What render engine are you using?

[eodeo]

I've been looking into new render engines lately. I am a huge mental ray fan. I love everything about it, but most of all, I love nitrous/quicksilver integration. I think it's the best thing since sliced bread. Quicksilver is beyond amazing and the fact that it and iray work under mental ray umbrella is unparalleled.

Because of popularity of Vray and its effectiveness in my personal tests, I've largely ignored external rendering solutions. However, recently I found Corona render engine and I've been blown away. MR/QS combo is still the king, but there are certain scenarios with geometry/reflection heavy scenes that Corona is trampling over MR and QS can't compete due to its reflection limitations.

I've been so impressed with Corona, it occurred to me check out what other render engines are there and you all might be using. There are so many new ones available I thought it best to ask here what renderer is best for what situation.

I'll start the thread:

interior rendering- mental ray

exterior with limited reflections- quicksilver

hair- scanline buffer rendering

physically accurate as-simple-as-it-gets-setup- iray

geometry/reflection heavy rendering- corona

Few words about the introduced render engine: corona is CPU only, realistic single quad core render in demonstration. You need only a fairly modern computer and 3ds Max and you're good to go and use it. For now, Corona is completely free and the max script material converter I downloaded from their site, converted my mental ray scene to a corona friendly one in couple of seconds. For reference, a 49sec render in MR turns into 14sec redner in corona with better quality.

[RobH2]

I've been using Max for 19 years and have been impressed with the default renderers available as time has gone by. I too am fond of MR. But, I did a project for someone and they required VRay. So, I bought it and I've never looked back. It's truly amazing and just has a look that MR can't achieve. I know all renderers have a "look" and some users might prefer the MR look. But I'll not go back to MR unless something goes very wrong the VRay.

My only complaint is it's kind of pricy. Chaos decided this year to charge for render nodes and not just a token amount. They really nail you for each node which makes it hard for one-man studios like mine. But after all of the crying and moaning, I have two additional render nodes and am pleased with the functionality and render quality I get from VRay. I just hope they come to their senses and reverse the extreme render node pricing at some point.

[Stefan_L]

IRay.

Nothing else (and nothing else than archviz).

I'm so tired of fiddling around with zillions of parameters...

[darawork]

Iray here too, only MR for Ambient Occlusion passes. Would like to try vRay RT but not enough of a budget to purchase it, yet.

[eodeo]

It's truly amazing and just has a look that MR can't achieve.

Vray can look really good, but is very slow. It is not only hard to set up properly, but even so it is several times slower then mental ray, by default. This was the single biggest reason I avoided it.

I'm a single guy doing 3d, and I need my stuff done yesterday. This is why I like quicksilver so much. With exterior daylight with little or no reflections, QS gives the MR look, but in a fraction of the time. Because speed, as well as quality are paramount, I normally I break the scene in layers and render each element with the most suitable rendering solution. The fact that scanline/mr/qs/iray all share the same materials, lights and cameras is a huge bonus.

I'm interested what sort of work do you do? Single images or animations? What has been your experience with vray? With years of Max behind you, you appear as someone who knows what he's using and why.

IRay. I'm so tired of fiddling around with zillions of parameters...

Easily one of the best attributes of iray.

Iray here too, only MR for Ambient Occlusion passes.

Try quicksilver AO. It renders ridiculously fast and is very easy to set up. Just apply a standard material to everything with a 100% self illumination- so it the whole scene geometry renders pure white. After that simply turn on AO in render dialog of QS and set the desired range for AO and render. Done 😉

[CAMedeck]

I was a fan of mental ray for many years.  I argued against investing in V-Ray, but my workplace did it anyway.  To be honest, I have never took the time to learn the ins and outs of V-Ray like I had mental ray, but we invested a little money in a plugin called SolidRocks.  It gives you a simple quality slider and a few wizards for animation, and does all of the work for you.  It's from a company called Suburb.  It takes a lot of the guessing and render testing out of the way, controlling your renderer, material and light settings based on a few settings and a slider.

I've only done a little testing with Iray, but we do so many animations that we just didn't pursue it very far when it first came around.  I'm sure it has improved since those days, but, well, we've got V-Ray now.

[RobH2]

eodeo, I'm a one-man shop. About half of my work is illustrations and half is animations. I too need speed. VRay's defaults are poorly implemented by Chaos Group. So, the first time you use VRay you'll get the feeling that you are watching paint dry. Like any complex piece of software there is a learning curve. I find diving into VRay's innards is easier than MR. I've done a lot of reading and I've also done a few online courses in VRay and now I find it as fast as MR but able to give me a more realistic look. Most of my work is photo realistic.

Rendering animations for photoreal work can talk a long time no matter what renderer you use. And yes, with a lot of years behind me I've tried a lot of different workflows. The primary reason I switched to VRay is rather narrow but I'm glad I did because it's made all of my work look better. I was working on a project that required that I render animations of clear plastic that was molded, like vacuum formed pieces, on a black background. I've posted the effect I was after in this thread (it's a small sample of what are much bigger objects). It took me days to get it in MR and I was frustrated that the render times were insanely long. So, I got a demo version of VRay and had it knocked out in a few hours and the render times were about 25% of what they were in MR. I've been using MR for years and years and just could not get what I wanted. VRay saved the day so I bought it.

The new version of VRay has a better automated setting feature that is pretty good but the thing that increased my VRay knowledge was to take a course offered by Grant Warwick. In his VRay course he breaks it down and explains what's important for fast and clean renders. After that course my life was changed. I've also had a Digital Tutors subscription for about 4 years. That's the best investment I've ever made. (Ok Grand and DT, how about some freebies for the shout out...lol....)

The only downside is the expense. MR is free and you can render to 1000's of machines (I think there is a note somewhere where Autodesk apologizes for the node limitation and that you can't render to more than 10,000 at a time...lol...). VRay costs and they really stick us hard for render node licenses. They didn't used to do that but they do now and it stings. But, once you get VRay going and working on a 3 or 4 machine farm, things are great. It just motivates me to find more work and more clients to offset the expense. I'm always spending smartly and for plugins that make my life easier.

I look at it this way. I bill at $150/hr for high end animation work. If I screw around for 6 hours trying to get something to work to avoid paying $399 for a piece of software that will assist me, it's dumb to keep struggling. My time is worth more than that. It's all relative and you have to keep it in perspective. Sure, we can't all go spending $1,500 every week for the latest plugin but dropping a few thousand a few times a year is just part of the process in my mind. It frees me up to go make more hours at my rate.

Because of the level of detail I need, iRay, QS and other fast renders just don't give me what I want. They all have some limitations. For certain things they look fantastic and if your business it doing those "certain things" then they are very fast and capable renderers. I'm stuck in the slow lane though.

When it comes down to it, cost aside, I just like the look I get from VRay over MR. And, aren't we all trying to compete and distance ourselves from our competition. VRay helps me distance myself. That's worth any price. Render "look" is a very subjective thing and can foster debates as heated as the PC or Mac debates that unbelievably still rage. VRay was easier to wrap my head around once I got under the hood also. I'm not a coder, I'm seasoned, but not a programmer. So being able to figure it out helps. I don't care how small you are, if you do 3D for a living, you won't last long if you don't bite the bullet and get under the hood of your render.

Guys who want an "out-of-the-box-one-click" renderer risk being left in the dust because you just need to be able to tweak for exceptional work. And if you don't learn how to tweak at some point, you'll get stuck in the right-hand (or left-hand if you are in England) lane as everyone passes you.

[andy.engelkemier]

Vray

I started my last job using scanline. (and this was a while ago when GI was just getting fast enough to get everyone using it). Then we changed to Final Render, Cebas. HATED it. Their business model kind of sucks for everyone but them. Well, unless you've got a really loose budget. Their render engine was fine, and times weren't aweful, but we never really fell in love.

I started playing around with Vray, but didn't want to justify the cost. Then another studio got Vray, so we had to? Something like that. So I became good at that, and loved it. 

Soon after, Mental Ray started stepping up a bit, so I thought about switching to that so we could save some money. That never happened there. 

Then I switched jobs, about the time iRay was built in to max. I happened to have 2 GTX 580's in my machine, so I used that for a couple animations. That was great, for simple stuff. But it was not flexible, so I switched to Mental Ray. But I had troubles getting times down, and a few of the tricks I knew in Vray weren't available for Mental Ray. 

I'm back to Vray again, a little reluctantly due to having to pay for extra nodes. But it's enough faster on most jobs that I don't even need them usually. I'm pretty sure you can just rent them also? I haven't looked into that yet. If I'm working on a rush job I'll just sned out the rendering portion and bill it back to the customer. I'm a one man shop right now so I don't have time to install max and vray on all the computers and keep them all maintained anyway. 

Also, if you compare VrayRT and iRay, you'll find they are pretty comparable in terms of being easy to use. Vray has a couple more settings, but can render more things now. And it gets updates more often and actual support. Try calling up Nvidia for support on iRay. hahaha, I laugh at you.

Post something on the forum, and vlado will answer from Chaos. 

[Anonymous]

never thought it possible but the answer is very simple for once:

best renderer for 3ds max is corona. 

not only is it a superb and easy piece of software, the team is an amazing group of individuals directly reacting to the user base feedback.

it is insanely fast, with non biased quality but total flexibility aswell in terms of lighting setup.

its seamlessy tied into max, also supports standard materials and lights and has zero setup needed.

check out the latest videos on interactive rendering with billons of polygons. the workflow is just mindblowing.

https://corona-renderer.com/blog/

the v1 brings also volumetric rendering and sss.

i could go on and on, how great and fast it is but do yourself a favour and just try it out if you haven´t already.

the sooner you do it the less time you will spend on kicking yourself for not jumping on it sooner.

if a recall correctly, a part of the sales proceeds will go towards some benefit organisations.

corona plain and simple.

[RobH2]

Corona looks really interesting. I like the simplicity of it. I'll play with it until A7 goes offline in December. It seems to be a nice streamline and direct approach and takes the complexity of MR and VRay and synthesizes it down to one tab that is organized and succinct.

One thing I like about it is the rollover text for each setting is written so that you can understand what's going on. I wish everyone did it like this. Some developers are getting better but many rollovers are still written in a way that you just shake you head and get on Google to look up what's being said in the supposedly "helpful" rollover.

It may well be a contender. The price is reasonable.

[eodeo]

RobH2: the first time you use VRay you'll get the feeling that you are watching paint dry.

I love that expression! Reminds me of watching the grass grow.

Anyway,recently someone shared a vray tutorial:

21:20 to 21:33  listen to these 13 seconds.

That scene should take only a couple of seconds to render on a 12 threaded system, like the one used in the video. With the same scene and default MR it renders in 9 seconds on 8 threaded CPU. In the video, vr with GI takes 1m 10sec to render after tweaking 28:55. Mental ray has GI (final gathering) turned on by default.

Over a minute of rendering after tweaking on a faster system for vr compared to 9seconds for the default mr.

I can post the mr scene if you want.

RobH2: Because of the level of detail I need, iRay, QS and other fast renders just don't give me what I want.

I can appreciate that.

andy.engelkemier: I happened to have 2 GTX 580's in my machine, so I used that for a couple animations.

Do you still have them? From what I understand gtx 580 is still king when it comes to rendering with CUDA engines. Only a gtx 780ti edges a narrow victory. Maxwell will likely perform even poorer due to less CUDA cores compared to Kepler, once it becomes compatible with iray/vray rt.

mujakovic: best renderer for 3ds max is corona. 

Corona was the initial spark that led me to start this thread. It's not the best, but it is certainly good in some situations. Its great integration in Max and super responsiveness in geometry heavy scenes is what I like the most about it.

Just today I've been playing with self illuminated materials illuminating the entire scene with no actual lights. It's fast, good looking and completely trashes MR, and looks better and renders faster than iray.

[andy.engelkemier]

I'm not sure just saying that it will render in 8/9 seconds in MR is really comparing apples and oranges. This guy is talking about tweaking to get a perfectly optimized rendering, not in just time, but quality. He's also rendering out multiple passes at once. VRay is quite capable of rendering that scene quickly as well. He's using 256 samples on the glossy material. What's the default, 8? 

In my experience, on the same system, I had significantly less noise in my Vray renders aiming for 5minutes per frame in my animation. Both MR and Vray started at around 15 at acceptable quality. It Definitely matters what the content of your scene is though. VR can be tweaked heavily by rendering each animating component on it's own, and rendering the scene with precalculated GI. I usually don't have that though. EVERYTHING moves. So I'm stuck rendering everything at once at high quality for the most part.

Realistically, "best render" is about like telling someone what the best pair of jeans are. One really awesome pair doesn't look good on the guy over there, because he has no butt.

[Anonymous]

i never hype a piece of software but i really needed to share my amazement with corona.

ofcourse "best" is entirely subjective, depending on ones needs and preferences.

no disrespect to chaosgroup, iray dev team or any of their userbase but in my opinion its clear cut -  corona is it and i stand by it.

i hope someone with more critical approach can chime in and list some cons because i am failing to find any.

meeting my last two deadlines would not be possible with other renders, i know that much.

rendering billboards resolutions, each hour was critical and i shudder to think of ram crashes i might have had with gpu renders.

[Anonymous]

@eodeo, 

i am interested in which scenarios do you think corona might be lacking. i would honestly love to hear about some shortcomings.

the self illuminating materials indeed work great and i dont recall ever seeing "include/exclude" options within the material slate.

i was on iray but the flexibility and speed is not comparable.

i recall reading on the nvidia forum that the iray features implemented on the 3ds max side are dependent on autodesk, ie iray 3ds development is somewhat stifled because of it.

corona dev team has an amazingly agressive tempo and even alpha is surpassing much of the competition.

the participative media/volumetrics was tackled inside of months by a one new team member, jarda.

its nice to see motivated devs that cut out all of the corporate nonsense and just try and deliver best possible product.

[eodeo]

andy.engelkemier: He's using 256 samples on the glossy material. What's the default, 8? 

Good point. I'm not a vray expert by any stretch of imagination. I can only eyeball it from what I see other users more familiar with vray share of their render setups and infer my own orange to apples comparisons.

I'd be very interested to hear your experience with this scene. I've done my best to convert materials and light setup to what the vray scene appears to use. I'm uploading both the original vr and my mr scene for anyone willing to give it a whirl. (mr vr.zip)

andy.engelkemier: It Definitely matters what the content of your scene is though.

Very true. This is why I'm not that hung up on fact that mr is faster in a super simple scene like the one from that tutorial. I just lack the knowledge to envision a more meaningful test myself.

Until I tried corona it was mental ray or iray for me. Between the two, I use quicksilver most often 😄

Joke aside, mental ray is far more versatile and renders much quicker than iray in most scenes. I'm attaching three images that show just how handy QS is at previewing the final scene. (mr ir qs.zip)

denis.mujakovic: i never hype a piece of software but i really needed to share my amazement with corona.

here is quote of myself from my original post in this thread:

I've been so impressed with Corona, it occurred to me check out what other render engines are there and you all might be using.

Corona is great. I'm using it as I type to render a night scene with self illuminated crystals being the only sources of light. As I've mentioned earlier, MR simply failed to produce anything usable here, and iray plain looked worse and took much longer to render a single frame.

Still, my original comment that it's not the best still stands. In the daylight shot of the same scene, MR rendered much higher fidelity of light and shadow at unparalleled time- compared to corona. I imagine that huge spheres of light I used to illuminate the scene were not sitting well with corona. I'm attaching an image from the sequence.

With all that said, I'm very glad to have two very capable render engines to use. It gives me unparalleled freedom and I'm loving it!

[andy.engelkemier]

I would absolutely Love to try out corona, but won't have time until January....which is a good thing really. Having too much work is always good.

I only looked at the corona website on my phone so far, because that's usually where I am when I have some free time. Their site isn't very mobile friendly, so i couldn't see much. I'll try and check it out soon and maybe install at home to check it out.

[Anonymous]

their webpresence is not at all representative of the product.

check out the blog for more recent info but more importantly, download the a7 in your downtime.

you wont regret it.

https://corona-renderer.com/blog/

it is also supported by the majority of plugin devs. forest pack, railclone et al...

@eodeo 

if the corona is showing to be slower in some cases you might want to check ways to optimize the scene.

i used sphere geometry as a domelight on a project and could not get rid of noise under 5min per frame.

someone mentioned that geometry light source is often a reason for excessive noise it and by getting rid of it, i got the rendertime under 2mins.

mental ray is a staple for sure, i just love the intuitive workflow with corona.

with the new interactive render it will be a breeze.

[RobH2]

Interesting samples. Looks like you are taking Grant's VRay course.

The three samples were good. The iRay was pretty noisy (probably would be better if it ran longer or had more samples) but had decent GI. However, the glossy reflections were strong and harsh. MR and QS looked pretty clean. QS appears to have little or no GI and no reflections. MR was the best render. The glossy reflections were soft, subtle and nicest. There were nice and very minimal relfections in the surfaces. The GI filled in the shadows nicely too.

But, while all of this while interesting, it really is subjective. We all use what creates the fastest and easiest workflow to "get what we need." And, what we need, covers a gigantic range. There is truly no "one-render-fits-all" solution, really.

[Anonymous]

I've read this thread like 2 months ago, and now I came back to give my opinion.

In my experience, the best Renderer is Corona Renderer

Back then, denis.mujakovic first post really got my attention, I went to see Corona's website and I was impressed by the quality of renders in their gallery. I downloaded and tried it, well, it's really easy to use, setting up a scene is really quick.

I was using Mental Ray for the last 5 years, I've always knew that a day would come and I should find a better alternative (Everybody was talking about V-Ray, but for some reason I dislike it), it didn't matter how experienced I was in Mental Ray, but it was never going to deliver the quality that Corona gave me in less than a month of using it.

Attached is a simple experimental render using Corona, using only basic materials.

To sum it up, Corona is the best Renderer I've known so far.

[RobH2]

That's a nice looking render. Looks like Corona may be a contender. It really boils down to what works for each person's workflow. They each have thier "look." I personally have always liked the "look" of VRay and once you really learn what all of the settings are you can get good renders that are much faster than paint drying.

Having said that Corona cerainly looks like it has what it takes.