little trickery) The bigest problem with MR is that most of its power is "Hidden" to the average user. Unless you know how to program you will miss out on alot of the features. Metalray3.5 is starting to address that. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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