Ok, so to set up the reason why I am asking this question: A co-worker of mine at an architecture firm( summer interns) told me that I should not bother using mental ray at all any more because Maxwell Render is sooo much better he says. In fact, his attitude was a little sneery when I told him I use Mental ray or Radiosity to render my scenes for school. I got the impression that he was trying to make mental ray sound like its outdated and a has been software.
This is really the first time I have heard of this about mental ray. I have seen Maxwell render used on student projects and I didn't feel blown away by the results. Comparable yes. 'Sooo' much better? No. So I wanted to know what the latest trend was when it comes to rendering. Is maxwell the best out there now? Is it worth an investment of time and money because it is the wave of the future? Or is it just another option...
Thanks for your replies. |
I started to post, but my battery died mid way through, so I will try again.
Whenever someone says something is so much better, always be cautious. I have found that most of these people fall into 2 camps. The first, they have always used one product, so how can anything else be better. Second, they drank the Kool Aid that the marketing department of the software released.
In my opinion, your friend has fallen under the second of the 2 scenarios.
The concept of Maxwell is nice. It is physically accurate based engine, which in concept, should produce results that best represent what it is you are showing. That is all nice. But beyond that, there are a couple of problems, the biggest of which is the amount of time and horsepower Maxwell needs to achieve decent results. The last person I spoke with on this said it was common place to let a rendering run over night, on 15 machines to get a good print quality image. This is simply not exceptable in a production environment. The second problem I see with Maxwell is more of a problem a lot of users have. A lot of people think that it is best to do everything in 3d, and they will spend hours trying to get something simple to work in 3d that they could do in Photoshop in minutes. The concept of Maxwell tends to promote this.
Another alternate to Maxwell would be Fry Render. It is also a physical based engine, that gives good results, but it is also my understanding that their development team is more receptive to it user base, and overall the engine is faster.
I have been doing Arch Viz for the past 10 years, and most firms that I have worked for,or deal with now stand in the Vray or MR camp. MR had a bad name in Arch Viz for a long time because the stuff that Vray was doing translated to th arch viz arena better than MR. However, with recent releases of MR, they have really closed the gap. Now each has their advantages. For me Vray has better and faster GI solutions, and MR has better material solutions, and is tied into Max. I have only been using MR for a handful of months, so maybe I will learn speed tweaks for MR as I go. I do really expect to see some wonderful things coming out of the MR camp in the arch viz arena over the year or so.
The bottom line is, ...don't trust marketing hype whether it is from AutoDesk, Maxwell, or some other company. The best decisions are made on analyzing production workflow, and what works best. This is experience that can not be read in a book, or advertisement. It has to be based on real world projects, under real deadlines, in real working conditions.
