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I know there has been a few of these, but I wanted to give my spin on it as a former Brazil user.
Brazil was the first rendering system I really started using. I tried radiosity at first but didn't like it due to some of its limitations (How things had to be squared away with no interceptions, I don't work that way a lot of the time) and then checked out mental ray which I also didn't like due to sluggish times and what I felt was low controlability. I then stumbled on to Brazil which my school lab had a commercial license of for some reason. I was enthralled by the new features I found and enjoyed. Most of my education about things like caustics and the way light bounces worked with these new systems and such came during my stint with Brazil. I admittedly loved it for about four months... And then a 'kink' in our relationship came along: Interiors.
My passion for the system fell flat when I found out that Brazil simply couldn't do it when it came to interiors. Direct computation didn't get the light back far enough for me in to rooms. I moved to photons to try and get more light in the room, which worked but the photons were slow when they had to be combined with the direct computation and the overall look made things relative to that of play-dough. It was frustrating, I then found that the skylight was more of a straight down light, rather than a dome, causing the skylight to not go places it should.
So, admittedly angry I downloaded Vray free, and fell in love again
After experimenting with it and my lab teacher saw some of the work that a friend and myself were producing from it he decided to purchase a license for us (God bless school budgets.) The major advantages that Vray has that I've found is speed. In exterior scenes, Brazil will give Vray a good run for its money, and sometimes beat it, but Brazil completely fails in my eyes when it comes to interior rendering. Vray now gives you plenty of alternatives to direct computation, such as light mapping. Vray's color mapping is amazing, allowing me to control the darkness in the corners that I hate sometimes, and with three types of mapping to control the intensity of the light.
At first, I was admittedly a little intimidated by the amount of options in Vray, Brazil had about a third of the options that Vray does, but that's where the beauty is, the controlling of speed to achieve the look you want. The one thing that Brazil was better about in my opinion was direct computation just because it was faster, and I found that HDRi was a little easier to work with for some reason.
Brazil was the first rendering system I really started using. I tried radiosity at first but didn't like it due to some of its limitations (How things had to be squared away with no interceptions, I don't work that way a lot of the time) and then checked out mental ray which I also didn't like due to sluggish times and what I felt was low controlability. I then stumbled on to Brazil which my school lab had a commercial license of for some reason. I was enthralled by the new features I found and enjoyed. Most of my education about things like caustics and the way light bounces worked with these new systems and such came during my stint with Brazil. I admittedly loved it for about four months... And then a 'kink' in our relationship came along: Interiors.
My passion for the system fell flat when I found out that Brazil simply couldn't do it when it came to interiors. Direct computation didn't get the light back far enough for me in to rooms. I moved to photons to try and get more light in the room, which worked but the photons were slow when they had to be combined with the direct computation and the overall look made things relative to that of play-dough. It was frustrating, I then found that the skylight was more of a straight down light, rather than a dome, causing the skylight to not go places it should.
So, admittedly angry I downloaded Vray free, and fell in love again
After experimenting with it and my lab teacher saw some of the work that a friend and myself were producing from it he decided to purchase a license for us (God bless school budgets.) The major advantages that Vray has that I've found is speed. In exterior scenes, Brazil will give Vray a good run for its money, and sometimes beat it, but Brazil completely fails in my eyes when it comes to interior rendering. Vray now gives you plenty of alternatives to direct computation, such as light mapping. Vray's color mapping is amazing, allowing me to control the darkness in the corners that I hate sometimes, and with three types of mapping to control the intensity of the light.
At first, I was admittedly a little intimidated by the amount of options in Vray, Brazil had about a third of the options that Vray does, but that's where the beauty is, the controlling of speed to achieve the look you want. The one thing that Brazil was better about in my opinion was direct computation just because it was faster, and I found that HDRi was a little easier to work with for some reason.
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