3d Studio Max 2009 Trial available

[DanielBrew]

So, just for conversation, if Mental Ray inside MAX is easier to use with the same results as v-ray would people start using Mental Ray? It almost seems like we all have become family (how sweet) so would we support v-ray long term?

The way things are going at the moment I'm more likely to stop using Max and use VRay within another application.

Dan

[cecofuli]

Some intresting features

(*). Mr Proxy = VRay Proxy
(*) FG presets = IM Preset (Low, Mid, High)
(*) MR render element = VRay Render elements like Raw Reflect+Reflect level

etc...


Anyway...
I believe that if there isn't VRay antagonist, MR would not have evolved like in this release. Thank's to the competition. VRay and MR user say .. thank's

[OT] Com'on AMD...[/OT]

[samuel_bubat]

2. April... finally all hope is gone that max 2009 was just a huge April´s joke

Regarding Mental Ray. Well actually I am biased regarding rendering
But still I test as much renderes as possible. This is the way I came to Vray.
In the past I was a big Final Render Fan. I couldn´t believe there would be something
better or faster. Until Vray "punched" in my face.
With every new max version I give Mental Ray another chance.
I go through tutorials and test every new feature. But at the end I always
come to the same conclusion. Mental Ray is a very old Lady who get´s another
"plastic surgery" every new Max release. Below the line it still uses Photon Mapping
the worst possible GI Method. To get around this, they introduced Final Gathering
to "paint over" the Photon Mapping. Final Gathering alone is slow, Splotchy and inaccurate.
(Try an Indoor scene lit just by indirect light with FG). with max 2008 they introduced
Skylight portals wich "shows Final Gathering where to place samples" (original words
by the autodesk demo artist) to come around the lack of details (guide dog for MR ? ).
All I see are huge workarounds for features that are simply outdated.
(Anyone remembers windows 95 ? )
I have never.. absolutely never come close to the rendertimes vray can offer.
Hey I do not say that I´m not willing to learn.. but so far noone could show me
how I get similar rendertimes like in Vray.
And seriously.. if someone needs "Pro Materials" to get a decent Material.. he better
looks for a new job as a gardener .. because there might (very likely) come a situation where the out of the box things do not work.

What I want to say....

why should I drive this....



when I can have that....




Just my personal biased two cents

cheers

[plastic_]

but you cant deny that mr is pretty nice integrated into max by now.
the material templates are very nice, same with the photometric and proxy UI's.

of course it still sucks under the hood, at least the GI system.

[beestee]

I agree that MR wouldn't be what it is now without the healthy competition VRay has provided.

I do need to mention that the link to Revit is very appealing, and it may be in chaosgroup's best interests(if they choose to maintain a strong relationship with the Arch Vis community) to find a way to twist the interoperability of the Pro Materials around to work well with VRay, be it through straight up compatibility or a simple and efficient converter. That is the only reason I would consider investing a little time in learning to use MR efficiently. Time is money, and manually converting materials for engine compatibility can cost a considerable amount of time. By the looks of things, Revit will be taking a much stronger hold on the industry than ACAD Architecture ever did.

My $0.02

[vlado]

The conversion script of the pro materials is in the works; it will not make it for SP2, but it will be posted on the forum when it is complete.

Best regards,
Vlado

[beestee]

Great news! You made my day.

[cecofuli]

Hi,

this is renderer in MR by Italian Guy...

no bad... no bad...

http://www.deltatracing.com/Video/Bi.../campello.html

7 INTEL Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz - Ram 6GB - Vista 64bit
3 AMD Dual Core 2.88 GHz - RAM 4GB - Vista 64 bit

15 min per Frame 5-6 day for all movie.


http://www.treddi.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=52613

[glorybound]

Metal Ray

Let's state the obvious.... Mental Ray ships with MAX so you are not paying for the engine.

My concern would be the novice producing am image close enough to good. We are building all our projects in Revit and if someone can seamlessly import that Revit model into MAX and render out a good image I am done with . Even the worse of my images produced in v-ray impress people in my circle. This is what I am competing with...

http://www.kuepers.com/services/index.shtml

Construction signs like this make me giggle, but this is as good as it gets around here. I have been rendering for 20 years and I can comfortable say anybody within a 200 mile radius is 15 years behind me.

[Sawyer]

I do have a hard time convincing people to purchase vray now. I was at a firm setting up their system and they had no desire to look at vray. Under the hood specs made no difference to them it just came down to mr is free. To them it was the identical product (they are not into the cg world just architects with graphic ambitions they don't know what gi is or photon mapping or anything technical) but one cost money the other came free. The best selling point I had was the forum here.

[Aldaryn]

The render engine is just a tool. It's the man behind the monitor who makes the astonishing work.

All I can say, is that MR evolved a lot. The usability has improved a lot, and much of the development was copypasta from VRay. And I think that should make Chaos, and us, VRay users proud.

There are some new feature that I would like to see integrated with VRay, but for example, the VRay IES light's area sampling (the correct sampling of the shadow produced by the IES pattern) is much much more useful then a viewport previw.

Best regards,
A.

[zeronove]

it's always a pleasure to hear Vlado's news

[rmejia]

My concern would be the novice producing am image close enough to good. We are building all our projects in Revit and if someone can seamlessly import that Revit model into MAX and render out a good image I am done with .

Did you see the Revit Interoperability movie?
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...12&id=11007421

We are done with ....

[glorybound]

Mental Ray

Games is over boys, time to pack up and go home

[stilgarna]

Games is over boys, time to pack up and go home

Do you think taht vray must stop now ?!
or
MentalRay must pack up ?
or
Autodesk ?

Best regards...