V-RAY or Mental Ray

[Anonymous]

Hi.I need help.Im tring render but some people say V-ray better or mental ray.What is difference between them.Thank you all.

[Anonymous]

there is a lot of documentation on the internet

3ds max has the built in help for mental ray

pricing is one of them Mental Ray is free with 3ds max

they are completely different rendering engines

[billnuttall · Accepted solution]

There's a reason why VRay costs what it does - it's a brilliant renderer. Mental Ray is not as good, but comes at an unbeatable price, and is still more than capable of producing beautiful images. However, right now the world seems to be gravitating towards VRay accross multiple 3D applications.

[Anonymous]

Vray is better in production... hands down. 

AB

[Anonymous]

Thanks alot that was all i need to know.I was using V-Ray.But my renders are not good enough.i would like better results.Can you help me please.I attached photo.Can anyone suggest me V-Ray settings,material and modeling for landscape? Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I know I'm in the wrong discussion group, but perhaps you could answer my question:

I'm a student, and need to purchase a desktop computer for Autocad purposes.

Please suggest the best one. I'm looking at either a HP All In One, or a Dell. 

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Hi.Yes you are in wrong discussion.What are parameters of HP and Dell,You cant say nothin just looking the brand names...

[eodeo]

Both MR and VR are very good. If you can, I suggest trying out both of them.

Mental Ray ships with Max, it's easier to use because of the frame buffer controls and is more intuitive. Because of this it produces better quality renders at much higher speeds. It also uses scanline materials at no additional render cost, and interestingly enough it is almost completely interchangeable with the unsung hero of your question- quicksilver. Quicksilver renders using DirectX, meaning it can use any modern graphic card to render almost at mental ray quality level tens or hundred times faster. Lastly, iray. Like mental ray, scanline and quicksilver, iray also ships with Max. It is mental ray ported to work on dedicated nvidia CUDA technology. It also uses GPU, but produces photorealistic, true mental ray quality images at faster speeds as it uses both CPU and GPU to work. It is however limited to GPU video RAM so the scenes iray can handle are limited to automotive and arch viz at the moment.

Vray on the other hand is perfectly capable renderer well worth your time. More so if you're in archviz bizz where it's defacto standard. It's a lot more trickier to properly setup, but allows for greater control once you master it. Vray also comes with Vray RT. Vray RT is to Vray what iray is to mental ray- a Vray port to work on dedicated nvidia CUDA technology.

As if nvidia didn't get enough exposure from my post, I'll end this part with- Max prefers nvidia cards in all price segments so you're always better suited to choose an nvidia card over AMD, even if you don't plan to use either iray or Vray RT.

***

To student asking about dell or hp- get neither. They are Apples of the PC world. Get a dedicated desktop and ask on a tech forum to help you select the parts that fit in your budget. Try a site like tomshardware.com. You'll find many helpful and knowledgeable persons to help you.

You'll get up to 50% faster computer at the same price point. Ask local hardware service to assemble your parts into a computer. You'll get maximum warranty, local, friendly hardware service if anything should go awry and best of all- you get best performance for your money.

All this unless you need a laptop. They suck, are overpriced- but are mobile and no desktop can give you that. If you can, always get  a desktop. Price/performance difference is staggering- esspecially for a normal student price range.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I know I was in the wrong discussion group - but really appreciate your effort to answer my question! I'm going to ask for a computer with Autocad system requirements!
Best,

[eodeo]

You want to get the best gaming system you can afford. If you can play all the latest games at max settings, you can play in Max quite comfortably. Because of this, you'll find help easily.

Avoid getting a "proffesional" graphic card. They excell only in openGL and 3ds Max was never an OpenGL app. Autodesk only certifies pro GPUs since there is one pro card per 100 gaming ones- it's a lot less work for them. This is well known "public secret".

Also, unlike a computer built strictly for games you want to ephasize CPU speed over GPU. Sure, you want to balance them equaly (in price range), but untill you get comfortable with CPU renderes I suggest you stay away from the GPU ones becase they all lack the universality of CPU kind.

Lastly, you want an intel CPU since not everything in Max is rendering. In fact most applications, Max included, use only 1 CPU core most of the time- so you want the best single threaded performance as well as multicore one. With that factored in, intel is the only game in town.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Hi Murat_tm

If you want to learn Vray I would suggest Grant Warwicks online tutorials. The first lesson is available for free here...

Good value course if you are using vray professionally.

AB

[eodeo]

I was hoping not to get drawn into what-is-better-debate, but after watching this video posted by a.brown, I just can't help myself.

21:20 to 21:33 shows everything wrong with Vray in 13 seconds.

A very simple scene takes 43s to render after being tweaked to render almost twice as fast, compared to the default Vray render of 1m 30sec. This is a fairly impressive improvement over the default rendering time, shown by what I can only presume is a Vray expert.

The problem here is that this particular scene should take no more than a couple of seconds to render even on the slowest 12 threaded system. Person in the video uses a 12 threaded system. Using the provided scene from the video's description, mental ray default materials and a photorealistic light, mental ray with the default settings finishes in 9 seconds on i7 4770k- an 8 threaded CPU. In the video, Vray with GI takes 1m 10sec to render after tweaking 28:55. Mental ray has GI (final gathering) turned on by default.

That's over a minute of rendering after tweaking on a faster system for vRay compared to 9seconds render time for the default mental ray.

[Anonymous]

Hello everybody.

Well to my perception of this issue, there's just NO WAY vray is better then Mental ray.. Mray has a very powerfull engine of photon simulation and if you tweek it enough on a production i assure you you'll have a bad time finding the differences between the render and reality. Vray is not that good, it may become, and its a fast  renderer that achieves godd results in no time, but i wouldnt choose it to have a platinum detailed quality production. Mental ray is to powerfull and the only issue is that you have to tweek a lot to get what you want, its almost a science on itself. 

People have different tastes, and you may prefer vray, but mray is just way ahead on everything if you know how to work with it. Its a fact, nvidia bought it in 2007 an not for cheap, theres a reason why.