VRay vs Mental Ray

[pdavis]

Let me throw out this disclaimer before I get started. I am not a Max user. Our visualization support person is no longer with the firm and my boss has asked me to figure this out, so...

We are going to start a formal 3DS Max training program for our architects and designers. We have identified roughly 40 that need this in the various offices. Most of them are self-taught. As a result, we want to introduce some formal training to get all the offices on the same page.

We are currently using Max 9 with VRay in some offices and occasionally a user will introduce Maxwell. We are moving to Max 2009 Design and the deployment of that has started, so the training will be based on that. We only have a few staff that really know anything about VRay. I have seen demos where VRay is definitely faster than Mental Ray in 9 but MR was faster in '09.

We are a Revit shop and adopting rendering in RA 2009 and we already own licenses of VRay.

So, I have two questions:

1. If you are going to be providing formal training to roughly 40 staff (Autodesk Consulting will be doing the training) with limited knowledge of VRay, do you train on that or MR.

2. Which is the better engine for architectural related renderings VRay or MR.

Thanks.

[Brian Bradley]

Hi,

Will ADC train on Vray? As a 3rd party plugin for Max i would
have expected them not to use it! But you need to settle on Which
engine you are going to want your Viz people to use, as getting
the best out of them depends on production artists becoming
well aquainted with the toolset.

Which is Best? None. Both have strengths and weaknesses, the
questions as to which will work better for you depends on a bunch
of variables, not least of which is the 'Type' of work you are going
to be doing with the engine.

Personally, I would get your guys a good bunch of Cost Effective
Downloadable Video Training and get them up to speed before anything
other kind of training! But then I would say that!! :-)

Regards
Bri

[spacedecor]

Me too!Now i am starting study for 3ds max.I check mental ray & vray.Both of them are great.But my favourite engine is "vray".I prefer vray lighting result better than mr ray.

[loydg]

My 2 cents: Both are very capable renderers. Mental Ray has come a LONG way from Max 8 when we first started using it. Our primary is now VRay and has been for several years. We tested everything at the time (Mental Ray, VRay, Brazil, MaxwellRender, and a couple others) VRay was the most intuitive and the fastest to render (As long as you follow some prescibed rules like never use Raytraced materials) at that time. We also looked at the industry standards and what other companies in AEC were using. A majority being VRay.

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of other Autodesk products take advantage of MR as well as some major third party applications that work with Max (like Vue 5 Infinite). Also. as you develop or convert your model library the either proprietary materials, it will make it difficult to move it over to another renderer (although there are some scripts out there that will convert materials, but not some of the dynamic properties). Okay, I've rambled. Hopefully there's some useful info in there.

[dellis]

Well...i'll admit to my bias toward VRay right off the start. Having said that, i do think that VRay is the stronger renderer...which isn't to say that MR isn't great and capable. I have found that VRay outperforms MR when the scenes get really big and/or intricate...meaning lots of stuff going on eg. blurry reflections/refractions, SSS, DOF etc. I don't see any reason to not use both though....you have licenses for VRay and MR comes free. If your employees are trained on how each of the engines work (under the hood)...actually its basically how all modern renderers work... then it becomes alot easier to control them. I did a class at Autodesk University last year which covered some of this....i have the contents posted on my site if you want to download and use them. Theres a link on the main page that wil bring you to the folder.

http://www.dwayne-ellis.com/

Here a few suggestions in no particular order:

-Get all of Chris Nichols dvds from the gnomon workshop/gnomonology (vray)
-When getting trained, make DR (distributed rendering) a priority (mr & vray)
-Understand the importance of sampling and how light effects colour/materials (mr & vray)
-Think of mr and vray as tools....not an either or situation but when its appropriate to use each of them.
-Throw some Photoshop training in there as well...its an essential tool in the arsenal.

I may add some more if i can think of them. Good luck to ya!!!

[pdavis]

Thanks. All very good suggestions.

[ramyhanna]

pdavis,
Dwayne, had alot of good and true comments about vray vs. mr. I've been using both for a while, and switch between the two depending on what I'm doing. Here is a comparison of different things they can do:

Cost:
MR wins. It's free, it comes with Max.

GI:
Vray wins. They both do photon mapping. But v-ray has a gamut of different ways to simulate global illumination.

Displacement:
Vray wins. Vray is much much faster and better than mr at creating displacements.

Sampling:
MR wins. It may be me, but i've found mr to render faster at lower sample rates.

Ease of use:
MR wins. There aren't too many options when considering lighting using final gather and GI. This can be good and bad. The A&D shader is very simple to use (of course so is the vraymat)

I used to use vray more, but now I use mr (still love vray though), due to just simplicity of installation, and speed of rendering times. I also don't have to worry about keeping up with a plug-in and licenses.

My two-cents.