How does rendering a forest with VRay compare vs. rendering with Vue

[Morne]

Hi all

Putting aside the modelling process, how would a scene with loads of trees, bushes, grass etc compare with rendering times with VRay in Max vs. Vue.
Something for example a scene like in the latest Indiana Jones where they on the cliff driving with the old car almost falling of the cliff and you see the forest. And the scenes done for Pirates of Caribbean.

This new vrayscatter tool is amazing for scattering etc but overall just with rendering? Any Vue experts here like to comment on Vue render speed for something like this?

[duke2]

Well, I haven't directly compared them but I believe VRay kicks the pants out for Vue for the following reasons:

-It is without a doubt, a superior renderer.
-Memory management, especially paired with VRayScatter, is unbeatable.
-Anti-aliasing is Vue's weak-point, and something VRay does well.

The thing is, Vue pulls some shifty shit to get all that foliage rendering. For starters, most of the trees use opacity mapped branches (no not leaves - whole branches), so they're very low poly. Second, way in the distance, they're billboards. Now the problem with VRay&VRayScatter is that the workflow would be to use Onyx plants or the like, which are very high poly. Scatter 1 tree and you'll be fine, scatter 4 and you'll be hanging around 2GB at-least, scatter 10+ types and you'll start running into problems. So to directly compare it to Vue, you'd have to scatter silly opacity-mapped trees, and you'd keep your memory way down.

[Shimakaze]

Dunno if it's applicable in VRayScatter, but in Groundwiz you can use different objects with different polycounts (or even billboards) based on distance or screen size. You can generally optimize Onyx trees (and others) a lot without loosing too much quality and with a little extra setup you'll save some time. The good thing about this is that the decision about which quality tree to use isn't chosen when planting the trees, but when rendering. so even in a flyby animation you won't run into any low poly trees since they will always be far from the camera. The bad thing about it is you need to have even more proxies (though not as heavy ones).

[animagic]

Considering that Vue was used for Indiana Jones and Pirates you may have your answer... Actually we've use Vue a lot and to be honest it depends on the shot, If you needed a matte shot or a wide panoramic vista flying over the country side, then we would use Vue all day long. If you needed a mixed closeup to wide and such. It would be very shot dependent to use Vue or something else, we generally don't use Vue for this type of work... Vue is very nice to create rich generic environments, but once you have a specific condition it all comes down to what you are comfortable working with...
D

[percydaman]

vue can create some great looking foliage in specific instances. Its whole daylight system and sunlight is setup with it in mind. So you can get great backlit leaves and whatnot. But yeah for closeup stuff, no so good.