Please help a hesitant Mental Ray user decide about switching to V-ray.

[Lone Deranger]

Hi everybody,

I'm a long time Maya + Mental Ray user working in the in the VFX industry since the dawn of man (only slightly exaggerated). I've got some free time coming up to work on my personal film project and have been debating with myself for quite some time now if I want to use Mental Ray, or switch to potentially greener pastures. I'm hoping I could get some of my questions answered here that might help me decide which way to go.

First of all, the recent release of 3.0 for Max has really impressed me. It looks like a very solid improvement. There are more than a few features in there that I could really see myself wanting to use with Maya. Which leads me to my first question.... Now that 3.0 for Max is wrapped up, how long will it be before 3.0 for Maya will be ready for sale? I'm wondering if it's worth waiting for that release, since having to pay an upgrade fee soon after buying 2.0 would be less than ideal.

Furthermore, I've read something about a change in render license policy for 3.0 that is probably the least popular feature of the new release.
It is my understanding that with 2.0 you get to use 10 additional V-Ray standalone or batch/slave(DBR) for rendering. However I've heard that with 3.0 this is no longer the case. What exactly does this mean? When I upgrade to 3.0 the ability to DBR on 10 machines is no longer possible and I have to fork out 10 x the price of a render license? How does it work?

Furthermore, I'm also considering upgrading some of the hardware in my trusty old 2010 Mac Pro. I'd love to garner some recommendations for Graphics Cards that have been known to work well with V-Ray for Maya on the Mac. I'm currently looking at anything and everything, from nVidia GTX 680's and Quadro K5000's to AMD FirePro cards.

Thank you for reading.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

1. Release date. It took chaos around 5+ months to release Vray 3 after open beta for max so. Once open beta stars for maya then add another 5-8 months of testing = maya release.

2. Its cheaper to buy vray 2(10 render licenses) + upgrade to vray 3(+10 render licenses) than getting vray 3 + 10 render license. - judging from max pricing

3. mac pro are reasonably bad for CGI. U better get PC. If no get the fastest GTX card u can for mac with as much ram on it as u can. It also depends what work you do and what scenes ur card need to be able to handle...

Hope this helps...

[Lone Deranger]

1. Release date. It took chaos around 5+ months to release Vray 3 after open beta for max so. Once open beta stars for maya then add another 5-8 months of testing = maya release.

2. Its cheaper to buy vray 2(10 render licenses) + upgrade to vray 3(+10 render licenses) than getting vray 3 + 10 render license. - judging from max pricing

Sounds like those two reasons alone would tell me to not wait for a v3.0 release and get my feet wet with 2.0 already.

So judging by the Max pricing, the purchase of Vray 2.0 would be just for a single Workstation/GUI license, which automatically includes 10 render licences. Correct? Then to upgrade to 3.0, I'll need to buy an upgrade for the Workstation/GUI license and if I want to keep access to the 10 additional render licenses, I would also have to pay an additional upgrade fee for those as well, yes?

And these render licenses, they are stand-alone? Or can they only be used for distributed rendering?

3. mac pro are reasonably bad for CGI. U better get PC. If no get the fastest GTX card u can for mac with as much ram on it as u can. It also depends what work you do and what scenes ur card need to be able to handle...

I use Windows and Linux at the office and Macs for my personal use. I'm just not a fan of either Windows or Linux and prefer to use Macs and OSX. While it's certainly true that things like OpenGL drivers are faster on Windows, I just find I am faster overall and much more comfortable on a Mac+OSX.

Hope this helps...

Yes you have. Thank you DADAL!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

When you buy Vray 2.0 you have 1gui + 10 DBR + 10 standalone in maya case.
Now I DO NOT KNOW how exactly the upgrade policy will be for maya because we did not have unlimited render nodes in 1st place so it might be different from max. But for the moment if you buy now 2.0. Then upgrade to 3.0 you will have few options. Now the thing to remember is that you can upgrade to 1gui+1render node only. Then only if you wish and when you wish at any time you are allowed to buy extra 10 render nodes at discounted price. I think its like 50% of price or something like that. So its very cheap.
This is a rough price I did for my friend few weeks back as he was in similar position - he was getting licenses for cgi studio.

1500$ = vray 2 = 10 slaves+gui
420$ = vray 3 q gui + 1 slave OR - option 1 upgrade 1 gui + 1 slaves
970$= vray 3 gui + 11 slaves - option 2 upgrade 1 gui + 10 slaves - also there is 1 gui+ 5slaves option too
so u looking at 1500+970=2470$total if you buy 2.x and upgrade to 3.0 later on
If you buy new u looking at
1040$ for Vray 3 gui + 1 slave +
10x 250$ for 10 slaves = 2500 = 3540 in total...
ure saving 1k+$ on upgrade

Its best to email sales and ask them to be honest...

As far as I know 1 Render Slave/Stanalone = 1 DBR... so we don't get 10 dbr by default from 1 gui as we do now... u might also want to check that as this is something that I found very few people know for 100% how does it work

As to macs. You dont really need OpenGL on vray. With nvidia you use CUDA. So well if you can I'd get fastest 780ti with as much ram as it can have Or tesla which are very pricy but can pack 12gb ram !

[Svetlozar Draganov]

So judging by the Max pricing, the purchase of Vray 2.0 would be just for a single Workstation/GUI license, which automatically includes 10 render licences. Correct?

Yes that's correct.

Then to upgrade to 3.0, I'll need to buy an upgrade for the Workstation/GUI license and if I want to keep access to the 10 additional render licenses, I would also have to pay an additional upgrade fee for those as well, yes?

That's correct also - more information about the exact price you could get from our Sales Team at sales.software@chaosgroup.com

And these render licenses, they are stand-alone? Or can they only be used for distributed rendering?

Render Node Licenses could be used for both stand-alone-rendering or distributed-rendering.