I normally build miniatures for film work, but with the turn of filmmaking to digital, I'm forcing myself to learn 3D in order to keep up with the industry. I have picked Maya, as it seems to be the industry standard (and I'm on a Mac), but I see a lot more photorealistic renders coming out of 3DS Max. Is there really that big of a difference between the programs and their supported renderers? And if so, why would the industry standard be Maya if Max looks better?
At any rate, I am stuck with Maya (can't find Max for Mac), and wondering how I can make my renders more photorealistic? I attached a photo of a scene I am working on. The textures are all from photographs of an actual model I built for one of the jail cells. The hallway seems like it is almost there in realism, but there is just something about it that screams CG, and I can't figure out what that is or how to fix it. Any suggestions? Any specific info/other screen shots you need to know/see about it? It is rendered in Mental Ray.
Thanks in advance for any help!
This is the actual miniature
Max is windows only, unless you're going to run bootcamp and I don't know how well that will work out. The thing with Maya is that it is very customizable and extendable. Most of the realistic Max renders floating around are done in Vray, and it's designed to relieve the user from a lot of the manual setup, for example handling gamma (which is vital to realistic images). MR for Maya is very capable as well, it's just brunt of the setup is on the user, which allows for more control,this can be a good thing or an inconvenience depending how you look at it.
