rendering software

# 1 05-08-2010 , 02:24 PM

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Ok so I started a new job and have been modeling a shed load of stuff which I hope to begin animating and rendering in the not so distant future. Some has already been rendered with Vue and mental ray but I am wanting to get away from mental ray and need to work out which render to incorporate into our workflow. I am currently considering vray or renderman, although I think renderman is not available for maya 2011. Personally I was hoping use renderman as previous work colleagues praised its speed and ease of use but am unsure if this is going to be possible.

Be great to here opinions on other renders

Cheers,

Leon

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# 2 05-08-2010 , 11:10 PM

The Nurb Herd
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whats wrong with mental ray?

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# 3 06-08-2010 , 09:14 AM

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I have been told a number of times that it is the worst render with Maya and that the likes of Renderman and Vray are much more stable, faster as well as easier to use.
I have often had problems with mental ray and simply put this down to hardware but I am working with a very decent set up and mental ray still acts up.
The other guys I work with are often laughing at how much crap it gives me as they work with cinema 4d and I am yet to see them have any problems.
It may just be me but I keep all of my files clearly labeled in the outliner and always keep the history clean.
At the end of the day it cannot hurt to try another render especially if it turns out to improve the speed I can complete work at and help improve my sanity.

That said I don't want to start an argument about which render is best or any of that nonsense. I simply want to try out another alternative to see if it can assist me in speeding up my workflow.

Cheers

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# 4 06-08-2010 , 04:50 PM

The Nurb Herd
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lol, i guess a bad workman blames his tools. user added image

I've never had any problems with mental ray. i use it here at work. if there is some problem with it, then its generally my fault.

maybe try out renderman, bear in mind its gonna be expensive and its harder to use (different interface, lights, etc) also its a rasterizer, it will ray trace and final gather but slower than mental ray does.

do you not composite or work with a compositor?

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# 5 06-08-2010 , 05:12 PM

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Lol yeah it may well just be a case that I am doing something wrong. Have had maya crash more times than ever since I started this job so maybe it is simply a case that the mac I am working with has some issues. One of the guys said today that he things the os was not installed properly and is gonna take a look at it next week. Have already spoken with the bosses and are talking about making the funds available for me to get a high end pc. I personally prefer working on pc although I cant complain about using a mac as it is the same scenario of blaming the tools user added image

.

Yeah we have a compositor at work who just comped a shot together for me and is the closest to photorealistic I ever believed I would manage to put my name to.

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# 6 06-08-2010 , 11:27 PM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
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The way Mental Ray hooks into Maya is a bit awkward, it is getting better though, VRay and Renderman are better Renderers for Maya because in these cases the renderer is fitted to the package and with mental ray they tend to cut stuff from the renderer so that it works more stable with Maya ( Mental Ray standalone is a bit different in comparison with it's incorporated brother)
Don't if anyone knows how you had to set up a SSS shader back in the day user added image

, but that sucked

Mental ray works best with XSI then 3ds Max and then Maya.
But it is getting a lot better and most posthouses i know of work with mental ray anyway so it's best to learn Mental Ray, if you get to work at Pixar they will show you the ropes when it comes to Renderman

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# 7 07-08-2010 , 03:39 PM

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Originally posted by mastone

Mental ray works best with XSI then 3ds Max and then Maya.
But it is getting a lot better and most posthouses i know of work with mental ray anyway so it's best to learn Mental Ray, if you get to work at Pixar they will show you the ropes when it comes to Renderman

Originally Posted by

lol, i'm pretty sure every post house uses mental ray. its used mostly in commercials.

btw, we and many other large post production companies use renderman, its not just pixar.

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# 8 07-08-2010 , 10:05 PM

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i completely vouch for mental ray only problem comes with them is that when they usually introduce a new feature it comes with alot of headaches (anyone remember physical sun and sky, mental ray production shaders and who can forget the ever time expensive mia_materials)

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# 9 08-08-2010 , 10:46 AM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
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Originally posted by hammer.horror
lol, i'm pretty sure every post house uses mental ray. its used mostly in commercials.

btw, we and many other large post production companies use renderman, its not just pixar.

Originally Posted by

I know but you probably have a renderman specialist, or better said you have a lot more mental ray guys than renderman guys.

@murambi:
Just as I said, mental ray works awkward in Maya ( it's getting better), that's why I think that VRay plugs into Maya a lot better ( Because of the workI do I tend to have most of the software there is) user added image

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# 10 08-08-2010 , 10:29 PM

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actually its the other way round. we have more renderman licenses and people who use renderman.

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# 11 09-08-2010 , 02:41 AM

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Think we are gonna get renderman 3.0 although have sent an email to see when they will be making the evaluation version of 4.0 available. I will be doing a lot of displacement rendering and this is where it will be of great help. Mental ray has certainly improved but still have problems with it and these have gone up a lot since I started this job.

Thanks for your thoughts on this guys.

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# 12 09-08-2010 , 05:11 PM

Maniacal boy king of Babylon
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Originally posted by hammer.horror
actually its the other way round. we have more renderman licenses and people who use renderman.

Originally Posted by

Really? Is it because Renderman is more complicatd to understand that you need more people?
Because as far as I know Renderman is not a widely known package ( in terms of userbase), everybody knows of it, of course, but since Mental ray is incorporated in the 3 main 3d packages I thought that that was also the most used package ( I would user added image

)

But it is as they say live and learn user added image