V Ray - Page 2 - Simply Maya User Community

# 16 09-03-2012 , 05:35 PM

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Thanks ND. Speed seems to be it's main selling point from what I've briefly read through googling.

I'm trying to find some time to look further into vray at the moment. Mr is the only stand alone renderer I've used before, so I really have no experience of weighing up one renderer against another.

Last edited by ben hobden; 09-03-2012 at 05:37 PM.

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# 17 11-03-2012 , 05:46 AM

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I was having some fun playing around with VRay and came up with this. Not too bad for about 3 hours of work. It's a bit grainy, and the ear isn't scattering as much as I'd like, but I wasn't going to thrash my laptop that hard. user added image

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 18 11-03-2012 , 07:42 AM

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nice.

Would you say the SSS works better/easier/stronger than in MR?

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# 19 11-03-2012 , 10:22 AM

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John

Pretty good. Grainy as you said, but still good.

I think to get the grain down you need to increase the threshold settings, but beware the render times will grind. The higher values in the threshold will result in faster renders as opposed to slowing them down, so try .020 instead of the default of .010. One of the other culprits with grain in Vray is the Multipass option. Uncheck it. Its a mother!!! It defaults to 4 prepasses before it considers the render stage similar to FG point computing. Its a bit of fine tuning to get it right but it will do a good job.

Jay

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# 20 11-03-2012 , 11:20 AM

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I agree that mental ray is too damn complex. You seriously have to have a PhD in light theory to half understand what a quarter the damn switches and knobs do. That is why in the end people just turn a shit ton of unnecessary stuff on (since most have no clue what each really does and how each affects the other) and end up with painfully slow renders and mediocre results.

I honestly spent a day reading through the docs and they read like PhD research papers in quantum hyper pan dimensional light theory originally written in German and then translated to English by a French person that only speaks Chinese.

To do it right you have to spend a metric butt ton of time twiddling mysterious knobs and dials to get a decent result. So seriously, what is the point of getting a render down to some small time if you have to spend 5 days twiddling knobs and dials to get a result that only applies to a single frame!

If you have not seen the modo render engine, I recommend you look at it (I believe it is the same that was just added to lightwave 10 and 11). I have used it several times and it's as close to the magic "make it look photo real" button as I have seen. It's very intuitive and relatively easy to use. I am not sure what is under the hood but it's also fast, and seems to have a maxwell constantly iterating feel to it.

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Last edited by ctbram; 11-03-2012 at 11:28 AM.

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# 21 11-03-2012 , 01:25 PM

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...

I honestly spent a day reading through the docs and they read like PhD research papers in quantum hyper pan dimensional light theory originally written in German and then translated to English by a French person that only speaks Chinese
....

Originally Posted by ctbram

LOL that's just too hilarious! Oh man I needed that, I'm having a shite morning.
user added image

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# 22 11-03-2012 , 01:28 PM

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looks cool, i'm going to have to have a shot of vray at some point. user added image

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# 23 16-03-2012 , 01:00 PM

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Its a shame Mental Ray is dieing out. Just when I was getting a handle on all the knobs and switches.

Plus I found the mia_material to be super. A one stop shop for all materials.

Looks like now Im gonna have to start learning about all those other shaders again for VRay - Car_paint, MibGlossy, DGS, Dielectric ..

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# 24 16-03-2012 , 01:16 PM

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MentalRay isn't dying out any time soon. Also, you only need to move to Vray if you WANT to. A lot of people think "because it's popular, I need to move to it." This isn't true. If the old tool gets the job done, who cares?

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 25 16-03-2012 , 06:23 PM

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Where did you hear Mental Ray was dying out? As NextDesign said, Vray is an alternative, that's pretty much it.

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# 26 17-03-2012 , 06:04 AM

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Where did you hear Mental Ray was dying out? As NextDesign said, Vray is an alternative, that's pretty much it.

Originally Posted by GecT

It's not dying out. It's just getting old. Just like Renderman. With all the years of development, it's bound to have some legacy code in it. Newer renderers may benefit from having smaller, fresher code bases, which allows them to put in some pretty neat new features, and have faster releases; but the older ones have been tried and tested in production.

Let me just say this, and try to avoid more people jumping onto this; use whatever tool gets the job done, and you feel comfortable with. Don't switch just because something's becoming popular. Switch because it does something that your current solution doesn't. In production, whole pipelines are built around a single solution, bet it Renderman, Mental Ray, Vray, etc; and it's therefore extremely hard, if not impossible, to change solutions without grinding production down to a halt.

Use what you want to.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Last edited by NextDesign; 17-03-2012 at 06:07 AM.

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# 27 17-03-2012 , 09:54 AM

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Ok, thanks for posts.

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# 28 17-03-2012 , 10:49 AM

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I've heard that Mental Images are more focussing on real time display tech than on their renderengine, What good about Vray is, is the fact that it largely takes existing terminology so the user instantly understand what different settings do, this is not surprising though since both Vray and MR are "raytracers".
I personally think VRay for maya is better than Mental Ray for maya, why?
Because they've written Vray around Maya's architecture, Mental Ray was an existing standalone engine and they've cut and chopped it in places to make it fit within the architecture sometimes cutting away features or diminishing them in some way.
I haven't ever played with Arnold, but heard good stories about it ...and bad, the good is the amazing speed, the bad is that it is in development for about 11 years now and not much used for fullblown triple A titles.
My personal favorite at this time is absolutely and without a doubt Renderman, it's blazingly fast I remember when the first time I rendered a displacement with it, started the render and because I was used to MR with rendertimes of at least 20 minutes I went and did other things when I got back after half an hour, saw it was already done 29 minutes ago LOL.
The only downside is price and understanding the differences between RfM, RPS,RMS etc., making it only "attractive"to pioneers and not really for the "mainstream".
But if you are interested just contact Pixar and they will set you up with trial licenses or go for the free option with 3delight

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# 29 17-03-2012 , 11:04 AM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
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Yeah Renderman is a killer for dis maps.

VRay and Mental ray are swings and roundabouts...Im currently using both at work...both a pain in the arse somewhere down the line. Whether its multipass calcs or FG calcs....just arse!!

Arnold is in the works for us too but have to wait and see....so far my eyes are on Modos renderer.....micro displacements please!!! and in real time

J

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