Are there a lot of materials available for GPU-Based renderers? Mental Ray and VRay both have so many materials and things you can use to make a nice render. Do you lose a lot by switching to a GPU-based renderer? For example, if you create a skydome using Mental Ray tools and you want to render it with a GPU based renderer, will everything in the shaders still work and render properly?
Replies
You can see some of what's capable here [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaqYyBGbx-c"]Cycles Tutorial: Interior Rendering - YouTube[/ame]
Thanks for the video Kroma!, never knew Blender was so robust. I'll have to see that video and maybe even check out Blender software. I use 3DS Max but I want to learn Blender at some point. I thought since it's free it wouldn't be as powerful but the demo videos I've seen of people using it are amazing.
It's funny that a GPU manufacturer like Nvidia could create their own version of Mental Ray which doesn't use GPU to render but uses CPU instead. I haven't had much luck with Iray though, my render window crashes when I use it.
Thanks for the tip on furryball bugo, it looks like a really good option for use in Maya. I'll take a look.
So if one uses a certain renderer then one must also use only materials made for that renderer then right?
You also have Keyshot for realtime rendering.
Also, Vray (and MR?) have realtime rendering options available? RT and iRay i believe they are called.
JohnnyRaptor, yeah it looks like Arnold is the plugin made by Solid Angle which seems to be gaining a lot of popularity these days. Keyshot is something I just learned of a few days ago actually so it's funny you mention it. I hear it's great for vehicle and realistic scenery rendering. I get crashes with iRay, don't know if my vid card is enough to handle it (GTX 260).
heres a cool sample of a character rendered in keyshot
http://www.dominicqwek.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Imp_Beauty.jpg