renderhaus

Just wondering why those of you who have chosen to stick with Mental Ray have done so. I've always used it, but am seriously considering switching over to Vray. I fear the learning curve - especially if I happen to land a big project while I'm smack-dab in the middle of that curve (and re-creating all my materials within Vray.

For years I've justified (to myself and my boss) that MR can do whatever VR can do. But the more Vray work I see, the less convinced I am of this. I've spent countless hours (hundreds) learning, applying, experimenting with, fine-tuning, tweaking and bending Mental Ray in efforts to achieve results as good as the very best (interior) VR images I've seen, but to not much avail.

So my question to all of you Mental Ray devotees out there is why have you chosen to stick with MR and not go over to the 'dark side'? Is it financial (not wanting to fork over an additional $800 - though I think they've recently raised it to $1,000 - for a 3rd party plug-in)? Or perhaps you take a special pride in being able to produce results similar to the architectural CGI industry standard using a product that most consider inferior. In other words, much like the Detroit Pistons, you not only enjoy being the "under-dog", but you perform your best when everyone else sees you as such.

Feedback?

mattclinch

MR rocks hard. I first learnt VR, but MR is so much more intuative. The GI / FG combo produces quick and smooth GI solutions in half the time. The mrSun and mrSky are brill. The Photographic Exposure control is intuative and powerfully tweakable. Arch + Design materials are simple to setup and can be done in seconds if you know what to push.

All in all a brilliantly powerful renderer, which can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be.

M

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renderhaus

Interesting... Because I've been told the exact opposite by many Vray users who once used MR. That Vray produces results quicker than MR.

AJLynn

Easy, fast, you can get good results, it's free... in most architecture firms the argument to buy Vray at this point would be hard to make. For an animator, the situation might be different.

Brian Bradley

Hey Guys,

We use both of these engines, know plenty of people who use both,
have lots of customers who use both, and can honestly say, hand on
heart that speed is in the hands of the user. Learn the engine well,
understand HOW its settings affect the engines processor use, learn
the material systems thoroughly and you will rarely see much difference
in the speed of the two engines on the same hardware.

Yes each have strengths and weaknesses, but anyone who invests time
in learning them will get great results with minimum slow down. (Imho )

Regards
Bri

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manta

In my observing the whole debate over the years, I have clearly seen one difference, Chaosgroup has always been right there with us all the way...why...because we the Arch/Viz community has adopted them to a great extent, and that's why we get that kind of treatment from them, in contrast Mental Images has alot more going on in other places, and we are certainly not their bread and butter, I mean why would they even care if we used MR in the first place, its free to us, so its just logical that it would take them much longer to get around to "us", things like charging for network rendering, and proxies and GI presets, things that Vray users have enjoyed for years...just my two cents...

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Claudio Branch

I stuck it out with Mental Ray for about 2 years before switching over to V-Ray recently. The learing curve can be significantly reduced with some training. Brian Smith can get you productive FAST.

I think Mental Ray is a great tool, it just wasn't great for ME at the time I was using it.

nicnic

vray vray vray
great support and a product that is always ahead of the curve

learn to use it properly and its no different to MR, just depends what you prefer, pros cons etc.

(that said vray is superior)

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SandmanNinja

This is almost like a religion kind of question.

I think BEFORE A&D materials, it was v-ray hands down.
When A&D Version 1 came out, it started getting attention.
Now with a few (quick but) multiple releases under it's belt, I think it can hold it's own with v-ray, and is a question of skill-and-experience versus software capability at this point.

What I like about Mental Ray is that, if I make a model in Max 2008 with Mental Ray, and give it to someone with Max 2008, it'll run. I mean, I don't need to worry about a plug-in version (which v-ray is) - it'll just work out of the box.

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Justin Hunt

Now that Mental ray has Proxies, I have no need to use Vray.

Personally mr just sat right with me. If Brazil was a little faster in their development I would be using that over Vray.

I gave Vray a real hard go. Did allot of reading , tuts etc but still couldn't get a strong hold on it. I could get good results, but I found to get truly great results the effort and render times were ridiculous.

Having trained several people in mr after being devout Vray users, overwhelmingly the response has been great. They could believe how easy it was to get up and running and to produce results.

I will also second the sentiment of its free, easy to hand the model to others and very flexible.

I disagree the mental images doesn't listen to it users. There is a great open dialog with Master Zap, who writes allot of the shaders and development of mr. For the past 2 releases of Max a large % of the improvements and new features have been mr centric. sure mr has been playing catchup for a while, but I'd say it can now compete head to head with Vray.

jhv