VRay vs MR: Blur point of view

[Morbid Angel]

I think it's more of a case of the material hasn't been documented or explained in a way that clicks with you just yet - I spent a while lecturing and everyone takes in information in different ways so maybe it's someone explaining the material in a way that sits well with you!

hmmm
I don't know. I mean Vray Mtl is the simplest material I have ever worked with. Almost everything in it is very straight forward.
No offense to anyone here who finds vray mat complicated, but if you have hard time understanding the basic principals of diffusion, reflectance, fresnel, refraction and etc, you should really try to understand these functions first, before working in depth with materials and renderers of physical accuracy.

And on topic of maxwell and fryrender. I personally find their materials overly complicated, and to have limited control to achieve desirable results. I personally find it hard to comprehend the idea that one must define the surface's "diffusion" from reflectance angle (0-90).

[rivoli]

And on topic of maxwell and fryrender. I personally find their materials overly complicated, and to have limited control to achieve desirable results. I personally find it hard to comprehend the idea that one must define the surface's "diffusion" from reflectance angle (0-90).

I agree with Dmitry, if I haven't worked with maxwell since its alpha stage, I'm sure I'd find its material system much more complicated than vray's. to me vray's mats are really straightforward and very simple to get used to.

must admit I find myself quite comfortable with a layer based mat editor a la maxwell, which is quite solid and logic in my opinion, so I can understand what others mean. even though the vray implementation of the blend mat works pretty well in basically every situation for me.

[simmsimaging]

hmmm
I don't know. I mean Vray Mtl is the simplest material I have ever worked with. Almost everything in it is very straight forward.
No offense to anyone here who finds vray mat complicated, but if you have hard time understanding the basic principals of diffusion, reflectance, fresnel, refraction and etc, you should really try to understand these functions first, before working in depth with materials and renderers of physical accuracy.

And on topic of maxwell and fryrender. I personally find their materials overly complicated, and to have limited control to achieve desirable results. I personally find it hard to comprehend the idea that one must define the surface's "diffusion" from reflectance angle (0-90).

I have a reasonable grasp of the basic ideas of those things (enough to use them if not write the shaders ) but that's not really the issue. Why do I need a Refract value/colour and a fog value colour? Why does fog need 3 parameters? Maxwell, for instance, gets by with an equivalent to the Refract colour/value in one and an attenuation distance - and it works better IMO. It's just an example - I'm sure there are good reasons for all of it - but that doesn't make VrayMat simpler from my POV.

At a guess there are probably 1/4 the number of parameters and options for a Maxwell material compared to VRayMat, and since they also do what VrayBlend Mat does I think it could be less. I guess with a long background in CG the type of parameters Maxwell uses may seem more complex, but as more of a layman I found them far more comprehensible. I have to jump through more hoops in Vray to create mats that are a breeze for me in Maxwell or Fry. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, it seems to me that what you more advanced users are after is not the same simplicity: it's more complexity in a material so your overall tasks are simpler. Such options always come at the price of complexity.

We are both really just looking for different things.

b

[Morbid Angel]

You guys think max (vray) material is hard?
Think again.
Here is example of my shader in maya (mr):

[simmsimaging]

And that's just for making a phong wood veneer.




b

[Neilg]

Anyway, it seems to me that what you more advanced users are after is not the same simplicity: it's more complexity in a material so your overall tasks are simpler. Such options always come at the price of complexity.

The way I see it though - although the vray material could be simpler, it is easiar to use than 90% of other shaders for other rendering engines, it's only a couple that just about beat it.

So it's not that bad, and can be learnt. But once you hit that ceiling and have it down, you've got nowhere left to go.


It would be more benificial in the long term to open it up to advanced users, because by the time vlado has even implemented the simpler controls you probably wouldnt feel the need to even use them anymore.