industry standard 3rd party renders

[grantw]

hello all.

 

just wanting to see if well trained eyes out there can help me understand what some of the large architectural visualisation and graphic companies are using as 3rd party renders.

 

what do companies like smoothe, hayes davidson, hush design etc use for interior and exterior rendering. I pay alot of attention to the use of blurred reflection, refracted glass and well resolved GI..

 

I like alot of the images that kdlabs do, i believe they have used mental ray...

 

I have tried brazil but found it slow for architectural work, vray seems good, mental ray is hard to get reliable results with..

 

thanks for any comments in advance

[STRAT]

smoothe still use LS, and most others, like HD have switched to vray or MR.

 

there is no set standard. dont think you must conform to what they use. Brazil is megga fast if you know how to use it, MR is also excellent and reliable, but again, you must understand how to manipulate it.

 

i use C4D for example, which not many others do.

[mbr]

I dont' think a good rendering would reveal which renderer was used. I use Final Render and like it a lot.

I am trying MR, but like everyone's already said, it's tough to get a hold of and slower.

 

 

I notice blurry reflections, refractions, etc., but they are really secondary. I like renderings that looks creative. I've seen some with bad shadows, reflections (just poor techinical stuff) but that looked fantastic because it inspired a response.

KDLab does this to some degree - they inspire more than they demostrate superb techinical details. The Arte Factory is like this, too - superb renderings with little technical things, but great looking and highly stylized.

[Lester_Masterson]

There is another, although, not as widely known. It's called InSight, and it is easy to learn, and get great results quickly. Best off, it's under $500.

 

Check them out at http://www.integra.co.jp/insight/gallery.htm

 

Not a plug...just a plug-in

[grantw]

lookign at some of smoothe's recent work they seem to have got some nice blurred metal work in there.. i know they use LS for exterior radiosioty scenes, looks like they use a raytracing renderer for interior work.

 

hush i think use a renderdrive..

 

I havent tried v ray other than the free download, it seems to be popular, is it used by the majority of comercial companies?

 

what about the maxwell renderer... looks interesting do you think this maybe a program of choice for many..?

[IC]

Grant

There's a thread not a million miles away on Maxwell. It's had thousands of hits (over 10,000!) so yes I think it's safe to say it will be a popular choice if the render times aren't too severe.

 

I think the majority of arch firms are now using Vray but as said above, all the major renderers do anything you want them to if you know how, so find out which one you like best.

I use LightWave and you can even get blurry reflections, realistic refraction, GI etc with that old bugger.

[grantw]

Thanks for that....

 

I have generally been using max's radiosity solution for alot of my work because an increasing amount of my clients are asking for animations and max's built in radiosity solution is quick as it is stored in the 3d mesh.

 

I recent client of mine wanted to visualise a meeting reception area that was mainly stainless steel, this threw up the requirement to look into 3rd party renderers. I have used mental ray and am getting a much better understanding of its photon mapping based GI. I think its quite easy to spot a Vray based render though, Mental ray is quite 'noisy' but with the new version there is the amibient occlusion pass option.

 

I am thinking of persevering with Mental ray (mainly as its built into max now) and investing is alot mor ram and a comple more machines to render to.

 

Maxwell sounds great but would like to wait and see what is said about render times etc.

 

cheers

 

Grant.

[3dp]

pretty well all 3rd party kit in th right hands will produce what you seek

how long it takes to get your head round the package and then finding what is will work with in your own software ie software specific materials/lights etc

 

i've not used mental ray in max but did years ago in softimage when nothing else came close on irix

i belive with max7 you can now access mr shaders that were written for soft and there are loads out there for maya etc as well as programes that will write shaders without going into code via a gui

i s'pose you need to get xtra licence though which will cost which is why i belive vray is so popular

 

with all of them you will need to practice and i say again there is no make art now button

 

 

speed - it's always an issue buy more slave nodes

consider that i bought my first pc 10 years ago a p60 with 32mb ram and it would not run autocad 13

[wda]

I am thinking of persevering with Mental ray (mainly as its built into max now) and investing is alot mor ram and a comple more machines to render to.

 

Research MR in other apps. Cough...XSI...Cough. The help files and tutorials in Max don't do it justice. MR can be as fast as you need it or as accurate as you need it- a balancing act. However with over 15 parameters if you don't have a good understanding and working knowledge, it will never render the way you need it.

 

MR being Slow, imho, may just be the user is slow on the pick up (who isn't with MR) and fast to talk. But learning curves are marketing and real world factors-that is what counts.

 

WDA

[Craig Ramsay]

Smooth use V-ray aswell as Lightscape

[joseph alexander]

I think it's interesting that everyone is so fascinated by glossy reflections... I've been trying to do it with Brazil R/S and it's to darn slow. I have friends that work at big viz offices and they're like, are you crazy, do a reflection pass and then use photoshop and a gausian blur. Comp the two images together and you actually have more control because you can control the opacity ie the amount of reflection. I think, unless your doing animations, reflections should be dealt with in passes.

Vray has a pass control option where you can do a seperate reflection pass, right??

 

-joe

[Christopher Nichols]

Well first of all in terms of glossy reflections, keep in mind that they are the next critical step for raytracing. Specular highlights, as you may all know, are in fact a means of faking a reflection of a light source. You give the illussion of roughness by spreading the specular highlight the same way that you do a reflection, and that is with a glossiness setting. However, CG spec looks just like it sounds... CG. Good lighters and good modelers can make a spec highlight look less CG, but the best way to do it is to make it a reflection rather then a spec hit.

 

Eventually, doing glossy HDRI reflections will replace the need to CG specular.

 

And yes, Vray has a method of accelerating the reflection pass, but approximating it the same way that it does the Irradiance cache. From what i remember a long time ago, finalRender had some method too but it was more of an overall blur, and not so much a defocus.

[great_acid]

i recomend accurender it's easy and very realiable

[Woody79]

lookign at some of smoothe's recent work they seem to have got some nice blurred metal work in there.. i know they use LS for exterior radiosioty scenes, looks like they use a raytracing renderer for interior work.

QUOTE]

 

we use vray. Mainly because in a production situation we need speed and flexability. Final Render, although it offers amazing results, it is just too slow. And Brazil is great if your packing a floor dedicated to render machines.

 

Woody

(Smoothe bod)

[mbr]

Woody - so you dropped Final Render in favor of VRay? I noticed a lot of the renderings on your site were done with fR, so I assume you know how to use it

[Woody79]

yup. vray worked out better in the long run. much faster imo. the only problem I have with it, is its not so pollished as fR and brazil. Waiting on 1.5, then things should catch up a little.