Vray versus Mental Ray Exterior scene

[mikeh]

Paraganek,
here is a link to a response to your post by someone that uses MR all the time.

http://support.discreet.com/webboard/wbpx.dll/%7E3dsmax

it is on the max forum and his settings were....Settings used: FG samples 20, filter 5, radius 90, min 15, max reflections 3, refractions 4; samples per pixel 1/4,4, bucket with 152, spatial contrasts(RGBA) 0.11. rest was same as in downloaded file.

I can't use MR because it doesn't work with a plugin i always use so i am exploring Vray that we just purchased.

mh

[davidr]

Personally, I don't care much what I use for exteriors -Maxwell can be very useable here- but before your boss switches to mental ray, do an interior test. mental ray sucks badly at this. I haven't seen ONE good mr interior (except Axel Karcher's) anywhere, incl. XSI Base. Vray totally owns this.

[paulison]

we used both maya+mentalray and max+vray in our office for a while and had a lot of problems with the GI quaility in mental ray and with light leaks etc even though there was no errors in the model. Exteriors were fine..although personally I always found the look to be too 'soft' like the colour bleed and fuzzyness was over exaggerated and i found this a bit unrealistic.

Im interested in the original comparison how you managed to have the eaves done in vray which appeared to have no GI at all or as if standard materials were used.

I think we should also compare the antialiasing because I always found that using mental ray that to get the same antiasing quality look much longer than vray (well for interiors at least) but that could have been a maya+mentalray issue

[vlado]

There are lots of things in the V-Ray scene that are not in the mental ray one:

(*) Five area lights
(*) Displacement on the grass
(*) Secondary GI
(*) Car object

With these things turned off, V-Ray can get faster results even with relatively high settings. Here are my experiments:

v-ray image - took 6m 37s
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/images/st...est_6m_37s.png

mental ray image - took 8m 7s
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/images/st...est_8m_07s.png

Of course, both can be made a little faster or a little slower, depending on the settings and the quality.

Best regards,
Vlado

[RErender]

In paraganek's comparisons he already had the displaced grass off so that is not part of the test.

Vlado, did you render the MR version on your computer? Paraganek's computer is pretty slow, the MR version rendered on my computer in about 8 1/2 mins.

I was surprised the MR version is so fast and the AA is better too.

[Da_elf]

another thing was the amount of light MR alowed into the building. not sure if its due to light leeks but inside was brighter

[vlado]

Vlado, did you render the MR version on your computer? Paraganek's computer is pretty slow, the MR version rendered on my computer in about 8 1/2 mins.

Yep, both were rendered on the same machine.

I was surprised the MR version is so fast and the AA is better too.

It's quite a simple scene... both V-Ray and mental ray allow tweaking to get any render time, and direct quality on whatever effect you consider more important (GI or AA etc).

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morbid Angel]

the real test would be not the exterrior, but interrior.

[davidr]

With these things turned off, V-Ray can get faster results even with relatively high settings. Here are my experiments:

v-ray image - took 6m 37s
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/images/st...est_6m_37s.png

mental ray image - took 8m 7s
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/images/st...est_8m_07s.png
Best regards,
Vlado

They look identical except for the reflections, where the mr one is more interesting. Doubt it affects render time much, though.

[paraganek]

Paulison: Im interested in the original comparison how you managed to have the eaves done in vray which appeared to have no GI at all or as if standard materials were used.

The eaves appeared to have no GI at all because the IR map was set too low I guess. I used -6/-4 for Min/max rates and 20 Hsph.subdivs only with samples set to 40.

Vlado : thank you for the nice comparison, as for the exteriors the dilemma is solved for me, vray has defended its territory on the farm so far
Interior scene is going to be the key test now.