As mentioned earlier, for V-Ray or any other raytracer engine that is using some way of brute force system. The most important controls are Number of samples and Noise threshold. The more samples the better, the noise threshold will control how many of the total samples the system will use.
V-Ray is an old render engine (technology time) there are millions of tutorials online, most of them are from the old era of V-Ray, I've seen some tutorials from VRay 1.5. in that case, from that time, yes V-Ray was overwhelming, because it was designed to be flexible, a swiss army knife. Same thing with Arnold, the first version aren't simple to use, same for the Mental Ray or Fry and Maxell render, even Octane render, by no mean is a Artis friendly interface. no matter what they say, just open up and try to do a shader without reading instructions.
Anyways for some reason people take render engines as religion, every time someone asks What's the best, Hell rises and burn everything around.
I use what's works for me, for what I do, when I do it, sometimes is Corona, others times is V-Ray, sometimes is Cinema 4D render engine, Lumion, Unreal and whatever in between.
I just put my input here in this thread because I saw something that really wan's true or correct, Thankfully I have many years of experience and I don't think is fair for a newcomer to read some opinions that are not educated enough and may display someone with a wrong direction.
Saying, this is the faster render engine, or this is the most flexible, or this one has more scalability. when in reality any of the render engines named here can do a great thing in a reasonable time when is in the right hands.
For you, the main point would be money, if Arnold comes with 3D Max, that's one important reason for you to look at it. If money is not a problem, then give a try to all of them and find what fits better your workflow.
Fors instance for many architects, the 'best render engine may be Enscape, why? because as an Architect you don't want to deal with samples and GI physics and Fresnel effect or such, all what you need is a good enough image, quick enough so you can do many of them, many variations and don't waste time trying to make the image works and instead try to make the design works.
Is Enscape the best render engine?? Well, that depends on what are your goals.
This is a long post but it is the last one here I think we all said enough 😉
Best luck.
