22 February 2009

Mental Ray Or Vray??

Humm,,, a fellow twitter friend ask me which renderer I use and which one I prefer? Personally I use mental ray and the default scanline renderer in max. I think both could give good result. Take a look at these two image. The first is a mental ray generated image and the second a render done with the default scanline renderer.






Both images are interesting. Some may prefer the mental ray one and other the scanline. Personally I prefer the mental ray one. I think it kinda give that clean and photo realistic look to the picture. I remember when Ive finish this picture people at work prefer the right one (the scanline one) They said the image as more personality to it. I think you can achieve great result in scanline, you can even fake global illumination but it is more difficult to get that pelicular effect as in mental ray. You really got to work the light and the shadows to do it. Here is a picture that I'm proud of entirely done in scanline.
But enough talking about my work. Is v-ray good? Of what I heard it is more easier to get a photo realistic image with v-ray. Some even say it work better and that it is more easy to set a good render than with mental ray. I may not tell it myself but it is the subject to this post. I want to know which renderer you use and why. I'm planning to use v-ray as it have a really good reputation but doesn't it worth the purchase or may I continue with mental ray?

here is a link to a forum on it but I want to hear from you here to get some action! :

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/8300-mental-ray-vs-vray.html

a link where you can download a demo version v-ray:

http://www.digimation.com/home/Downloads.aspx?sm=vr


Sam The 3d Blogger
www.the3dblogger.blogspot.com

8 comments:

Doug Springer said...

Speaking from a Maya background, I think Mental Ray is the cat's meow. From what I've been told and from my experience, it is more sophisticated and yields better results than Maya's software and hardware renderers. To be honest, I've never heard of V-ray before. Probably because it is a 3D Studio addon.
What about Renderman? That has a really good reputation and you can see the results every time you watch a Pixar movie.

Samaël St-Laurent said...

you got a point I didn't tought about renderman either and it does fantastic result... Is V-ray only for 3ds max?? A guy from twitter tell me that he thing for architecture v-ray was the best and for organic mental ray was the better choice....

Anonymous said...

I don't have direct experience with V-Ray myself, but I did see it in action while taking an online course about a year ago about using 3ds Max for Arch/Vis projects. The course instructor swears by V-Ray because, according to him, it's so much faster than mental ray. From watching him work with it, V-Ray looks like its a bit more user-friendly and less technical than mental ray. Also, for larger projects or environments, the V-Ray proxy objects perform quite well. I watched the instructor render a scene with several trees and reflective windows within a few minutes. That's something that took much longer with mental ray... I've thought about picking up V-Ray myself, but the budget and frequency of 3D projects just aren't enough yet to justify its purchase.

Samaël St-Laurent said...

thanks Shawn I really appreciate your contribution to this forum! Ive check and legit version of vray in the 4000$ its a little bit too pricey for me.. Wich class did you take?

Anonymous said...

$4,000? Is that for multiple render nodes or something? I can buy a license right now for $899 in US dollars from www.vray.com

As for the course I took, it was offered through vismasters.com, taught by a guy named Brian Smith. I've been waiting to see if they'll offer similar courses in the future, but it looks like they're not. However, vismasters.com is a good site to look at if you do any kind of architectural visualization, or if you enjoy seeing what other people working in the arch/vis sector are doing.

Samaël St-Laurent said...

Oh yeah I think your are right I migth have mistake the 3dsmax software price... anyway 900$ is to hight for me now...

Anonymous said...

Your renders are very nice in scanline as well as in mental ray. But the beauty of your renders is 80% because of the texturing you've done. When seen closely, both in mental ray and scanline, the lighting solution suffers in the photographic accuracy... Well, your renders are excellent as per the animation purpose. But photorealism is not achieved in both MR and Scanline.. :( ... I am never satisfied by the MR, VRAY and scanline, coz I hunt for photorealism.. Maxwell can do it in some 5 hours.. and those results are very hardly achieved in biased renderers... :(

3d rendering said...

Good samples...the realistic effect that is provided by 3dmax in texturing and rendering is really commendable..