render engine poll

[ultrasonic]

Just received the link to a render engine poll from master zap (ex mentalimages - now autodesk)....just vote for our favorite renderer
http://strawpoll.me/2958/

gogogo

[Morbid Angel]

I can't open that page...

[ultrasonic]

hmmm....works still fine over here....sorry man...anyone else having trouble?

[Morbid Angel]

must be my connection from the office...worked fine from home. How can arnold have more votes then vray?

[ultrasonic]

i think because this link maybe posted on the arnold forums as well vote boys! maybe someone can post it in the max section of this forum too...

[sandykoufax]

Arnold 55% ?
I cannot believe.

[ultrasonic]

yes i cannot believe this too....this poll is still very biased....don't know why...will post in the max section now....

[Emcs07]

Sincerely doubt that many people have access to Arnold, unless a large number of them pirated it or something (or just voting based on hype). I wish they would just release a consumer version of it, I've only heard great things about it and can't wait to try it myself.

[Yannick]

Feels like people at Sony have been voting.
What's interesting his this is an initiative from Master Z and Mental Ray is way behind.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Arnold is very popular in communities where custom coders sits next to artists. They simply can get anything coded very quickly and easily so I do understand why its so popular.

[alainfx]

People that try Arnold often say it's incredibly fast, even with high complexity scenes, and without to bother about prepasses.
But some stuff are still missing, for example it seems there is no light-linking, you have to use all lights in the scene.
Anyone can confirm it's true ?

EDIT : please note that I have no proof of any of this, just heard about it. If someone has extensive knowledge of both renderers, please enlighten us.
EDIT2 : people that really tried Arnold and VRay in this forum say that instead of "incredibly fast", Arnold is only 10% faster on Brute Force, and slower than VRay if you use interpolation in VRay.

[bigbossfr]

People that try Arnold often say it's incredibly fast, even with high complexity scenes, and without to bother about prepasses.

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.

[alainfx]

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.

Well, that's what I said, people that don't want to bother with prepass get better render times in Arnold.
They think they save time by *not* having to tweak prepasses over and over until it is good enough.
As I haven't tested Arnold myself I will not argue
In the future we will probably see independant comparisons appear in the web (with people that know both renderers very well, because if someone knows mostly one of the two he will have better render times as he knows tricks to get the best of it).

[vlado]

People that try Arnold often say it's incredibly fast, even with high complexity scenes, and without to bother about prepasses. But some stuff are still missing, for example it seems there is no light-linking, you have to use all lights in the scene. Anyone can confirm it's true ?

It would really be best if you make such statements after you have made the comparisons yourself For example, what I have heard people say, is that the speed of brute force tracing is roughly similar between the two. (Of course, brute forcing an architectural interior is mostly out of the question anyways, due to the required high number of secondary bounces). There is some stuff which Arnold seems to do better (like hair), but we'll get to that too. There is also seems to be some stuff which V-Ray does and which you accept for granted, which are not present in Arnold.

Best regards,
Vlado

[alainfx]

It would really be best if you make such statements after you have made the comparisons yourself
For example, what I have heard people say, is that the speed of brute force tracing is roughly similar between the two.

Well, I'm not stating anything, as I asked if someone could confirm (or not) what I have heard.
Most of the hype is about a software that we haven't even tried.
And I also asked for independant comparisons, which will take time.
Anyway, I would not drop a renderer that I know is very good (and has excellent support), for a renderer that I heard was very good, and has very limited support (Solidangle clearly stated they don't want to take too much time on the hotline).

I have added an "EDIT" line to my original message, to make even clearer that I ask for comments, and have no proof about stuff I heard from artists.