Standard Lights and Materials

[travistlo]

I know this had to have been discussed before, but i was unable to find it. I was wondering what the advantages, and disadvantages to using vray lights, and materials are compared to standard lights and materials.

I know you can produce better metals, and glass with vray materials, but when trying to do simple materials with faked highlight that max scanline can produce, what is the solution? Do standard materials work for this? I dont want tohave to use glossy reflections for everything within vray just to get nice highlights. And the unchecking of trace reflection still doesnt give me the results i want. I dont want to have to add alot of extra lights just for highlights.

Also are the standard lights faster than vray lights? What are the adv/disadv. to using them?

Thanks,
Travis

[flipside]

Just use std mat if you want highlights, shouldn't give you any problems.

Std lights have falloff controls and lots of other things. They may not be physically correct but who cares! Just put vrayshadows on them and they work great. Note that vraylights can be set to visible, so you can see them in reflections. Std lights also have spotlight paramters for example (hotspot etc...), vraylights are either spheres or rectangles that throw light in all directions.

Vraylights have the option to store with IR map (usefull for large fill lights to brighten up dark interiors without adding much rendertime)

There are so many differences! Just use the one that fits you most for the effect you're after.