maya and mental ray (public beta?) - Page 2 - Simply Maya User Community

# 16 18-09-2002 , 04:44 PM

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6500 Euro, isn't Maya Unlimited also somewher in the 6000 Euro ... ?

I hope they made a miscalculation

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 17 18-09-2002 , 05:03 PM

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nah, unlimited is 7k USD and 8149 euros *plus* VAT
...so I'll get Maya inComplete first (won't need fluid effects, Cloth and Fur for some time I guess)

but I second the wish for a miscalculation.

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# 18 18-09-2002 , 05:04 PM

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oh, and as a matchmover have you checked out Icarus?
looks very promising...

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# 19 18-09-2002 , 05:08 PM

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what is icarus, a renderer ?

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 20 18-09-2002 , 05:10 PM

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no, a match mover/tracking software, free for noncommercial work.

https://aig.cs.man.ac.uk/icarus/index.php

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# 21 18-09-2002 , 05:41 PM

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sounds very nifty, Have you used it all ready ?

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 22 18-09-2002 , 08:02 PM

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I only tested it on one short track; it was pretty stable and not too slow. the markers were all found automatically and the result looked ok

will have another look when I find some time.

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# 23 18-09-2002 , 09:25 PM

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let me know how it is... sounds very interesting

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 24 02-10-2002 , 11:16 AM

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Re: maya and mental ray (public beta?)

hey philip
I'm a new comer to your forum(i don't know ,maybe i disturbe your conversations)
anyway,it seems that you know lightwave well,
i have some quastions if you would like answer them:
-did you worked with renderman in lightwave
and if you not ,can you compare it with mentalray?
_which of them is more suited with maya,renderman or mentalray?
-have you heard of JIG how is it?

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# 25 02-10-2002 , 11:28 AM

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hi najafi,

mental ray is a killer renderer, as is lightwave's; the lightwave renderer is the best "out-of-the-box" one IMO. But there's some shortcomings still; there are no physically corect lens shaders (as in mental ray), and the radiosity algorythm (what does it take to make an american vice president dance?) seems to be not overly well suited for architectural interior shots. But on the other hand the HDRI support just rocks.

I have no renderman experience at all, unless you count BMRT in there; I played a bit with that one while still on blender back then.

As far as I know, the new Renderman (due this fall) will have raytracing and radiosity as well, but I haven't seen any renders yet. Mental ray is said to be quite slow, while Renderman is optimized for speed to a higher degree.

Never heard of JIG, what's that?

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# 26 02-10-2002 , 12:57 PM

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welcome to SM najafi.. :p

hey philip, how are you man.. haven't seen you in some time..

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# 27 06-10-2002 , 11:18 AM

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Dear philip
what a perfect information you learned me,thanks too much.
I heard about JIG (sony renderer )in:
www.highend3d.com/render/JIG

I don't know if you have worked with Maya?
Is there any advantage that lightwave has and maya don't have?
could you compare these too?
In your country(by the way where are you)which software is mostly used for animatoin purpuses.
I have worked with maya so much but i didn't have any experience with lightwave.How much does lightwave cost?

best regard

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# 28 06-10-2002 , 12:22 PM

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Hi Najafi,

a little price comparison first:

maya complete: 1999 USD
maya unlimited: 7000 USD
softimage XSI: 7000 to 13000 USD
max 5: 4000 USD
lightwave: 1595 USD

I'm currently working with LightWave mostly, but am in the process of gathering information about maya and decided to add a seat of maya to my toolbox soon (only waiting for one more payment, impatiently).

The most obvious difference between maya and LW is that LW consists of 2 programs; the modeler and layout (referred to as LightWave). The modeler is used to , well, model things ; ) and layout is the program where you setup your scene, lighting and animation. This is a pretty unique concept that might seem a little strange at first glance but it really has some advantages. Some people even run them both simultaneously on a dual monitor setup. The next thing is that LW has no real NURBS, it's strictly polygons, and the modeler is considered the best polygon modeler around. Then there's the renderer; LW's renderengine renders 160 bit floating point, resulting in extremely vital images which can even be saved as HDR. It can also use HDRI's as lightprobes to light your scene without a single light, copying realworld lighting scenarios. Since version 7.5 the GI renderer can calculate up to 8 indirect bounces.

Now maya surely can't keep up with the LightWave renderer, but from what I learned until now (by searching the web, purchasing maya 4 fundamentals and watching some gnomon videos at a friend's and playing with the PLE a bit), maya clearly has some impressive advantages over LightWave. To my knowledge they are: raw animating powers! I just loved clusters, sculpt deformers (especially the flip mode) and lattices, blendshapes, wrap deformers (!) and the construction history. Rigid body dynamics too is something LW doesn't have (you can fake it to some point, but well...). And workflow enhancing thingies like the hotbox and marking menus (made my first custom mm yesterday : )) are very cool too.

There are lots of studios working with both maya and LW. Mostly using LW/maya for modeling, LW for texturing, maya for animating and LW again for rendering (eg digital domination, read about their awesome adidas commercial on cgchannel...).
To pass files between the two there are either some free sets of scripts or the beaver project, so everything runs pretty smoothly.

So, I'd say maya and LightWave make a killer combination, don't you agree? : )

Here in germany everything is pretty much max contaminated. How I see it, max is said to be the game industries darling (even though LW was used to model the highrez models for doom 3).
But I don't aim for games, at least not exclusively. So I don't want to jump on that train. And by the way; *if* everybody was using max around here, this would be one more reason to NOT. = )
Granted, max offers access to the most 3rd party renderers, but splutterfish is working on a port to maya for brazil : ))

So, quite a lengthy post I guess; just ignore if I bore you. : )

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# 29 06-10-2002 , 12:33 PM

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ahh, one more shameless plug:

have a look in my gallery to see what I have put out with LW:

https://www.liquid-arts.de/test

(I'm currently redesigning the site...)

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# 30 07-10-2002 , 01:33 PM

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Fantastic (for sure not boring)
I saw your site ,perfect models and scenes.
thanks too much for your precise and detailed answers.so you want to enter the world of maya and also I want to enter the world of lightwave.good joint ha?
I can send you a great range of scenes,models,shaders,brushes,mocap files,etc which I used in my great range of animation projects.I targeted the animation market not the game ,as you.
in addition to maya I'm working with Premiere (for editing),Shake and combustion(for compositing) and photoshop and corel for 2d purposes.
My site is under construction but you can contact me at my email m-najafi@mailcity.com,I would be so glad to hearing from you whatever relates to our same favorite area.
If you would like write me your address and I will send you a demo version of maya(also you could gain it at www.aw.sgi.com) and a great range of profitable CDs and text.I'm so free in transfering whatever information I obtained through my professinal works,so feel free for any kind of request.

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