3ds Max 2017 - ART vs mental ray

[MattDillon247]

I've been playing with the ART rendering engine in 3ds Max 2017 and have reached a few conclusions - I'd like to get a reality check from anybody that is a little more up to speed on it than I am...

1. It seems to me that the ART renderer, in general, would be preferable over the older mental ray engine for a workflow involving Revit building models linked into Max. It's easier to configure and it appears to be faster as well.
2. ART automates a lot of (if not all of) the Global Illumination settings that have to be manually set up in the mental ray engine - that said, I wonder if that automation sacrifices quality at all. Is ART better for exterior renderings than interior?
3. Even though Physical Materials are optimized for the ART rendererer, mental ray materials are also compatible. However I have noticed some issues with materials that are part of older Revit models (Revit 2014 and 2015).

Thanks for any input!

[c0cllc]

In my eyes automation is something for non-  3D-Artists. So for people, who just want to get a nice picture without understanding what they just did. 

A 3D-Artist in most situations has a picture in his head and he wants to create and tune his rendering exactly like that. Automation is absolutely not helpful in this case. Here Mental Ray is way, way better as you can almost do what you want without any limitations. Even within mental ray there are newer automations, like unfied sampling, which i personally dislike for the same reasons. Classic sampling is just way more flexible and fast if you know what you're doing.

Speed is in most cases depending on your understanding of the software. ART will be faster, if you didn't study either ART or mental ray. But ART is giving you just renderings without real tweaking options yet. It will take years for ART to become as flexible as Mental Ray.

[KarlAkimor]

I think Metal Ray is disappearing, too complicated for new users and with not enough updates. I guess if you know it well can be a good tool.

From my tests Art quality is excellent, better than Iray by far and comparable with Vray. A lot easier to get good results and more consistent than Vray. The implementation of real time rendering is the best. For example in Vray there are a lot of things you can not do in real time render and Art has little of those limitations.

At same time there are little tools for customization and for some people that have complex productions could not be enough, for example when you need to cheat in complex scenes Art has nothing of that. Also I can not see something so basic as renders elements.

It is a great renderer that need more iterations. I don't know what is going to be the policy of Autodesk with Art now that they have Arnold.

[MattDillon247]

Thanks - that reinforces my initial impressions. There are a lot of "casual users" out there that get overwhelmed with all of the options and settings involved with global illumination with the mental ray renderer. Not knocking it at all - those options give you lots of control over the final output that you can't get with automation, however you can go down a lot of rabbit holes and spend a lot of time figuring things out before you master it. For someone who spends most of their time in... say...Revit and only pops into Max occasionally, I think the ART renderer may be a better option.

[hartmann]

Autodesk have update the API for Render Engines. This is for Chaos Group or other Companys better to integrate they own Render Engine in 3dsmax.

Autodesk have buy Arnold, because Autodesk will use Arnold in future and not mental ray anymore. The same with Iray.

The Big problem of ART is, that you can´t optimize light, samples, materials etc., this is very important, if you render a movie with 1000 of frames.  😉

[c0cllc]

Well i don't know, who "casual users" are - maybe students or millionaires, who don't pay or don't care about the ultrahigh license fees. 

I'm sure that anybody who is really paying thousands of dollars per year for 3dsmax is even happy about the huge amount of options and possibilities of Max and Mray. This is not a smartphone-app, it's a tool which needs extensive studying, just like with any other profession where you need to use for example komplex machinery. 

If Autodesk really abandones Mray in a next version, i'm going to cancel my complete building desigh suite premium subscription and i'm going to buy an Mray license from NVIDIA. I believe Max 2017 will be good enough for the next 10 years with  just updating Mray-license every year. And cheaper. So byebye Autodesk, hello NVIDIA then. I guess you'd love it if a lot of people begin doing that, Autodesk? So think about you future steps. 

[KarlAkimor]

Nvidia itself is forcusing more in Iray, that I personally don't like because visually is not great.

[daniel]

I think Autodesk wants an alternative to NVIDIAs Mental Ray and iRay. With Arnold they have a really good contender, on par with vray and if they are able not to stall the development as they did with so many products in the past, this can be the renderer to go.

I think ART is no real alternative to a full featured renderer like Mental, Vray or Arnold.

They changed some stuff in 2017, to make it easier and faster for new render engines to work with max as far as I know, so I hope to see Arnold in the next extension already.

I see arnold even ahead of vray and if I can spare 1000 EUR for vray licenses this is a nice extra too.

[hartmann]

No Body from Autodesk have sad that arnold is for free? We don´t know it.

NVIDIA is not focusing of Iray, that is a big part, because NVIDIA sell Graphicards, but mental ray is very important for NVIDIA. And mental ray have more and more GPU Functions. Look at the new GI Mode.  😉

In 5 Years is all GPU. Today can you buy a Graphiccard with 24GB Ram, this is enough. 😉

The Best for mental ray user is. We must don´t wait of a new 3dsmax Version. We do the same as like a Vray User. We waiting of a Renderengine Update. It give so many peoples that use the newest Vray but a very old 3dsmax Version.

[marc.pat]

Hello i make a simple test in 3ds max 2017: Art vs Iray on this  video.

Best regards.