Brazil or Vray

[agentdark45]

You would need to use 12 or so light bounces to get an even light distribuion in an interior scene. The reason behind this is that in the real world light bounces a near infinite amount of times, and with each bounce of light, light is transported and illuminates the scene.

Obviously on a computer we can not have and infinite amount of light bounces, so we make a rough estimate; 12 bounces. Anymore than that, and the difference is negligable.

Dont believe me? Try it yourself, model a simple room out a box and cut a hole in it for the window, place a Vray light in the hole hit render with 1 bounce, doesnt look to good does it? Yeh because 1 bounce of light is only 1 step above having no gl at all, then put the bounce number to 6, 10, or 12 depending on what looks the best.

If too low a bounce number is used things start getting burned out very quickly! Yes a solution is to use exponential/HSV mapping with the dark multiplier cranked, but it looks unnatural and really undersaturated.

Sorry to rant on like that, but I just thought id share my knowledge a bit with everyone, because ive seen people do this alot (low no. of light bounces) then ask 'why does my scene look so unnatural?'

[WWX]

Light Bounce

Hi,

To which bounces are refered to, those under the Indirect Illumination settings or those under the Global photon map settings?

Thanks

[agentdark45]

It depends on how you calculate your Gl solution, If you are using an irradiance map then it should be under the secondary illumination tab, which says depth.

If you are using a photon map in conjunction with and irradiance map, then you need to set the value of the bounces in the bounces part, and the retrace bounces part, the two should usually have the same value.

Hope this helps!

[flipside]

Your statement is only true under some extreme conditions where there are many walls etc where light has to reach behind.

The light decreases by inverse square! So how many is left after 12 bounces??? Veeeeeeeeeery little! But even if it's very little, it takes time to calculate it... So if you use 3 or 4 bounces and you want to brighten up the lighting more, adding more bounces is generally the worst way of doing this as your rendertimes will go way up. Increasing the first diffuse bounce multiplier by 0.5 for example, will have 10 times more effect than adding 3 or 4 bounces. Also color mapping, second diffuse bounce multiplier, send and recieve GI values are all methods to achieve the same effect as more bounces without the drastic effect on rendertimes.

[TRGraphics]

When I first started with vray I used a high number of bounces for interiors as well, but I soon learned this was a waiste of my time. If you feel it's needed and produces a better render then by all means use it! I'm sure you do fine work, we just do it differently.

I think flipside explained it very clearly, as usual! There is always a penalty to pay when you use high bounce numbers in secondary and the result is often not noticeable. This is of course, only my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

Hope this helps!

Tony

[pixelperv]

All this Brazil-Vray tug of war on this thread, No one has mentioned Mental Ray! It comes free with max 6 and has been around for ages, used by Hollywood, and comes as standard with Maya & Softimage. I've dabbled a little with Mental Ray, and yes I always end up rendering with Brazil or Vray, only 'cause I'm lazy & have'nt read the manual What I have done in MR, has been ok, albeit very slow, but the displacement is excellent, as good as Vray. Brazil does'nt do displacement I know soon I'll get my head down and learn MR, but I'm sure there are people who know it and can produce stuff as good or better than Brazil & Vray!Does anyone think otherwise?... I know this is a Chaos site, but I just wanna get peoples feedback on Mental Ray, and why they don't use it!
ps, Tim, nice to see ya'

[pengo]

My little opinion about this argument is

My little opinion about this argument is:

About Brazil

I think it has the most accurate Gi on the render engines market (most accurate shadows, contrast, bump, AA) but the cost of quality is very high rendering times even if on some kind of work it is faster HDRI!!

It's stable as a rock! It works with every pc it doesn't crash for low memory or something like this (ok it will be slow for some scene but it will works anyway)

It needs to much rendering to find the correct settings (to clear the solutions)

ARCHITECTURAL INTERIORS

Seems not simple to use and the results isn't so good In my opinion not usable even if I saw http://forums.splutterfish.com/viewt...b09c149bcc6d4c
(and now I'm thinking maybe I'm not good BRAZIL user)

ARCHITECTURAL EXTERIORS

Is fast and very good even with scenes with very high number of polygons

Very high control for everything

About VRAY (I love it)


I think is very flexible (I mean u can do everything) and obviousely the faster on raytrace and gi BUT for accurate lighting is request high setting for some parameters otherwise u can get problems (examplen the corner between ceiling and walls the shadows doesn't start correctly from the corner of a wall even the low bias; floating objects etc) but u can render half resolution save gi and rerender at the full resolution reloaded tweaking on the gi solution to!

About the net rendering I don't like VRAY I prefer Mental Ray and Brazil or FR approach (FR distributes GI too) in this particular usage!!

Another thing That I like and unlike is vrayMTL materials simple, faster(for clear reflections) but the glossy reflections refractions are too slow even with low settings. But I think that u can do everything with this sometimes some problem with particular material to replicate to reach the correct highlights sometimes I needs to fake it (vray real highlights from reflection is fantastic but sometimes)

VRAY is CLEAN CLEAN in the gi solution

ARCHITECTURAL INTERIORS
the photons is excellent for who tell that vray is flat look on the net the interiors done with photon map but the problem is the ram (my dream is for not crashing for machine ram limits like brazil and bleeding control to avoid double renders) Better of every engine on the market

ARCHITECTURAL EXTERIORS
Fast and with quality and what can I say about the displacement???
EXCEllent!!! can beat every rendering engines

Maybe the contrast could be better for this kind of works I'd like the BRAZIL and Mental Ray image contrast u can get even if Vray gives the color mapping to solve the problem)
Seems that vray can be used in all kind of project with high quality but u have to know it and its problems very well!!! (mirrored instances, ram problem, cropped map etc)

About the news and what I read on the internal version seems that VLADO and PETER wants to shock the 3d graphic community with the best engine of the world!!!

Excuse me for the long message and the confusion could I made!!(I'm rush)

excuse my english

anyway those are my opinions based on my experiences maybe not so great or not so much to give the exact description of those two packages but only my opinions

bye from a 3d graphic lover
a VRAY lover