mental ray interior fast setup

joske · July 27th, 2004

Nakadate made a very fine setup in Brazil : http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/6490-brazil-rio-global-photon-mapping-tutorial.html
nothing to add on my account, looks great, i never tried Brazil myself... i'm sure it's a great renderer, and also very fast.

However a lot of people seem to complain that mental ray is so slow and hard to master

: well... let's do the same for the mental ray users then right?

pls note: this is not an attempt to find out wich renderer is 'the best, the fastest..." pls do not go into that peoples... plenty of those threads around allready

so don't go that way ok? i'm sure all of the diff. solutions out their can do wonderfull stuff, and are very fast, so this is just a small test/proof that Mental Ray CAN be compared with the rest of them.

IMHO it looks very similar to the brazil version, no?
rendertime : 2 minutes on a pentium IV 2.8 gig 2Gddr
so compared to nakadate's Brazil version 5 min i would say mental ray can do the job fast.

see the max file attached
greetz,
phil

izrut · July 27th, 2004

Hi joske

nice example!I'm quite new in 3d field but I decadet to give a test with this siene. the wall of the origanaly posted by U siene were planes. I change them with boxes.render time has encreased by 1 sec.swithcing between the two images U can see a slight differece...I can't say which image U like more but next time U render have this in mind

p.s. this is not a critique to joske.His original idea is to give us all example for wat mr is caipable of.he is one of the people I owe my progress

.
I just wanna help people achieve better results!

thank U

joske · July 27th, 2004

no problem izrut,
great to have somebody mentioning those small differences.
i only see a slight diff. in the way the photons are filtered and gathered in your results, this should be because in my setup the walls and floor are the same mesh and in the box-wall example each wall and the floor are seperate objects or meshes.
it seems obvious to me that the photons that are casted on two meshes might have a different bounce than on one and the same mesh all around... no?
that might also explain the slight in-/decrease in rendertime... mabey there are less or more photons bounced to calculate?? I'm just guessing here, this is an explanation that comes first to mind...

mabey someone should try a Vray and Final render setup with this scene? it might be very helpfull to see the 4 most used renderers next to each other...

izrut · July 27th, 2004

plane walls:

number of segments: 1x1x1
render time: 2min:11sec

number of segments: 50x50x50
render time: 3min:13sec

box walls:

boxes separated
render time: 2min:12sec

boxes attached
render time: 2min:11sec

p.s. enough MR testing

... time for V-ray, Brasil and FR

Nick Nakadate · July 27th, 2004

Glad you guys took a try at rendering the scene. A critique I have is the images from mr seem washed out and over-averaged--too little contrast. It is true the image at the end of the tutorial is a balance of a "decent" render in a short amount of time. It could be polished more with a few setting increases and a bit more render time. Anyway, good photon fun.

Cheers,
NN

joske · July 28th, 2004

yes nakadate, i tried to make the comparison fair.
I even overdid the final gathering : the render didn't need that much of it, went for the 'silky smooth' look i guess

It was a very quick test to finally see what Mray was capable off speedwise
I'm sure if it really mattered that the render time could even go lower for similar results, but in all fairness : didn't really spent any extra testing on the settings for that kind of thing.

blaz · July 29th, 2004

done in FR stage1
renderign times 15 seconds, in dual xeon 2.8, with 2G ram

izrut · July 29th, 2004

ei blaz, very decent machine U've got

pls do render joske siene to tell us the time...

pixelperfectg · July 29th, 2004

** Edit - I read this thread the wrong way. I though you guys were looking for other R/S's to compaire the scene with. My bad, I've removed my posts.

Jeff **

izrut · July 29th, 2004

***Edit - Nooooo...bring the post back

.Just render the original siene too.

July 27th, 2004	#3 (permalink)
joske Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: gent belgium Age: 33 Posts: 158 Name: Philip De keersmaecker	Re: mental ray interior fast setup no problem izrut, great to have somebody mentioning those small differences. i only see a slight diff. in the way the photons are filtered and gathered in your results, this should be because in my setup the walls and floor are the same mesh and in the box-wall example each wall and the floor are seperate objects or meshes. it seems obvious to me that the photons that are casted on two meshes might have a different bounce than on one and the same mesh all around... no? that might also explain the slight in-/decrease in rendertime... mabey there are less or more photons bounced to calculate?? I'm just guessing here, this is an explanation that comes first to mind... mabey someone should try a Vray and Final render setup with this scene? it might be very helpfull to see the 4 most used renderers next to each other... Last edited by joske; July 27th, 2004 at 02:35 PM.

July 27th, 2004	#5 (permalink)
Nick Nakadate Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Berkeley, CA Posts: 20 Name: Nick Nakadate	Re: mental ray interior fast setup Glad you guys took a try at rendering the scene. A critique I have is the images from mr seem washed out and over-averaged--too little contrast. It is true the image at the end of the tutorial is a balance of a "decent" render in a short amount of time. It could be polished more with a few setting increases and a bit more render time. Anyway, good photon fun. Cheers, NN

July 28th, 2004	#6 (permalink)
joske Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: gent belgium Age: 33 Posts: 158 Name: Philip De keersmaecker	Re: mental ray interior fast setup yes nakadate, i tried to make the comparison fair. I even overdid the final gathering : the render didn't need that much of it, went for the 'silky smooth' look i guess It was a very quick test to finally see what Mray was capable off speedwise I'm sure if it really mattered that the render time could even go lower for similar results, but in all fairness : didn't really spent any extra testing on the settings for that kind of thing.

July 29th, 2004	#8 (permalink)
izrut Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: BG Age: 31 Posts: 92 Name: Ivo Nklv	mental ray interior fast setup ei blaz, very decent machine U've got pls do render joske siene to tell us the time...

July 29th, 2004	#9 (permalink)
pixelperfectg Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: SC, USA Age: 38 Posts: 206 Name: Jeff Patton	Re: mental ray interior fast setup Edit - I read this thread the wrong way. I though you guys were looking for other R/S's to compaire the scene with. My bad, I've removed my posts. Jeff Last edited by pixelperfectg; July 29th, 2004 at 01:13 PM.

July 29th, 2004	#10 (permalink)
izrut Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: BG Age: 31 Posts: 92 Name: Ivo Nklv	mental ray interior fast setup **Edit - Nooooo...bring the post back .Just render the original siene too. Last edited by izrut; July 29th, 2004 at 10:51 PM.*

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