what's going on with iray?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

what happens there - NVIDIA released a new iray version and now you have to pay for it? http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia-iray.html

This is very disturbing!

Will iray be still a free, integarted rendering engine in 3ds max? 

[eodeo]

Thanks for another quick and informative reply!

Good to know that DP is not used in Max. I was hoping to hear that 😄 but I still don't get who and or when is that used. I hear science, but I guess I'm too far away from the field to use it like that.

I haven't used iray in a long time, I'll try to give it a go soon. It's just that mental ray is so absolutely fantastic I find it hard to justify trying to setup a different rendering engine- even one that works with most of MR scenes.

I'm using matt/shadow/reflection material with scenes that are to be integrated with live footage with regular skylight without IBL and iray still doesn't understand clean white illumination from all sides and asks HDR to work properly. Which is annoying, but it also uses special matte shadow material and... Transition from mr to iray is very smooth, but I'd wish it was smoother 🙂

[Anonymous]

>>It's just that mental ray is so absolutely fantastic 

No need to appoligize!

We like our other child too :), and we beleive you will enjoy the improvements coming to it.

>>and iray still doesn't understand clean white illumination from all sides

Hmmm. Seems solvable. It would be great if you could share an example scene with us to examine. Also, the new Iray for 3ds Max (that started this whole thread) may provide another means to accomplish your challange.

- Phil

[Anonymous]

I recently moved a mental ray product scene (3ds max 2015) to Iray, modo 701 and blender cycles for comparison render time tests.

Product renders lit by HDR and needing white/matte backdrop

At the moment iray takes too long to clean up it's render (6corei7 plus nvidia 780 gpu) and has no "clamping tools" like blender does with cycles render which is 5 times faster as i can use lower settings plus clamping.

I like iray's interactive render..it's useable unlike mental rays( 'inactive renderer !!) but it's waaay slower than blender's interactive renderer.

Will Iray ever address clamping or other clean up tools as right now it performs the slowest out of mental ray, iray, modo 701 and cycles (gpu blender renderer).

also matte material for iray?

[Anonymous]

so am i reading this right that iray for 3dsmax in future versions will NOT ship with the installer of say 3dsmax 2017 but we will need to rent it at $295 per year?

and what about mental ray?

[Anonymous]

Nothing is being said about what is coming in future versions of Autodesk products. All I can say on that is that NVIDIA is working with the Autodesk 3ds Max team as it has in the past, and that development continues on mental ray itself at NVIDIA.

The "Iray for 3ds Max" product is a brand new offering being supplied directly from NVIDIA as a new plugin rendering option. It is $295/year, and brings the latest Iray technology to muliple 3ds Max versions. This product does not impact what Autodesk provides within 3ds Max itself.  IFMax differs from the core 3ds Max feature by having native MDL material support, faster interaction, a new fast interactive ray tracing mode, the ability to stream rendering from a second machine or a cluster of VCAs, and harness mutlple machines together to speed offline/batch rendering.

- Phil

[Anonymous]

so right now it's promoted as an "additional product" for 3dsmax with 'extra features and speed'

so how's it work in prctice...in the renderer drop down do we see iray, mental ray, scanline...and them the 'new iray plugin" or does it replace the currently installed iray?..if it replaces the current iray what happens after the rental period ends?...do we get the 'old' iray back?

[Anonymous]

re the new iray plugin

does it have matte material like scanline and mental ray to use as a shadow catcher for product renders?

(i'm currently using max 2015 btw)

[Anonymous]

When you install Iray for 3ds Max (IFMax) you'll see two new renderers appear in your renderer choices - Iray+ and Iray+ Interactive.  This is similar to installing VRay and getting both VRay and VRay RT.  Nothing happens to the native mental ray Iray when you install IFMax - it will remain there as always, just as when you install any other plugin renderer.

The "+" is actually a term used by our partner Lightworks, who produced this plugin, and we kept that designation so to better differentiate from the mental ray Iray mode.

The IFMax product has a fully functional, 90 day trial so feel free to give it a try. The accompanying Iray Server product is about to ship, and it will also have a 90 day trial, so you can see how the whole solution works on your render farm for 3 months with no obligation.

- Phil

[Anonymous]

thanks for the prompt response that clears up someof the nittty gritty details!

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure what you mean by "clamping tools" here. Clamping what?

>>but it's waaay slower than blender's interactive renderer.

Are you refering to the Active Shade mode of the native mental ray Iray mode, or of Iray+ Interactive mode in the new Iray for 3ds Max plugin? The latter is about 40X faster than Iray Photoreal.

[Anonymous]

>>does it have matte material like scanline and mental ray to use as a shadow catcher for product renders?

Had to check, as there's so much in IFMax. 

The answer is "not yet". It's on our priority list for later this year though.

Support for 3ds Max 2015 was added yesterday, so it's now one of the tial download options.

BTW, we're able to talk about upcoming features and provide them rapidly in these plugins becuase we are charging an annual fee which includes any and all updates and improvements we come out with.

- Phil

[Anonymous]

I just wanted to say thanks to Phil for being so active in this discussion.

I had the pleasure of meeting you at AU a few years ago - so knowledgable and passionate, a real treat to speak with you.

Please hang around the forums if you can! 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the kind words. Nice to hear that you came to our GPU Technology Conference.

I'm pleased to contribute up here - and you'll likely see some more of us up here more often now that we have plug-in products to support. Several of us date back to the CompuServe forum era and established the first Web forum for Max back in the day, so in some ways this is coming home.

Feel free to ping me directly if there's another thread that deserves our attention, as we could easily miss it with all the traffic up here.

- Phil