solidbox

I was in the same situation like you. I spent a lot of time learning both. It is not healthy to do that. Finally, I decided to stick in to one, Mental Ray, and have never regretted.

vizfx

Mental Images was aquired by Nvidia and let`s not forget that Nvidia is behind Gelato (GPU rendering system) which is now available for free - including the PRO version. I think MR it will bring us a lot of goodies in the near future.

peterguthrie

The support that chaosgroup offer for vray is just incredible. As a freelancer the help that comes from the vray forum is invaluable. I also think Vray is incredibly good value for money when you consider the development from v1 to v1.5 - all free updates. Compare that to Autodesk's policy.....

In terms of Vray vs MR, there seems to be a lot of talk about MR these days... can't work out why though ;-)

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odouble

It all boils down to the artist that's using the tool. It's like the max vs maya thing. Vray and mentalray are just tools. It's like anything else that you have choices with... sedan or hatchback...juice or soda... in this case it's:

1. Free renderer with max or $$$ plugin (financial)
2. What is more intuitive to you and how fast can it produce in your own adopted workflow?

Vray is the most widely adopted in our industry and for me it's a little easier to get up to speed with and that is not to say mentalray is inferior. Mentalray though has made huge strides of recent with proxies, the A@D materials and optimization of it's engine.

I have seen great works from both engines but remember the renderer does not spit out art. It is all in the skill of the artist and not the tool. Remember that the great works that you see have a lot of post work done on them in compositing packages also and are not just a single render.

The skill is in the artist's creativity and imagination and not the tool.

renderhaus

I want to agree with that. But it's awfully hard to when I see so many exceptional works produced with V-Ray. Maybe there just aren't enough people posting Mental Ray works.

I'll tell you what though, in my 9 years of teaching 3dsMax at 2 different universities (starting initially with 3d Studio VIZ) I can confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that the software is nothing more than a paint brush. It's the one holding it that determines what ends up on canvas.

odouble

It's no secret that our industry has adopted vray much more than mentalray.

I think some of the other posts had great points about the vray forums and the ease of getting help for anyone learning the package. I don't think that Mentalray does not have help either it's just not geared as much to Arch viz as vray. There is a lot of help for programming shaders and much more complex stuff available for mentalray. The intuitiveness of mentalray in 3ds max has definitely improved with it's newest versions too.

But again I have seen great works from the 2 engines and it all was based on the styles and preferences of the artist really (like you said it's they are just paintbrushes) with some great post work to mention. Mentalray is heavily used for VFX in some hollywood studios (probably because of it's widespread programming of custom shaders) and it goes to show that it is a very capable engine.

With that said, it's been easier for me to pick up Vray and that's just me. Check out the gallery section for some mentalray work too. They may be few but there is definitely some impressive stuff.

crazy homeless guy

IMO opinion the reason we see better work from Vray than MR is because up until the last few releases MR was the inferior render engine. Now the playing field has equaled out a great deal, but Vray still has its strong foot hold and dedicated users. New people coming into the market look at the imagery being produced, and what engine produced them. Vray still has the advantage in the volume and quality of work out there. So the logical choice for someone trying to make the decision on which to use goes to Vray. The old cliche that a picture speaks a thousand words is working heavily in Vray's favor, and will continue to do so for at least the next year, maybe 2.

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renderhaus

Okay...That's it then. I think i'm officially going to stick with MR. I've got to learn Vr for the things we're putting out here at work - which is good in that it will make me fluent in both engines. But for my own business, I will continue to master MR. It also helps that I can do distributed rendering without extra licenses with MR.

Sawyer

Or maybe until Vray reaches 2.0 and we need to pay for an upgrade. I have been very happy with vray but I don't know if I would pay for an upgrade. And I hate to say it because I have been so happy with the development team and the program. But I assume Chaos knows that MR has taken up a bit of the slack and is free so maybe they have some good things in the works.

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crazy homeless guy

I really hope that Vray does. So far I still feel it has more control over the final image, but that could just be because I don't have the full grasp on MR yet. I am guessing that Chaos Group will only recompile Vray for a release or 2 of Max after they introduce version 2.0. But I must say, Vray has been one of the best values on the market. Ever since the released version 1.09 they have been offering free updates on their product. They could have easily saved a lot of these updates and charged for them in version 2.0, but they choose to introduce. I think they know they will always need to stay ahead of MR in order to survive because MR now has an unfair advantage.

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