grantw

hello all.

just wanting to see if well trained eyes out there can help me understand what some of the large architectural visualisation and graphic companies are using as 3rd party renders.

what do companies like smoothe, hayes davidson, hush design etc use for interior and exterior rendering. I pay alot of attention to the use of blurred reflection, refracted glass and well resolved GI..

I like alot of the images that kdlabs do, i believe they have used mental ray...

I have tried brazil but found it slow for architectural work, vray seems good, mental ray is hard to get reliable results with..

thanks for any comments in advance

STRAT

smoothe still use LS, and most others, like HD have switched to vray or MR.

there is no set standard. dont think you must conform to what they use. Brazil is megga fast if you know how to use it, MR is also excellent and reliable, but again, you must understand how to manipulate it.

i use C4D for example, which not many others do.

mbr

I dont' think a good rendering would reveal which renderer was used. I use Final Render and like it a lot.
I am trying MR, but like everyone's already said, it's tough to get a hold of and slower.


I notice blurry reflections, refractions, etc., but they are really secondary. I like renderings that looks creative. I've seen some with bad shadows, reflections (just poor techinical stuff) but that looked fantastic because it inspired a response.
KDLab does this to some degree - they inspire more than they demostrate superb techinical details. The Arte Factory is like this, too - superb renderings with little technical things, but great looking and highly stylized.

Lester_Masterson

There is another, although, not as widely known. It's called InSight, and it is easy to learn, and get great results quickly. Best off, it's under $500.

Check them out at http://www.integra.co.jp/insight/gallery.htm

Not a plug...just a plug-in

grantw

lookign at some of smoothe's recent work they seem to have got some nice blurred metal work in there.. i know they use LS for exterior radiosioty scenes, looks like they use a raytracing renderer for interior work.

hush i think use a renderdrive..

I havent tried v ray other than the free download, it seems to be popular, is it used by the majority of comercial companies?

what about the maxwell renderer... looks interesting do you think this maybe a program of choice for many..?

IC

Grant
There's a thread not a million miles away on Maxwell. It's had thousands of hits (over 10,000!) so yes I think it's safe to say it will be a popular choice if the render times aren't too severe.

I think the majority of arch firms are now using Vray but as said above, all the major renderers do anything you want them to if you know how, so find out which one you like best.
I use LightWave and you can even get blurry reflections, realistic refraction, GI etc with that old bugger.

grantw

Thanks for that....

I have generally been using max's radiosity solution for alot of my work because an increasing amount of my clients are asking for animations and max's built in radiosity solution is quick as it is stored in the 3d mesh.

I recent client of mine wanted to visualise a meeting reception area that was mainly stainless steel, this threw up the requirement to look into 3rd party renderers. I have used mental ray and am getting a much better understanding of its photon mapping based GI. I think its quite easy to spot a Vray based render though, Mental ray is quite 'noisy' but with the new version there is the amibient occlusion pass option.

I am thinking of persevering with Mental ray (mainly as its built into max now) and investing is alot mor ram and a comple more machines to render to.

Maxwell sounds great but would like to wait and see what is said about render times etc.

cheers

Grant.

3dp

pretty well all 3rd party kit in th right hands will produce what you seek
how long it takes to get your head round the package and then finding what is will work with in your own software ie software specific materials/lights etc

i've not used mental ray in max but did years ago in softimage when nothing else came close on irix
i belive with max7 you can now access mr shaders that were written for soft and there are loads out there for maya etc as well as programes that will write shaders without going into code via a gui
i s'pose you need to get xtra licence though which will cost which is why i belive vray is so popular

with all of them you will need to practice and i say again there is no make art now button


speed - it's always an issue buy more slave nodes
consider that i bought my first pc 10 years ago a p60 with 32mb ram and it would not run autocad 13

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can i have everything louder than everything else please

wda

Research MR in other apps. Cough...XSI...Cough. The help files and tutorials in Max don't do it justice. MR can be as fast as you need it or as accurate as you need it- a balancing act. However with over 15 parameters if you don't have a good understanding and working knowledge, it will never render the way you need it.

MR being Slow, imho, may just be the user is slow on the pick up (who isn't with MR) and fast to talk. But learning curves are marketing and real world factors-that is what counts.

WDA

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From the calm seas.... Into the CG Fire...... Into the Heart of Texas

Craig Ramsay

Smooth use V-ray aswell as Lightscape