Intuition's Vray/Maya Musings

[Intuition]

I initially did an XSI test thread. Never did one for Maya.

Will drop images here as work or tests come out.

---edit----- original was 1920x1080..... upload was scaled down.

[jasonhuang1115]

love those noodles....please keep them coming...BTW, will you do one for PRMan 21?

[Intuition]

DoF

http://www.mediafire.com/view/w2896w...k_Hole_001.jpg

[Intuition]

love those noodles....please keep them coming...BTW, will you do one for PRMan 21?

It is tempting. I am waiting for Commercial Free version though. I bought a full Renderman 19 RIS License but never used it over VRay on a project ever. Renders took too long. I am sure it was a huge benefit to those Renderman pipelines, but for Vray users it was an immense drop in speed and versatility. I Skipped 20. Will look at 21 when it is free before I buy. Vray still the primary workhorse. Love playing with Rman, though Vray is my home.

[jasonhuang1115]

It is tempting. I am waiting for Commercial Free version though. I bought a full Renderman 19 RIS License but never used it over VRay on a project ever. Renders took too long. I am sure it was a huge benefit to those Renderman pipelines, but for Vray users it was an immense drop in speed and versatility. I Skipped 20. Will look at 21 when it is free before I buy. Vray still the primary workhorse. Love playing with Rman, though Vray is my home.

Hey KC,

Is the upgrade from 19 to 20 or 21 not free? I can't help but wonder when most of the comments I read is that Arnold and PRman is slower than Vray (even when Vray in BF+BF), when would big houses like MPC, Framestore, Cinesite still use them? I can see ILM use Rman as it's free to use and given that their environment/generalist team already use Vray. But for other big vfx houses, I really don't fully get it. Is it simply PRman and Arnold more "open" to them so they can tune it to their like?

cheers,
JH

[Intuition]

I am not sure overall. I know with Transformers at Digital Domain they went with Renderman because many of the lookdev people on the project knew Renderman in and out and could control every aspect and even create custom brdf, ray trace, gi solutions etc etc. A very granular level of control. Vray has quite a bit of granular control as well. Every once in a while I see a Vray scene setup quite badly. The final image looks great but they've accepted 6 hours a frame on 32 core machines. I think.... why? What could possibly take this long? I look through settings that seem way too low to be taking so long. Yes it's interior, yes there is reflections everywhere. BUT.. six hours on a 32 core machine?

Then I see,..... dynamic memory limit at default 5000. OH,!!!!. Jeez. OK... lets push that up to 32,000.

BAM... render now takes between 60 mines to 90 minutes with bells and whistles.

It is simple things like this that make people try out Renderman and Arnold. Sometimes they can't figure out the noise, vs the GI splotches. If the noise is caused by a light sample or a shader sample or something they should brute force through the AA engine. To me these things are second hand now. I see them and know which controls to use. Which numbers to adjust. Others feel this way about Renderman or Arnold or even Mental Ray. They know where to shortcut and adjust to get what they need.

Though I will say that the Arnold approach and Renderman RIS approach is basically... Lookdev as fast as you can and just throw the farm at it. And whatever it takes to render it takes to render. I saw a breakdown for Renderman on the Good Dinosaur and it touted a filed of grass render that took 48 hours a frame.

https://www.fxguide.com/featured/mak...good-dinosaur/

Ok so they literally made so much grass that it is ridiculous. BUT... why? There is a way to art direct that same render.

I am glad Vray still gives me more control than those other renderers. There were some Rman tests that looked great but they were 80 minutes for a very basic two area light render to be clean. This is before Noise reduction. I could get that same render out of Vray in less than five minutes at HD before there was a Noise filter.

Upgrades from RIS 19 to 20 to 21 are not free for paying customers. If you wait till the public release you will get it anyways. To me the Arnold and Rman preview is why some houses have moved to those engines.

Meanwhile the smaller places like where I am have a smaller render farm and use Vray in an exacting manner to get nice images at far less render time.
The bigger houses see it like.... artist time is more expensive than machine time. So let them lookdev fast and we'll have a render technician fix the settings if the render is taking too long.