render engine poll

[Morbid Angel]

This is false. I have tested an interior scene with Vray and Arnold.
Arnold is more fast than Vray in Brute force GI. But if i use IR, Arnold is dead.

I have done a more or less in depth comparison and also involved one of the guys who is more of an advanced user in arnold, our result, nearly identical speed between vray and arnold.

[alainfx]

I have done a more or less in depth comparison and also involved one of the guys who is more of an advanced user in arnold, our result, nearly identical speed between vray and arnold.

Thank you Dmitry.
For the comparison, did you use Brute Force on VRay, or something else ?

[SreckoM]

I have licenses of both, and using both of them. Arnold brute force is indeed faster, in my tests, not significantly though. Vray looks like more mature product, so you have DR, more output passes etc. I am used more to Vray material system. I love progressive thing from Arnold. Also VrayRT is great. Arnold is more expensive. Vray offers brute force but also interpolation, Arnold does not, with short deadlines this could be really important. Vray is more widespread, easier to find learning materials. I mean it is just preference I think at the end, as this poll shows both are 2 best engines today.

To compare them u need to use Brute Force with Vray. What is point of comparison when you are comparing 2 different things than.

[alainfx]

Thank you for you input.

To compare them u need to use Brute Force with Vray. What is point of comparison when you are comparing 2 different things than.

To be fair, I think a comparison should use the fastest method available for each renderer, whatever method is used.
For a given result quality, if VRay is faster using passes, then VRay wins.

The main question is how much time is needed to setup the lighting and shading, and render everything.
The method does not matter.

If VRay render is faster using passes, and the setup of those passes is fast, then VRay wins.
If VRay render is faster using passes, but the setup of those passes takes more time than what you save compared to Brute Force, then it's different.

And then you add the support part, which we know is awesome in VRay.
And about the price, I don't know how much costs Arnold, their website is empty, is it some kind of big secret or something ?

[SreckoM]

You can not look it like that. You compare interpolated result with Brute Force. Interpolated means that Vray guessed a lot while computing, so results are not at that level of quality as with Brute Force, also interpolated are prone to flickering etc. It is not always about how fast you can get final image. For example for animations, if you are using interpolation you need to take care a lot, and work a lot, to have flicker free render. With Arnold or Vray BF you need to calm down noise and you do not need to think about flicker at all, that is great workflow.

Support is great on both sides. ChaosGroup did significant job to bring that on higher level that is for sure.

[Morbid Angel]

Thank you Dmitry.
For the comparison, did you use Brute Force on VRay, or something else ?

For my tests we tried using near identical setups, all brute force, hdr lit, dome lights, glossy reflections etc. Just for the record I don't believe in comparing renders and judging which one is faster (waste of time), arnold indeed seems like a good render engine though not mature yet (not in maya anyway) as vray and it will be some time before it becomes the level vray is.

[alainfx]

It is not always about how fast you can get final image. For example for animations, if you are using interpolation you need to take care a lot, and work a lot, to have flicker free render.

I agree, that's why I spoke about "a given result quality", and about the time spent on tweaking.

B1 = Tweaking time needed for Brute Force.
B2 = Render time using Brute Force.
I1 = Tweaking time needed for Interpolation.
I2 = Render time using Interpolation.

If (I1+I2) < (B1+B2) then Interpolation is faster (if quality is the same, without flicker)

[paulDryzen]

Since we have both renderer here at Parasol Island I had the chance of comparing both renderes on the Maya side.
First the implemantation and usability.

Vray kicks Arnolds ASS Even the XSI implementation of VRay is much nicer.
The standard Arnold shader works like the original Maya shaders and can not compare with the VRayMtl.
Renderpasses and for example the feature that you can attach displacement/subd to an object instead of a shader is also much better in VRay.
Arnold for example creates custom attributes on each shape/transform in your scene... which sucks a lot and is done much nicer with VRay.

So the implementation of VRay is really much better than Arnolds implementation.
Sure thing is that you can write your own shader for Arnold, which is working like the VRay one (for XSI they have something like this)

Speed and Tweaking options:

With Bruteforce Arnold is about 10% faster and does scale better with scene complexity.
But if you know how to use prepasses right VRay can be a lot faster, especially on indoor scenes and scenes with heavy glossy reflections/refractions!
SSS and Hair is faster and better tweakable in Arnold.
Since Arnold is a brute force only renderer there is no way of optimizing your rendering if you need it, but this is something they want to keep the artist time low on the tweaking side.
The standalone format vrscene/ass is better with VRay since you can export your whole animation into one file the export time is a bit faster.

Learning curve.

For me it was exactly the same, so I cannot say which render is easier to use

Since we have not done any real project with Arnold yet (too expensive compared to VRay) I cannot say how Arnold is behaving on a real project for now. The only thing I did are some basic animation tests etc.

Hope this helps.

Paul

[RobPhoboS]

I cannot say how Arnold is behaving on a real project for now.

I'd say you'd need to hire a bunch of coders as well.
I like how simple it appears but I found it slow/buggy and no use for a studio that cannot afford to have a dev team on it.
Although I'm leaving baseblack (hoping to return), I've constantly mentioned vray and it sounds like they'll finally swing that way

[Treedee]

For my tests we tried using near identical setups, all brute force, hdr lit, dome lights, glossy reflections etc. Just for the record I don't believe in comparing renders and judging which one is faster (waste of time), arnold indeed seems like a good render engine though not mature yet (not in maya anyway) as vray and it will be some time before it becomes the level vray is.

I'm curious as to what level your referring to? To the levels of implementation within Maya or Features? Arnold clearly is making its way into the vfx market so I'm just curious as to your thoughts on what it needs. Cheers.

[Morbid Angel]

I'm curious as to what level your referring to? To the levels of implementation within Maya or Features? Arnold clearly is making its way into the vfx market so I'm just curious as to your thoughts on what it needs. Cheers.

my understanding is that arnold standalone and maya plugin are developed separately, the arnold standalone is very advanced, but the connector to maya still needs work. Things are broken a lot of things aren't working, thus can impact production...much like any early beta developments.
Vray has been around a long time in maya/max now to refine a lot of the common issues, which make things much easier. Arnold will probably also get there, in time.

[Treedee]

my understanding is that arnold standalone and maya plugin are developed separately, the arnold standalone is very advanced, but the connector to maya still needs work. Things are broken a lot of things aren't working, thus can impact production...much like any early beta developments.
Vray has been around a long time in maya/max now to refine a lot of the common issues, which make things much easier. Arnold will probably also get there, in time.

Thanks for the info, I was just curious based on the type of work you do I figured you might have some insight! and of course no disrespect to Vray we currently use it in production and it is rock solid!

[Morbid Angel]

I think arnold has lots of potential. I like the simplicity approach they have, in terms of settings, its just 4 sliders which control the overall quality. Though as people mentioned in this thread, when it comes to rendering interiors the pure brute force way will not get you fast render times...

[Treedee]

I think arnold has lots of potential. I like the simplicity approach they have, in terms of settings, its just 4 sliders which control the overall quality. Though as people mentioned in this thread, when it comes to rendering interiors the pure brute force way will not get you fast render times...

its interesting you bring up that topic as I know vray is used for a variety of things from arch viz to vfx, as Arnold seems to be used strictly for vfx and based on the improvement of it. so it would make sense that interior shots would not cut it, but what confuses me the most is that Arnold seems totally capable of achieving this as I was watching the amazing spider-man sequence were they are fighting in the hallway of a classroom building, that was totally convincing. Maybe its imageworks version but not bad really.

[Morbid Angel]

well you would really need to know details on how they made it. You have to take into account some things like, the size of their render farm(s), which can allow them to render those frames for x number of hours and not worry about optimizing, or baking that lighting into some sort of data...