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