V-ray for 3d Max?

[steelers05]

Now I hope i dont piss anyway off with these questions, but I have to ask. Now we all know how limited sketchup can be, especially when considering large scale modeling and animation so I am kind of forced to ask this, but how similar is vray for 3d max to vray for SU? My ultimate intention is to model what I can in SU and then take it into max, because its no secret that Vray is more powerful in max, and render it there. Has anybody had experience with this? And what are some of the difficulties I would face? Any reason not to do this? Anyone with any info, please fill me in, because im just trying to not limit myself due to SU's limitations. So I hope i did not rub anyone the wrong way, because that is not my intention. I just figured there is a lot of well versed people on here that would be able to help me out. Thank you in advance for any help.

-Steelers05

[dalomar_cg]

Re: V-ray for 3d Max?

Well if animation is your goal, then it will be damn near impossible to get the results that you'll get out of Max with SU. This actually has nothing to do with V-Ray, but is just an issue with SU. In Max you can adjust the transitions between different keyframes, move them around as needed, and do many more small tweeks than you can in SU. SU animations are extremely limited an generally have a very rough feel because all you can do is set a camera location...you can't adjust how to go from camera to camera, vary the length of the transition, or things like that. There might be a ruby plugin that might help, but I think its still going to be harder to work with and have a poorer result than Max.

In terms of large scale modeling, a lot depends on how you have the file structured. A poorly structured file anywhere is going to be a pain to work with. As far as rendering large scale structure I think vfMax is a better bet because of proxies and also 64 bit support. I've seen 4-5 million polys here, so you can get good large scene performance, its just a matter of whether thats easier to deal with

[steelers05]

Re: V-ray for 3d Max?

Yeah i kinda figured all of that with the animation. I guess im more concerned with how vray works in max compared to SU. I know that it has more features like fur and such, but is it going to feel like a completely different program. From the research Ive done, that doesnt seem to be the case, but im definately no expert. It just seems like vray for max is ahead of SU just even when it comes to realism with little things like glass. And I would assume it is faster in max. I look at the work from places like PUR and spine3d and I want to get to that level and they have to be using max. Right? I mean check out their website, it is amazing (http://spine3d.com/). I know that they use a lot more than just modeling and rendering programs, but to handle models of that size and animations like that has to be done with max. I need to get more comfortable with max first, but it will push me that much more if I know that vray works very similar in max as it does in SU.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: V-ray for 3d Max?

Well the V-Ray will work the same...its the same program underneath, so most of the UI is pretty close, its all the same parameters as you see in SU. Its the same program at its core, so speed and glass depends on you're setup not V-Ray. There are some slower things regarding SU, like exporting the scene, but once everything is in V-Ray's hands, the its all the same.

As far as those firms, they do great work, and there are some great artists behind that work. Don't assume that vfMax means that it will come out like that and vfSU will come out like "eh". A lot has to do with the artist behind the scene, and although vfMax is much more capable, that doesn't mean that vfSU doesn't have its own capabilities. As I said, SU is probably going to be much more limiting then vfSU, but ultimately, its relating to your skills and how comfortable you are in a given program.

[Macho3001]

Re: V-ray for 3d Max?

Steelers

Being Max user since v1 (3DS f/DOS R4 onwards), I've followed its development & may be I could chip in with my observations/experience as an architect; though this opinion is purely my own and (I am) sure will invite other ardent Max followers' ire/scorn.

I hope this won't bore you, but it requires a little bit of talk on Max's history. Back in prehistoric times, (1994), when we had 3D Studio for DOS (v4 being the last of its breed), Max was introduced with the intention of making modeling 'parametric'; with the Modifier stack as a suggested easy way of being able to edit/alter/reverse model anything at any and every stage of development (you could think of it as similar to what now Revit Architecture is, compared to AutoCad Architecture/AutoCAD). History is witness there hardly was/is any interest (since 1994 of v1) in the (linear) parametric way of modeling things through the modifier stack due to workflow related issues, which further gave way to the 'non-parametric', non linear nurbs & other modes of modeling. Development was driven by demand. With the collapse of SGI (Silicon Graphics) in late 1990's, Autodesk took the lead in providing visual special effects & animation technology to the likes of Hollywood & the film industry/gaming industries by floating a dedicated Autodesk Media & Entertainment division, & here is where people (like me) from the Architecture/ AEC segment, lost interest in Max.

Max envisioned itself to be the Master of everything 3D. It became a Goliath of modeling, rendering, visual special effects, gaming, animation, product design (etc; you name it) and anything concerned with the Digital world of simulated visualization, a result of its own quest of being THE software in the world to make anything in digital CG. Agreed it became just that, BUT along the way of its development, two vitally important & critically essential factors were (intentionally) overlooked by Autodesk: Simplicity, & Ease of use.

If you were to model a twin shutter storage cabinet in Max, it would involve 10 steps in a regular Max user workflow only to generate the box & two shutters: namely- draw rectangle, modifier (extrude), modifier: edit poly/mesh (face offset), modifier (extrude) for shutters, modifier (offset) for base skirting, again extrude, & then usage of complex face align commands for creating locations & further extruding & finally moving shutters in place. Hell of a difficulty to make a damn cabinet !x??x!... Further, as if this wasn't enough, they give you a 'Steering wheel' and 'Viewcube', to be able to rotate/ view your model. Sheeesh! (Also, don't ever try to organize your Max scene using selection sets, or the recently introduced scene explorer, its easier & much faster to re-select by hand).

Enter Sketchup.

The above process reduced to 4-5 steps, with the added ease of navigation through your model. I regularly use the Outliner to organize my sketchup models, & Max doesn't compare anywhere to its ease of moving groups/components within other groups/components... try it. Moreover, there are many Ruby scripts out there that make modeling a breeze in Sketchup.

V-Ray f SU is 90% similar to its Max counterpart, with added features for some materials; (we have both in office). also, For single Hi-Res frame renders, VfSU DRSpawner IMO renders FASTER in a production environment with shared network resources as compared to mR Satellites using Backburner. Y'see, backburner and allied features are good if you are Mr. George Lucas where you have 200 Quad core servers chained to deliver 1000 frames per hour and if one or more nodes konk off, the BB Manager software reassigns the thread to a different server! In our office, we have 8 machines (2 dual core), running DRSpawner for static frame renders for a single Licensed VfSU, which gives us a power of 10 cores for our render farm (we're very happy, since mental ray only permits 8 cores for a single license). And we are looking at increasing our farm by changing our existing 6 single core systems to quad core; you could total it to 28 (humongous!) cores!!

Talking SPECIFICALLY with reference to our segment (Architecture + AEC); where does Max then score over Sketchup (+VfSU) ? High polygon handling through 64 bit OS support & Multi-core CPU utilization, the one and only area IMO, which too is in process of being resolved in Sketchup 7 (as I learnt as SCF).

If you are looking at architectural visualization & static images only, it is not V-Ray that's the limiting factor between VfSU & VfMax; but Max itself ! It don't stand a chance against Sketchup ! (& Why did you think the guys at Autodesk wisened up, took stock of the phenomenal market demand towards an easy to use software such as sketchup and come out with a 'architectural' flavor of Max- Max Design 2009 ) ?

I'm a Max convert myself, & would HIGHLY recommend your sticking around with the SU+vRfSU combo till after both Sketchup 7 & its V-Ray renderer are released. I'm sure, Max would continue its inclination of providing an easy visualization software for architects by aping Sketchup in its future releases.

Macho

[patplace_cg]

Re: V-ray for 3d Max?

I agreen with Marcho. It's huge different of speed when doing the modelling in MAX and SU. That's why the percentage of user (especially in Arhitectural field) moving on SU. I am the same move from max to su user. Even I am the Su user now, I am still leave a ? for VfSU programe. I don't know any of the core and design of the programme inside of Vray for SU and Max. BUT from user point of view. the interface of the material editor and the funtion is less than VfMax. Especially the speed. I am not agreen with you guys (working for Vfsu progreme) always say it's SU didn't relese the reading meathod. that's why make a lot of trouble to improve the programe and fix the bugs. Hello. from user point of view. We paid for the programe. of course we want the perfect program to use. we can't tell to our client we have to delay the project because of the programe need a time to fix the bugs....can we do that....NO. Guys PLEASE fix your problem...that's your job. It's No any excuse for the market. When you guys say the programe is same as VfMax. if it is ture the programe sure be very matural,stable and funtional. Even i am here to say a lot of bad thing, I am still here to supporting this programe and look forward the progarme to be matural one day....... oops...Hopefully when SU coming v7. You guys won't say Vray is not working again because of different version of SU. ;D

[dalomar_cg]

Re: V-ray for 3d Max?

BUT from user point of view. the interface of the material editor and the funtion is less than VfMax.

I have a little disagreement with that...there are some small features that we don't have within our editor (exit color for instance), but for doing complex materials you would have to go through a number of different Max materials in order to set up. So if you wanted to make a material thats on the lightbulb at the top of the page, then you'd have to make two separate materials (a VrayLightMat and a regular Vray material), then throw them into a Vray blend material to get things the same. In vfsu thats as simple as adding a layer making some adjustments and being done with it. There are some advantages to their system and some advantages to ours.

Guys PLEASE fix your problem...that's your job

As far as bugs...if you let us know, either by posting or through the support tickets, then we'll go back and do our best to fix them. Without those reports and the feed back from all of you guys we can't get them taken care of...there are only so many that we can find on our own. We should be trying to get an update with some bug fixes out in the coming weeks, so let us know now so we can try to get them fixed for that build.


For all, I'm not disagreeing with anything, but I still have to come back to animation....modeling is one thing (and I completely agree on that), but if the end goal is animation, then I'm not thinking twice about doing things in Max. SU just does have the control for animations...I'll just leave it at that.

[steelers05]

Re: V-ray for 3d Max?

First, thank you all for the feedback and I apologize for the delayed response. I really appreciate the time and detail put into each respones and it has answered a lot of questions. For me, I am just about to gradaute and I am working right now at a firm and I am luckily building up their rendering section. Now they gave me the power to go out and get whatever products I want, and it just sucks not knowing where SU7 stands. I referenced spine3d because they are a company that really stands out to me and even that Pur company that vray's homepage advertises. That is the level I want to get to, and I dont know if SU will allow me to. Now I know they are using other video editing programs and that is why i am learning Adobe After Effects, but I still want to make sure I am learning the best software and considering I am still in school, it is great talking to guys like you all because I need to narrow down what to spend time on. I mean, I think spine3d has to be using 3dmax, right? But i never truely think I will get away from Modeling in SU because I completely agree with how much more intuitive and fast it is. I guess the work flow I envision is modeling in SU, importing to max and rendering there and then take the animation or image into PS of After Effects for editing. I guess there may not be any true answers for me and I personaly do not expect everything to be perfect, because I do know that bugs are just part of business, I just wish SU would give us more news about the future because like I said, I want to get to the level of places like Spine3d and Pur, and I dont know if SU can handle that. But I could be wrong?