renderhaus

I don't know how the minds work there at Chaos, but I'd be very surprised if they were to discount their pricing at all with the next upgrade. Even if MR closes the gap completely, they simply can't 'give' the program away. They've got enough cache built-up in the arch viz industry to last them a good little while before the tables start turning on them (IF they turn). And that's not to say that MR isn't capable of turning the tables. The question is whether or not the users will reflect that turn.

An easy analogy, with me being born and raised and educated in the Motor City (Detroit) is the auto industry. Whether people at large want to believe it or not, domestics have made and continue to make huge strides in quality and reliability. So much so that some of them, in certain surveys, tests and comparisons, rank on or above par with the powerhouse imports of reliability such as Honda and Toyota. But if you ask the general public most will still swear to their graves that no domestic product could ever touch a Lexus.

crazy homeless guy

I have always baulked at the accolades that Lexus gets. I feel they are a heavily over rated. Just glorified Toyota's. I agree, domestics reputation is still damaged from the poor build quality of the 80's. Didn't they admit that they were building cars poorly on purpose? I think it is the mentality that people are unable to move past. Building a bad car, and purposely building a bad car are two different things.

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travis schmiesing

crazy homeless guy

...someone stated on the Chaos Forum that Gelato is dead, and that is why it is free. They will now start playing with MR.

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travis schmiesing

novelh

I originally used Scanline up to VIZ4. Then I started to do some renderings for the architecture office I work for and I convinced them to build me a custom computer and purchase Max2008. That's when I discovered Mental Ray. It gave me result immediately and at lightning speed (could have been the new computer too.) When I opened the scanline model I was last working on I adapted the materials and lights for mR. Scanline = 5hrs , mR = 3min! It blew me away.

After that it was only natural to begin to dive deeper into the engine. I read a lot about Vray and decided to give it a try since it was so hyped-up but results were not as easily achievable. I tried several times and it wasn't happening for me. Its true that mR has a ton of settings (that can easily ruin the look of a material) but there a lots of good presets to choose from which you can modify without much risk. mR for me!

Being that I have no one in the office to turn to for questions I use you guys a lot for support. Thanks



Here is a sample of my second mR project.


This is my first interior rendering.

zeniamai

Both are great engines with advantages and disadvantages. I would suggest you master mental ray since you have already have a strong background with it. One advantage of mental ray is that it has better compatibility to other plug-ins compared to vray. If your planning to use a lot of plug-ins with out spending too much time on finding solutions to solve the some compatibility issues Mental ray is better.
So far the plug-ins that I use for my renderings that function in mental ray and which conflict in vray are RPC's and Vue 6. I am not sure if there are updates on this but so far I haven't seen any. Vray is also not compatible with other default max plugins and you would have to learn some plugins for vray in order to replace it.
The advantages for Vray on the other hand is that it has a lot of tutorials for you to learn on. There are just a lot of people using this that it is easy to find solutions to almost all the problems you encounter in vray. For me though I'm using using both mental ray and vray. I usually use mental ray if i need to use the incompatible plug-ins. One reason why I seldom use mental ray is because of the availability of its tutorials. I am having a hard time achieving good results for the interior in mental ray.

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Brian Bradley

I don't think this is any where near the problem that it was
2 or 3 years ago. Some good stuff ships with Max itself, you
have mymentalray.com, Zaps blog, Jeff Pattons blog, and of
course www.mentalboutmax.com

Regards
Bri

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renderhaus

Not to turn this into a car forum, but Lexus has earned ever single accolade fair and square. They're no more a glorified Toyota than Lincoln is a glorified Ford. I work for Ford, but happen to drive a 15 year old Lexus. And trust me, it has earned every single accolade. After 15 years, the interior cabin still has no squeaks - (not that that's its biggest advantage though).

illegalalieninbeijing

Here's a great reference that convinced me that mental ray can do what vray can do. I don't even think that vray has came up with a reference book like this.

Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds Max and Mental Rray
by Roger Cusson & Jamie Cardoso

Another good tutorial reference was featured recently in 3D World Magazine issue no. 93 titled:

Photorealism with Mentay Ray 3.5 by Chris Bullen

I started out using vray with my old employer. Since I moved to my current office about 2 years ago, I had trouble convincing my boss to get us a copy of vray. Wanting to get renders out, I was forced to learn & use mental ray as quick as possible. I was surprised that it was way easier to learn & understand compared to vray ( which until now i probably know less than half of it ). I haven't used vray since.

AJLynn

I find my renderings coming full circle - I used to use Vray, then I got a job that involved some rendering at a company that didn't have Vray and I started using mental ray. Now my mental ray rendering looks like what everybody else thinks Vray rendering looks like, and I'm dubious about there being that much real difference.

Quick one I did recently for one of our projects:

Attached Images

AJL_mr.jpg (220.4 KB, 41 views)

renderhaus

Well, I'm now learning VRay. My employer recently became convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that VRay was superior to MR in terms of lighting capabilities and is having us all switch to using it.

I'll tell you what though. One thing I'm really liking baout it is how well the displacement mapping works for things like carpet. And it renders those displacements a lot quicker than MR ever could. Can't wait to try it with a large patch of grass.