Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-25 Thread Cristobal Infante
I've been testing both for the last month, like everyone says VRay seems to
have way more options
in the render settings and shaders but there is more info in the web.
Arnold is easier to learn but it comes at a price,
something to consider as well..

One thing I love about Arnold though, is that fact they it calculates the
GI of a certain frame and it allows to tweak
some shader values and render around the scene at a much faster render
time. This makes the lighting process more intuitive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KemtQrh5UrEfeature=related

Vray is like MRay, from what I've gathered, you start from scratch
everytime you tweak something (Please correct me if I am wrong)

It would be very helpful if Vray would come with a material library
presets, this would definitely help get nice results faster which is
ultimately
what we all want :).




On 22 June 2012 21:51, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote:

 absolutely! there are downsides to both but both are very capable. i would
 prefer to use either over mental ray.

 i have been using arnold and sitoa for a while now and really enjoy it,
 but i think vray provides a better balance for a smaller studio or one
 without a technical staff.


 On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Vladimir Koylazov 
 vl...@chaosgroup.comwrote:


 5. I don't know anything about V-Ray but I love Arnold!

 shrug Arnold certainly is a very capable renderer. Nevertheless, I'm
 sure that many people will find V-Ray useful as well.




Fwd: Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Eugen Sares

Hi,
the most important feature for me would be a progressive-refinement-type 
Frame Buffer/Render Region, like VRay-RT.
This reduces light and shader-tweaking iterations to a minimum. Arnold 
has it, too.
Irradiance map/lightcache preview is helpful, but there should be the 
final look right from the start, without black pixels inbetween.


Regarding VRay-RT: to me, it does not make much sense to fork VRay into 
CPU and GPU versions, and dedicate the GPU-version only for fast preview 
(with missing features), and the CPU-version for final rendering.

Is this still the official approach?
From a user's standpoint, I don't want to worry about such things. If 
there's a GPU, use it, if not, offer progressive refinement anyway.
(I'm aware this is technically problematic. If one fine day 
CPU/GPU-memory gets unified, this might be the start of a new age in 
rendering)


Another thing: VRay tends to have a somewhat overwhelming number of 
parameters, so a good handful of render presets, including the unified 
settings would be appreciated.
Also, a compehensive (short but not too short) documentation on how the 
different render engines work and play together would be nice.

Best,
Eugen



 Original-Nachricht 
Betreff:Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?
Datum:  Fri, 22 Jun 2012 01:03:36 +0300
Von:Kamen Lilov kamen.li...@chaosgroup.com
Antwort an: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com




I'd like to chime in to this discussion.

What are the things in VRay/XSI you hate most? A missing feature, clumsy 
configuration, poor documentation, any kinds of instabilities, etc?


Disclosure: I run the XSI integration team at ChaosGroup so, obviously, 
I am not impartial to this discussion. But I am keen on making the 
product work well for all you VFX folks out there :) and I can take 
criticism. Shoot at will :)



On 6/21/2012 10:11 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:


Hi,

I'm wondering who has switched to VRay for Softimage completely and 
loves it.


I don't seem to see much commercials or movies stating they have used 
Vray for Softimage. Has it picked up?


Now, after a few months now, how does it compare to Arnold? Why have 
you picked VRay instead of Arnold?


How's Vray's buy one get 5 free for your farm working for you?

Thanks.

Marc-Andre








Fwd: Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Eugen Sares

Hi,
the most important feature for me would be a progressive-refinement-type 
Frame Buffer/Render Region, like VRay-RT.
This reduces light and shader-tweaking iterations to a minimum. Arnold 
has it, too.
Irradiance map/lightcache preview is helpful, but there should be the 
final look right from the start, without black pixels inbetween.


Regarding VRay-RT: to me, it does not make much sense to fork VRay into 
CPU and GPU versions, and dedicate the GPU-version only for fast preview 
(with missing features), and the CPU-version for final rendering.

Is this still the official approach?
From a user's standpoint, I don't want to worry about such things. If 
there's a GPU, use it, if not, offer progressive refinement anyway.
(I'm aware this is technically problematic. If one fine day 
CPU/GPU-memory gets unified, this might be the start of a new age in 
rendering)


Another thing: VRay tends to have a somewhat overwhelming number of 
parameters, so a good handful of render presets, including the unified 
settings would be appreciated.
Also, a compehensive (short but not too short) documentation on how the 
different render engines work and play together would be nice.

Best,
Eugen



 Original-Nachricht 
Betreff:Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?
Datum:  Fri, 22 Jun 2012 01:03:36 +0300
Von:Kamen Lilov kamen.li...@chaosgroup.com
Antwort an: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
An: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com




I'd like to chime in to this discussion.

What are the things in VRay/XSI you hate most? A missing feature, clumsy 
configuration, poor documentation, any kinds of instabilities, etc?


Disclosure: I run the XSI integration team at ChaosGroup so, obviously, 
I am not impartial to this discussion. But I am keen on making the 
product work well for all you VFX folks out there :) and I can take 
criticism. Shoot at will :)



On 6/21/2012 10:11 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:


Hi,

I'm wondering who has switched to VRay for Softimage completely and 
loves it.


I don't seem to see much commercials or movies stating they have used 
Vray for Softimage. Has it picked up?


Now, after a few months now, how does it compare to Arnold? Why have 
you picked VRay instead of Arnold?


How's Vray's buy one get 5 free for your farm working for you?

Thanks.

Marc-Andre









Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Stefan Kubicek

We've been using Vray for almost ten years, we started using it in version 0.74 
beta in 3dsMax
and the first image I rendered had GI and DOF enabled, and it came out in PAL 
resolution in under a minute
with superb quality on a 700mhz AMD Athlon back then. I was blown away, bought 
a 1.0 license the minute it was released and never regretted it.

XSI integration is pretty good for a first release, bug fixes come in quickly, 
and the dev team is
responding to bug reports and feature requests on the forum usually within the 
day.

As a long time user I must admit that it does have more settings than Arnold, 
but those only play a role once you start using the various GI cheats, like 
Light Cache and Irradiance Map, which are nowadays, with fast computers, pretty 
much obsolete (I find myself brute force raytracing  GI for the most part) 
except for interior shots where they allow you to get really fast render times, 
often 3-4 times faster than with Arnold/brute force for the same quality on the 
exact same shot.

Things I miss in Vray:

- A bug tracker thats open to paying customers and beta testers. Bugs are being 
reported on the forum,
some double and triple, and it's hard for a single individual keeping track of 
what's already fixed and what not, as well as knowing what priority the bug 
currently has, etc.

- Better support of ICE. I haven't used the daily builds in a while so this 
might have become better, but last time I checked (2-3 montsh ago) strand 
renders looked quite different (sometimes wrong) compared to what you get with 
MR, 3Delight and Arnold ootb. Sometimes it didn't render at all, depending on 
what compounds were used.

- As Eugen said, progressive refinement of the render region. I find myself 
continuously switching between AA settings just to get a quick preview (AA = 
0), and higher settings. I suggested this a few months ago in their forum, but 
since there is no bug tracker I can't check if I was heard. If that was there I 
would not crave for VRayRT so much. Like Eugen, I believe that time spent on 
VrayRT should rather be invested in making
the Vray core faster, but I understand that the RT branch might become the next 
big hit once GPU and CPU are truly merged and use unified memory, or the memory 
bottleneck of GPU is somehow solved differently.
Is that on any CPU makers disclosed road map?

- Faster hair rendering. Quality is good, but Arnold was still faster last time 
I played with it.

-Faster export times, especially with ICE. Again, this might have been improved 
with later nigthly builds.


What I really like about Vray:

- Fast interior GI rendering is possible.
- A clear shader strategy, it comes with pretty much anything you could need 
out of the box. With Arnold, you very much need to resort to third party 
shaders (e.g. Kettle Uber).
- Similar controls and output across different 3D packages.


What I miss in Arnold:
-Light portals (if they'd help any in bringing render times down), better light 
transport for interiors.
-A feature complete standard shader.
-I was tempted to write Nightly builds, but updates do come pretty 
frequently, and one can compile the latest sources if he dares to.


What I miss in both renderers:
-Volumetrics!
-Rendertime Marching Cube/Blobbies (or similar) effect for particles. I don't 
always want to mesh my particles
first, generating gigabytes of mesh data.






With increasing hardware speed


I'd like to chime in to this discussion.

What are the things in VRay/XSI you hate most? A missing feature, clumsy
configuration, poor documentation, any kinds of instabilities, etc?

Disclosure: I run the XSI integration team at ChaosGroup so, obviously,
I am not impartial to this discussion. But I am keen on making the
product work well for all you VFX folks out there :) and I can take
criticism. Shoot at will :)


On 6/21/2012 10:11 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:


Hi,

I'm wondering who has switched to VRay for Softimage completely and
loves it.

I don't seem to see much commercials or movies stating they have used
Vray for Softimage. Has it picked up?

Now, after a few months now, how does it compare to Arnold? Why have
you picked VRay instead of Arnold?

How's Vray's buy one get 5 free for your farm working for you?

Thanks.

Marc-Andre







--
---
Stefan Kubicek   Co-founder
---
  keyvis digital imagery
 Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof
   1050 Vienna  Austria
Phone:+43/699/12614231
--- www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at ---
--  This email and its attachments are
--confidential and for the recipient only--



RE: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Marc-Andre Carbonneau
Thank you all for your time and answers!

About the complexity of the parameters in VRay, I find it cynical that a guy 
has released a plug-in to ease the tweaking of them! LOL! Some sort of presets. 
But it's only for MAX. 
It's called SolidRocks. http://solidrocks.subburb.com/

The problem is exactly as some pointed before; the Vray business model is 
smooth talking the wallet of my bosses. ;)
Cheers,
Marc-Andre

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek
Sent: 22 juin 2012 05:08
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

We've been using Vray for almost ten years, we started using it in version 0.74 
beta in 3dsMax and the first image I rendered had GI and DOF enabled, and it 
came out in PAL resolution in under a minute with superb quality on a 700mhz 
AMD Athlon back then. I was blown away, bought a 1.0 license the minute it was 
released and never regretted it.

XSI integration is pretty good for a first release, bug fixes come in quickly, 
and the dev team is responding to bug reports and feature requests on the forum 
usually within the day.

As a long time user I must admit that it does have more settings than Arnold, 
but those only play a role once you start using the various GI cheats, like 
Light Cache and Irradiance Map, which are nowadays, with fast computers, pretty 
much obsolete (I find myself brute force raytracing  GI for the most part) 
except for interior shots where they allow you to get really fast render times, 
often 3-4 times faster than with Arnold/brute force for the same quality on the 
exact same shot.

Things I miss in Vray:

- A bug tracker thats open to paying customers and beta testers. Bugs are being 
reported on the forum, some double and triple, and it's hard for a single 
individual keeping track of what's already fixed and what not, as well as 
knowing what priority the bug currently has, etc.

- Better support of ICE. I haven't used the daily builds in a while so this 
might have become better, but last time I checked (2-3 montsh ago) strand 
renders looked quite different (sometimes wrong) compared to what you get with 
MR, 3Delight and Arnold ootb. Sometimes it didn't render at all, depending on 
what compounds were used.

- As Eugen said, progressive refinement of the render region. I find myself 
continuously switching between AA settings just to get a quick preview (AA = 
0), and higher settings. I suggested this a few months ago in their forum, but 
since there is no bug tracker I can't check if I was heard. If that was there I 
would not crave for VRayRT so much. Like Eugen, I believe that time spent on 
VrayRT should rather be invested in making the Vray core faster, but I 
understand that the RT branch might become the next big hit once GPU and CPU 
are truly merged and use unified memory, or the memory bottleneck of GPU is 
somehow solved differently.
Is that on any CPU makers disclosed road map?

- Faster hair rendering. Quality is good, but Arnold was still faster last time 
I played with it.

-Faster export times, especially with ICE. Again, this might have been improved 
with later nigthly builds.


What I really like about Vray:

- Fast interior GI rendering is possible.
- A clear shader strategy, it comes with pretty much anything you could need 
out of the box. With Arnold, you very much need to resort to third party 
shaders (e.g. Kettle Uber).
- Similar controls and output across different 3D packages.


What I miss in Arnold:
-Light portals (if they'd help any in bringing render times down), better light 
transport for interiors.
-A feature complete standard shader.
-I was tempted to write Nightly builds, but updates do come pretty 
frequently, and one can compile the latest sources if he dares to.


What I miss in both renderers:
-Volumetrics!
-Rendertime Marching Cube/Blobbies (or similar) effect for particles. I don't 
always want to mesh my particles first, generating gigabytes of mesh data.






With increasing hardware speed

 I'd like to chime in to this discussion.

 What are the things in VRay/XSI you hate most? A missing feature, 
 clumsy configuration, poor documentation, any kinds of instabilities, etc?

 Disclosure: I run the XSI integration team at ChaosGroup so, 
 obviously, I am not impartial to this discussion. But I am keen on 
 making the product work well for all you VFX folks out there :) and I 
 can take criticism. Shoot at will :)


 On 6/21/2012 10:11 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau wrote:

 Hi,

 I'm wondering who has switched to VRay for Softimage completely and 
 loves it.

 I don't seem to see much commercials or movies stating they have used 
 Vray for Softimage. Has it picked up?

 Now, after a few months now, how does it compare to Arnold? Why have 
 you picked VRay instead of Arnold?

 How's Vray's buy one get 5 free for your farm working for you?

 Thanks.

 Marc

Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Serguei Kalentchouk
My two cents:
VRay was used very successfully for Tron and Real Steel. It was easy
to set up and manage the VRay pipeline. The turnaround time was really
fast and results were consistently good.
The support we got from the Chaos Group was good as well. And finally
the transition for most lighters and TDs from Renderman to VRay was
pretty smooth.

Arnold proved to be much more problematic from both pipeline and
artist adoption. It was difficult to get the results we were looking
for with displacement, which caused us to increase the resolution of
our models that was a hit across all departments.


On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau
marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com wrote:
 Thank you all for your time and answers!

 About the complexity of the parameters in VRay, I find it cynical that a guy 
 has released a plug-in to ease the tweaking of them! LOL! Some sort of 
 presets. But it's only for MAX.
 It's called SolidRocks. http://solidrocks.subburb.com/

 The problem is exactly as some pointed before; the Vray business model is 
 smooth talking the wallet of my bosses. ;)
 Cheers,
 Marc-Andre

 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek
 Sent: 22 juin 2012 05:08
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

 We've been using Vray for almost ten years, we started using it in version 
 0.74 beta in 3dsMax and the first image I rendered had GI and DOF enabled, 
 and it came out in PAL resolution in under a minute with superb quality on a 
 700mhz AMD Athlon back then. I was blown away, bought a 1.0 license the 
 minute it was released and never regretted it.

 XSI integration is pretty good for a first release, bug fixes come in 
 quickly, and the dev team is responding to bug reports and feature requests 
 on the forum usually within the day.

 As a long time user I must admit that it does have more settings than Arnold, 
 but those only play a role once you start using the various GI cheats, like 
 Light Cache and Irradiance Map, which are nowadays, with fast computers, 
 pretty much obsolete (I find myself brute force raytracing  GI for the most 
 part) except for interior shots where they allow you to get really fast 
 render times, often 3-4 times faster than with Arnold/brute force for the 
 same quality on the exact same shot.

 Things I miss in Vray:

 - A bug tracker thats open to paying customers and beta testers. Bugs are 
 being reported on the forum, some double and triple, and it's hard for a 
 single individual keeping track of what's already fixed and what not, as well 
 as knowing what priority the bug currently has, etc.

 - Better support of ICE. I haven't used the daily builds in a while so this 
 might have become better, but last time I checked (2-3 montsh ago) strand 
 renders looked quite different (sometimes wrong) compared to what you get 
 with MR, 3Delight and Arnold ootb. Sometimes it didn't render at all, 
 depending on what compounds were used.

 - As Eugen said, progressive refinement of the render region. I find myself 
 continuously switching between AA settings just to get a quick preview (AA = 
 0), and higher settings. I suggested this a few months ago in their forum, 
 but since there is no bug tracker I can't check if I was heard. If that was 
 there I would not crave for VRayRT so much. Like Eugen, I believe that time 
 spent on VrayRT should rather be invested in making the Vray core faster, but 
 I understand that the RT branch might become the next big hit once GPU and 
 CPU are truly merged and use unified memory, or the memory bottleneck of GPU 
 is somehow solved differently.
 Is that on any CPU makers disclosed road map?

 - Faster hair rendering. Quality is good, but Arnold was still faster last 
 time I played with it.

 -Faster export times, especially with ICE. Again, this might have been 
 improved with later nigthly builds.


 What I really like about Vray:

 - Fast interior GI rendering is possible.
 - A clear shader strategy, it comes with pretty much anything you could need 
 out of the box. With Arnold, you very much need to resort to third party 
 shaders (e.g. Kettle Uber).
 - Similar controls and output across different 3D packages.


 What I miss in Arnold:
 -Light portals (if they'd help any in bringing render times down), better 
 light transport for interiors.
 -A feature complete standard shader.
 -I was tempted to write Nightly builds, but updates do come pretty 
 frequently, and one can compile the latest sources if he dares to.


 What I miss in both renderers:
 -Volumetrics!
 -Rendertime Marching Cube/Blobbies (or similar) effect for particles. I don't 
 always want to mesh my particles first, generating gigabytes of mesh data.






 With increasing hardware speed

 I'd like to chime in to this discussion.

 What are the things in VRay/XSI you hate most? A missing feature

Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Adam Sale
The main thing I am looking for is the RT capability VRay currently has
with Maya / Max. Love it. Without it, a lot of the quick iteration gets
lost..
The last I heard from Chaos Group, this was a priority for V2.


On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Serguei Kalentchouk 
serguei.kalentch...@gmail.com wrote:

 My two cents:
 VRay was used very successfully for Tron and Real Steel. It was easy
 to set up and manage the VRay pipeline. The turnaround time was really
 fast and results were consistently good.
 The support we got from the Chaos Group was good as well. And finally
 the transition for most lighters and TDs from Renderman to VRay was
 pretty smooth.

 Arnold proved to be much more problematic from both pipeline and
 artist adoption. It was difficult to get the results we were looking
 for with displacement, which caused us to increase the resolution of
 our models that was a hit across all departments.


 On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau
 marc-andre.carbonn...@ubisoft.com wrote:
  Thank you all for your time and answers!
 
  About the complexity of the parameters in VRay, I find it cynical that a
 guy has released a plug-in to ease the tweaking of them! LOL! Some sort of
 presets. But it's only for MAX.
  It's called SolidRocks. http://solidrocks.subburb.com/
 
  The problem is exactly as some pointed before; the Vray business model
 is smooth talking the wallet of my bosses. ;)
  Cheers,
  Marc-Andre
 
  -Original Message-
  From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
 softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Stefan Kubicek
  Sent: 22 juin 2012 05:08
  To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
  Subject: Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?
 
  We've been using Vray for almost ten years, we started using it in
 version 0.74 beta in 3dsMax and the first image I rendered had GI and DOF
 enabled, and it came out in PAL resolution in under a minute with superb
 quality on a 700mhz AMD Athlon back then. I was blown away, bought a 1.0
 license the minute it was released and never regretted it.
 
  XSI integration is pretty good for a first release, bug fixes come in
 quickly, and the dev team is responding to bug reports and feature requests
 on the forum usually within the day.
 
  As a long time user I must admit that it does have more settings than
 Arnold, but those only play a role once you start using the various GI
 cheats, like Light Cache and Irradiance Map, which are nowadays, with fast
 computers, pretty much obsolete (I find myself brute force raytracing  GI
 for the most part) except for interior shots where they allow you to get
 really fast render times, often 3-4 times faster than with Arnold/brute
 force for the same quality on the exact same shot.
 
  Things I miss in Vray:
 
  - A bug tracker thats open to paying customers and beta testers. Bugs
 are being reported on the forum, some double and triple, and it's hard for
 a single individual keeping track of what's already fixed and what not, as
 well as knowing what priority the bug currently has, etc.
 
  - Better support of ICE. I haven't used the daily builds in a while so
 this might have become better, but last time I checked (2-3 montsh ago)
 strand renders looked quite different (sometimes wrong) compared to what
 you get with MR, 3Delight and Arnold ootb. Sometimes it didn't render at
 all, depending on what compounds were used.
 
  - As Eugen said, progressive refinement of the render region. I find
 myself continuously switching between AA settings just to get a quick
 preview (AA = 0), and higher settings. I suggested this a few months ago in
 their forum, but since there is no bug tracker I can't check if I was
 heard. If that was there I would not crave for VRayRT so much. Like Eugen,
 I believe that time spent on VrayRT should rather be invested in making the
 Vray core faster, but I understand that the RT branch might become the next
 big hit once GPU and CPU are truly merged and use unified memory, or the
 memory bottleneck of GPU is somehow solved differently.
  Is that on any CPU makers disclosed road map?
 
  - Faster hair rendering. Quality is good, but Arnold was still faster
 last time I played with it.
 
  -Faster export times, especially with ICE. Again, this might have been
 improved with later nigthly builds.
 
 
  What I really like about Vray:
 
  - Fast interior GI rendering is possible.
  - A clear shader strategy, it comes with pretty much anything you could
 need out of the box. With Arnold, you very much need to resort to third
 party shaders (e.g. Kettle Uber).
  - Similar controls and output across different 3D packages.
 
 
  What I miss in Arnold:
  -Light portals (if they'd help any in bringing render times down),
 better light transport for interiors.
  -A feature complete standard shader.
  -I was tempted to write Nightly builds, but updates do come pretty
 frequently, and one can compile the latest sources if he dares to.
 
 
  What I miss

Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Len Krenzler
The absolute number 1 issue for me is no volume rendering.  That's a 
show stopper for me.  Hope to see this in the future.


Len - www.actionart.ca

On 6/21/2012 4:03 PM, Kamen Lilov wrote:


I'd like to chime in to this discussion.

What are the things in VRay/XSI you hate most? A missing feature, 
clumsy configuration, poor documentation, any kinds of instabilities, etc?


Disclosure: I run the XSI integration team at ChaosGroup so, 
obviously, I am not impartial to this discussion. But I am keen on 
making the product work well for all you VFX folks out there :) and I 
can take criticism. Shoot at will :)







Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Vladimir Koylazov
I'd like to comment on some of the items that invariably come up in any 
discussion of V-Ray for Softimage. Hopefully they will shed some light 
on the thinking behind the product. (Disclaimer: I don't mean to offend 
anyone :))


0. You must have interactive progressive re-rendering!

Yes, of course, and we are actively working on it.

1. There are a lot of options!

This is true and is due to the fact that V-Ray must work efficiently in 
many different scenarios. The approach for efficient rendering of an 
architectural interior is vastly different from that of rendering a few 
characters with IBL. If choosing the right GI engine reduces the render 
times by an order of magnitude, would you not want to have that option?


2. I must spend a lot of time tweaking all the options!

Only if you want to. Just because there are all these options, doesn't 
mean you have to go change every single one of them. Most settings have 
good defaults. Additionally, there are brute force settings that work 
almost always. They might not be the fastest ones, but they usually get 
the job done in reasonable time. So if you prefer to spend time 
rendering, rather than trying to speed up the render, this is entirely 
up to you. In any case, most people quickly find a set of settings that 
work well for their particular workflows and they soon learn what would 
be appropriate settings for a given scene. After that, the time spent on 
render set up is actually not that long.


3. You should just remove all the options so as not to scare new users, 
and instead give them an SDK to access extra features that they need! I 
can't imagine why anyone would need all that stuff anyways!


Most of the V-Ray users are not programmers; they don't have the 
ability, time or desire to deal with an SDK to get their job done. This 
is somewhat related to item #1 - if the users don't want (or don't know 
how) to deal with an SDK, we must still give them ways to do what they 
need. With that said, access to the V-Ray SDK in Maya and 3ds Max is 
quite advanced, and I hope we'll get to that point with V-Ray for 
Softimage as well.


4. You should just do what Arnold does, it's so much better!

Implementation differences aside, I really don't think an Arnold 
approach to V-Ray as a product would have been successful. Solid Angle 
has a good strategy for Arnold, but it won't work for us in the same way.


5. I don't know anything about V-Ray but I love Arnold!

shrug Arnold certainly is a very capable renderer. Nevertheless, I'm 
sure that many people will find V-Ray useful as well.


Best regards,
Vlado

?? 6/21/2012 10:11 PM, Marc-Andre Carbonneau ??:


Hi,

I'm wondering who has switched to VRay for Softimage completely and 
loves it.


I don't seem to see much commercials or movies stating they have used 
Vray for Softimage. Has it picked up?


Now, after a few months now, how does it compare to Arnold? Why have 
you picked VRay instead of Arnold?


How's Vray's buy one get 5 free for your farm working for you?

Thanks.

Marc-Andre



Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-22 Thread Steven Caron
absolutely! there are downsides to both but both are very capable. i would
prefer to use either over mental ray.

i have been using arnold and sitoa for a while now and really enjoy it, but
i think vray provides a better balance for a smaller studio or one without
a technical staff.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Vladimir Koylazov vl...@chaosgroup.comwrote:


 5. I don't know anything about V-Ray but I love Arnold!

 shrug Arnold certainly is a very capable renderer. Nevertheless, I'm
 sure that many people will find V-Ray useful as well.




Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-21 Thread Oliver Weingarten

Hey Marc-Andre!

Well, I´m using Vray since two years (also the beta) for certain 
projects, not for all. It performed quite well. I like the integration 
and the concept of having identical parameters over all the different 
packages. That way you can easily adapt tuts from other application. I 
like the look Vray generates and I like the straight forward setup of a 
scene. You will get nice results really quick.
The five rendernodes are cool, and I think, you get 5 more standalone 
rendernodes (for Vray archives), if I got it correct...
Currently setting it up for my own little render backyard. I think you 
get a good renderer for your money. Support is excellent and very 
responsive on bugreports and other stuff...very nice guys ;)


cheers,
oli

Am 21.06.2012 21:11, schrieb Marc-Andre Carbonneau:


Hi,

I'm wondering who has switched to VRay for Softimage completely and 
loves it.


I don't seem to see much commercials or movies stating they have used 
Vray for Softimage. Has it picked up?


Now, after a few months now, how does it compare to Arnold? Why have 
you picked VRay instead of Arnold?


How's Vray's buy one get 5 free for your farm working for you?

Thanks.

Marc-Andre



Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-21 Thread Alan Fregtman
I agree with you. It's way easier than mentalray.

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Mirko Jankovic 
mirko.janko...@aeonproduction.com wrote:

 Hmm I found Arnold learning curve to be really really short and in less
 than a week you can be production ready.



Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-21 Thread olivier jeannel
Well, I easily found some videos showing click here, enter this 
value for Vray. While there were buttons in Arnold, I was really not 
sure of what I was doing.

But to tell the truth, I really did not try a lot.

Le 21/06/2012 22:15, Mirko Jankovic a écrit :
Hmm I found Arnold learning curve to be really really short and in 
less than a week you can be production ready.





Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-21 Thread Steffen Dünner
There are _a lot_ more buttons in Vray than in Arnold! ;)
The combination of GI algorithms ( primary / secondary) alone is
intimidating.
The funny thing in Arnold is that the result most of the time converges to
the same image, only the rendertime varies if you e.g. shoot rays that you
don't actually need to sample or have useless diffuse rays bounce inside
your glass objects.
Optimizing Arnold scenes can be a time consuming process as well, but it's
not mandatory to get a result. It's only mandatory if you need a result in
time. ;)
I remember the not so good old mental ray times where optimizing scenes
made the difference between a rendered image and a crashing renderfarm. But
on the other hand I kind of masochistically liked the challenge of pushing
the right buttons.

Cheers
Steffen


2012/6/21 olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr

 Well, I easily found some videos showing click here, enter this value
 for Vray. While there were buttons in Arnold, I was really not sure of what
 I was doing.
 But to tell the truth, I really did not try a lot.

 Le 21/06/2012 22:15, Mirko Jankovic a écrit :

  Hmm I found Arnold learning curve to be really really short and in less
 than a week you can be production ready.






-- 
PGP-ID(RSA): 0xCCE2E989 / 0xE045734C CCE2E989
Fingerprint: 394B 3DA9 9A9A 96C6  3A5A 0595 EF92 EE1F


Re: Who has switched to Vray and loves it?

2012-06-21 Thread Eric Thivierge
I'm not a render / surfacing guy myself but I really appreciate your
involvement in the XSI community AND for reaching out to the community for
crits. Thumbs up!


Eric Thivierge
http://www.ethivierge.com


On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:03 AM, Kamen Lilov kamen.li...@chaosgroup.comwrote:

 **

 I'd like to chime in to this discussion.

 What are the things in VRay/XSI you hate most? A missing feature, clumsy
 configuration, poor documentation, any kinds of instabilities, etc?

 Disclosure: I run the XSI integration team at ChaosGroup so, obviously, I
 am not impartial to this discussion. But I am keen on making the product
 work well for all you VFX folks out there :) and I can take criticism.
 Shoot at will :)