landrvr1

This probably belongs in the MR area, but I figure I'd get a tad more objectivity here.

I'm curious as to what the story is with Mental Ray animations. I see lots of talk and examples of still shots, but very little about animations.

How easy is it to get an animation out of Mental Ray?

How does the process/quality compare with VRay?

With Revit now using the MR engine, what's the future for animations with MR - especially if Max may be abandoned?

SandmanNinja

I think it's just as good (or incredibly close) as v-ray. I just don't think many people are doing that many animations. <shrug>

I've animated a few animations (3 seconds to 30 seconds) of 'mechs walking around (lost them in a windows crash last year, sadly). I used Mental Ray and it was pretty good looking.

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amer abidi

I'm rendering a 7 minute walkthrough of a residential city using mental ray... really stable, flicker free, and IMO, MUCH faster than Vray! it's just so easy to bring down render times without compromising as much quality.

and this is coming from a Solid 4 year Vray user

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"Well I figure it has to be bigger than smaller. Whats the point of designing a concept the size of a hot dog stand? "
J.G.

Claudio Branch

Great! When and where will you post it for us?

amer abidi

=) i'll finish it tonight, will post a link once client ok's that.

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"Well I figure it has to be bigger than smaller. Whats the point of designing a concept the size of a hot dog stand? "
J.G.

John Dollus

Mental Ray has always produced some of the most flicker free animations around even dating back to Max 3.1 but it has become a lot easier to achieve with the latest incarnations. Like Amer said above, you can tweak the scenes to be very efficient without compromising the look.

milfora

HI,

I'm also curious about Mental Ray animations. I'm just starting to look at dumping the scanline renderer in favour of MR. I animate a lot of roadways, and I find there is usually a bit of flicker.

Do you have to save out your FG map prior to doing a successful animation?

Any help on the process (especially how to reduce render times!) would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

AM

Justin Hunt

Suprisingly animation with mr is simpler than still rendering.

You can use rediculously low fg photon settings which makes light calculations very fast.

Only gripe I have is you have to have high image sampling to get rid of moire effects and very small detail can flicker even with high AA.

I have done quite a few mr animations (mainly shoping malls) and been very pleased with the results.

Yes you do have to pre-save the FG , but only every nth frame. there are a few threads covering this so do a search

jhv

milfora

Justin,

Thanks for the info. Just another quick question.
With the pre-saving of FG, is that done with all the materials applied? or just a generic material (ie. plain white) overriding?

AM

Adrian Bold

Justin, not sure what you mean by animation is easier in mr than a static.

Only ever used MentalRay for architectural rendering. Flickering in MR is still possible when FG and GI are used together, my studio has had problems with interiors in the past, but the latest MR engine solves this FINALLY with a simple 'optimise for animation' tickbox. Yay!

Milford, we pre-save FG only if we don't have objects in motion or the time of day isn't changing. Not sure if there is any difference in presaving with materials or not performance wise.