Is Vray better?

[Metin_7]

I'd like to add to this that V-Ray is the only GI renderer I know that offers its own easy-to-use fur alternative, which has become quite controllable in the latest update. In fact, whenever I need fur or grass, I use VRayFur in stead of Max's native hair/fur. I love the straightforwardness of VRayFur.

[trick]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned its price here. I don't know exactly how long I have been using VRay but while other packages are asking upgrade prices with each new update to Max, I have not paid a single upgrade dime since I bought it. Mostly when software becomes popular you will definitely pay a big bug for things like VRay's service packs. Because of the dedicated development VRay is one of the biggest reasons I use Max; Mental Ray is no competition in that ! Also the availablity for other other 3D-software gives it a bright future in that regard. Looking at all the value that has been added since its existence, as a developer I would be worried about all the features that would justify a paid v2 upgrade. I think a "donate"-button would be preferrable

[Morbid Angel]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned its price here. I don't know exactly how long I have been using VRay but while other packages are asking upgrade prices with each new update to Max, I have not paid a single upgrade dime since I bought it. Mostly when software becomes popular you will definitely pay a big bug for things like VRay's service packs. Because of the dedicated development VRay is one of the biggest reasons I use Max; Mental Ray is no competition in that ! Also the availablity for other other 3D-software gives it a bright future in that regard. Looking at all the value that has been added since its existence, as a developer I would be worried about all the features that would justify a paid v2 upgrade. I think a "donate"-button would be preferrable

actaully mental ray is free for the most part. It comes as a part of max, and is free when rendering with backburner on the network. New versions of mental ray comeout with servicepacks of 3ds max or maya, which are also free. The only big price difference is really in standalone. MR standalone costs quite a bit more then vray's and is limited (or used to be) to number of cpus per license.
For maya users it gets worse. Since maya nativly does not have program like backburner, mental ray network rendering is very costly. I believe around $1250 USD / render node. And with each maya upgrade users must pay for render nodes yet again. That is not the case with vray

[trick]

I know that MR is free with Max. But what I meant was that it is has more value to me that I can contact developers of a render engine directly, which is certainly not the case with MR. Even if MR had more features I still prefer VRay for its contact with the user community. It has helped me a lot in the past. The same goes for FormZ for modeling: Max can not touch it in that area. If only there was an equal application for animation !

[Morbid Angel]

I know that MR is free with Max. But what I meant was that it is has more value to me that I can contact developers of a render engine directly, which is certainly not the case with MR. Even if MR had more features I still prefer VRay for its contact with the user community. It has helped me a lot in the past. The same goes for FormZ for modeling: Max can not touch it in that area. If only there was an equal application for animation !

no argument there

[Shimakaze]

As you can see, layering more materials causes significant slowdowns for mental ray, where is the impact on V-Ray is minimal. The same results can be observed if you use more complex materials (e.g. with glossy hilights etc).

Is this the case only when using vray specific materials like VRayBlendMtl, or is it the same for default Max materials like Mix and Composite too?

[vlado]

This is only for V-Ray specific materials; for the standard 3ds Max materials, for compatibility reasons we need to use the 3ds Max shading API which does not allow for this kind of optimizations.

This is not an issue for mental ray though, since it does not rely on the native 3ds Max rendering API at all - internally all materials are converted to mental ray shaders before rendering.

Best regards,
Vlado

[trajic]

Wow, thanks for all those detailed answers guys! I have been tasked to go head-to-head with our viz lab here, (8 guys from animations and motion picture backgrounds who had never heard of Vray until I asked them why they are not using it). They are having us take a Revit model we created for a hospital and set-up the same camera settings, materials, lighting, all that good stuff in Max. We will be putting them side-by-side in a presentation with a short animation as well. Raw renders and no post work. I have given the powers that be many articles and briefs from companies that use Vray to let them read first-hand what is being used. We have major companies in our office every week, like Spine3D, who we give work to because some of the architects feel our viz lab is inferior. Spine I think uses Vray, that is what they told us a few weeks ago when they were here. But, I still believe this is the right direction for the firm for all the reasons mentioned. I basically get hit with, "MR is more accurate and better for animations" the viz lab tells me. I guess the best thing to do is show you all what I am doing and you can CC with setting changes and tips to make it better and faster. If they choose Vray over mr, roughly another 50 licenses will be purchased on top of the 16 already for all 22 offices.

I really appreciate all the responses and help you guys are giving, that is precisely why I think this software is superior.
Now if we could get Vray in Revit, they would surely get off my case!

[^Lele^]

Mental ray in maya also supports fluids which is a very important factor. While vray is a great renderer for hard surfaces, other entities like fluids or complex sss objects can be difficult to achieve.

I suppose you mean maya fluids rendering?
I render Aburn stuff with VRay, as well as fume, for volumes.
And as far as fluids are concerned, I render or see rendered flood stuff with Vray all the time, and i should say it ROCKS.
Speed and quality so far are so pleasant that I sit at my workstation with a grin on my face every time I get tasked with some of this stuff...
We did do internal benchmarks, as thorough as humanly possible, on more than one job, so please don't take this as biased banter, for once :P

[Morbid Angel]

yes I was referring to maya's fluid dynamics system. Its a separate thing all together, which does not excist in max.

[trajic]

How about mental ray and GPU's? With a partnering effort between Autodesk and Nvidia, what do you all think the outcome will be with GPU perfermance in mr? Will that be looked at for Vray? Those are some of the questions the IT guys are bringing up as well for down the road.

[vlado]

It will be some time before nVidia comes up with anything in that regard (and don't expect it to be free either ). We are also looking into this, but all in due time.

Best regards,
Vlado

[mike_kennedy]

GPU's and Raytracers generally don't get along well, Nvidia had a renderman engine they bought but had to give up due to legal issues with Pixar, but renderman is mainly scanline.
Mental Ray being bought by Nvidia means they must be looking at Raytracing at some point on the GPU, but if you look at the road map from Intel for their future products you see they are focused totally on raytracing and Vlado has mentioned the Intel products would be easier to implement. The Intel products are rumoured to be high end raytracing video cards....put that along side the interactive renderer that Vlado is working on and I think you see a better pipeline that involves less hacks..IMHO....

[^Lele^]

I cannot unfortunately go into details (bound to silence by contracts), but do not fear the GPU based renderers just yet.
There's ample proof that Vlado's cleverness still has the upper hand, and by a country mile, also in places where it really shouldn't :P.
Tell your IT guys to look at the present, and from that infer about the future.
Otherwise, it has commercial merit also to ponder on what the quantum computers will bring us.
And even then, i'd have a bet or two on who'd be able to squeeze the most out of those.

[animagic]

Animation

I know that some of you will disagree, but we use Vray, Mental ray and Renderman in production everyday. Our company produces over 2 hours of architectural animation a year. I have personally been working in design viz industry almost 20 year (aka AutoCad and 3d Studio beta, dos) I have also used Vray in production for over 2 years (our staff really don't let me work on projects anymore). If we need still renderings we would use Vray all day long, but when it comes to Architectural animations Mental Ray is the way to go... We get cleaner results faster with mental ray on our animation projects, period. This is not a lite statement, we have used Vray on many animation projects and although Vrays rendering quality is much nicer,(not as true since MR introduced, skylight portals) the cost to clean up Vray area shadows is too high.

Dispute this all you want, but when you do please provide some kind of Vray pipeline to back it up. And don't use a teapot on a surface as your example any moron can accomplish that. Our projects usually are 100,000+ square feet, sometime contain billions of polygons and 100s if not 1000s of area lights.

Respectfully
Darin

Typical mental ray animation pipeline:
FG + AO and sometimes Photons