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Vray vs Mental Ray

chrisanth
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chrisanth
So I have been debating on whether to invest in Vray and I was wondering if anyone could give me some benefits and drawbacks of either of them. Like which is better quality or which is faster etc. My main priority is obviously quality but obviously speed is useful too. Tell me what you think. Thanks
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  • artquest
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    artquest polycounter lvl 13
    No one uses mental ray anymore... Autodesk is killing it and putting Arnold with Maya (I'm assuming since they just bought solid angle.)

    Mental ray Pros:
    -free with maya
    - for the most part physically plausible materials.
    - A really nice layered material system



    Mental ray Cons:
    - integration with maya is poor and even getting a dome light enabled requires running some lines of mel (feels like a secret code lol!)

    - difficult to optimize rendertimes (used to be way worse!)
    - lacks a fair ammount of modern features.

    a great site for learning about mental ray: https://elementalray.wordpress.com/

    Vray is what most places use. It's fast and looks pretty good. But I will say that if you want something a bit more intuitive when it comes to shaders then pick one that has an implementation of  the disney principled shader. Renderman, Mantra(houdini) have this already and I believe Arnold has some custom shaders you can download that behave a bit better then the default.

    I use vray all the time and find that the shaders are a bit lacking. (I have to paint and tweak a ton of maps to get the look I want.) Now that renderman is free for non commercial use I highly recomend it! I just downloaded it last week and am gearing up to use it on my next personal project.

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  • Segreto
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    Segreto polycount sponsor
    Yeah, same benefits coming from Max really: Mental Ray is free. The biggest problem right now, is that it isn't aging very well... and boy is it slow.

    VRay is nice and fast, and I've been using it for a few animation projects now.
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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    mr is developed now by nvidia themself and its not dead... it will come back... huge... a lot of R&D was done... if you are interested apply for the betatest....

    but in the meanwhile use vray and take a look at redshift... blizzard for example rendered the overwatch cinematics with red...

    https://www.redshift3d.com/blog/blizzards-overwatch-animated-shorts-rendered-with-redshift
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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    and start to learn Arnold it will have a really good implementation in maya...  B)
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  • C86G
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    C86G greentooth
    I wonder how Keyshot will develop for bigger production projects. For small pieces, it´s still limited, but very fast. Love it.
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  • Eric Chadwick
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    Eric Chadwick admin
    If you're getting V-Ray, I recommend also getting SolidRocks which really helps automate my renders. It's super easy to dial things down for previews, adjust settings for animations, change various options, etc. Just a really nice UI, and a great way to speed it up.
    http://solidrocks.subburb.com/index.php
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  • musashidan
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    musashidan high dynamic range
    oglu said:
    and start to learn Arnold it will have a really good implementation in maya...  B)
    And in Max....... ;)
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  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    musashidan said:
    oglu said:
    and start to learn Arnold it will have a really good implementation in maya...  B)
    And in Max....... ;)
    i would say that will take at least two years...
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  • ZippZopp
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    ZippZopp polycounter lvl 12
    i was a long time mental ray user and recently switched to Vray and won't ever go back to Mental ray.  vray seems to render quicker, it handles everything i throw at it and without a ton of tweaking I can get great renders.  the dome light is fantastic and seems to give nicer results compared to mental rays IBL along with final gather.  I only wish I had switched to Vray sooner
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