Re: Anybody still using mental ray?

[Jason S]

IMO, what mainly hindered MR was reliable light transport (in animation) which is essential for realistic renders, and where FG can be difficult. Something which also hinders Redshift to an extent, but the tricks used to circumvent flickering  (similar to VRay such as pre-rendering 1 frame with super long motion blur running the entire length of the sequence while writing light cache points in one lightcache file ) ... can be less of big thing to manage, but which is still is a thing to manage especially with deforming geometry... but which is also offset by the fact that Redshift is just so fast. And I think the main advantage of Arnold is that it's just as flexible as MR (which is otherwise also very flexible) but with much better chances of fully lit renders being right the first time, which despite render-times themselves being longer (especially for interiors),  would still eventually finish, being still somewhat faster than other pure raytracers (Though vray pathtracing supposedly got faster, but don't know by how much) Also for Redshift , while it's not as 'flexible' as Arnold or MR, it's still quite flexible while continuing to improve there, particularly for Store in Channel nodes which is great! :) Otherwise, any of these renderers mostly made their way, and are arguably still best handled in the RenderTree, traditionally because of it's interface (now more or less everywhere), but still because of on the fly compounding and other things (like reliability) that greately ease authoring of more elaborate shader networks. On 06/01/16 5:05, Juhani Karlsson wrote: The quality of Softimage productions stood out with Arnold and it was for me clear moment when Softimage actually became great for rendering. For many years MR was the bottleneck imo. Other products had plenty of more capable third party renderers at the time. Now everyone is doing more or less similar stuff so it dosen`t matter that much. - J On 1 June 2016 at 11:48, Morten Bartholdy <x...@colorshopvfx.dk> wrote: I understand what you are saying Matt about learnign how to properly use tools beore complaining, but I am one of those who have used MR extensively in production for animation all the way back from when it was released for Softimage 3D and onwards, ie. many, many years. I had to learn how to use it in depth to get what I wanted, and the last years I used it I really hated it for wasting so much of my time with technical issues. It was a blessing for Softimage 3D (having used the old built-in raytracer since 1992) and it continued for quite a while to be a strong player in the field until Mental Images somehow managed to drop the ball. I would say it is (still) a very good renderer for still frames - great integration with XSI and lots of good shaders and utilities. They never manged to make Final Gathering really good for animation though, and GI was just plainly a pain to use. FG combined with motionblur and DOF is pretty much not possible for production in MR. I can't even begin to count the hours I have spent trying to fix stuff that would not render properly, crash, render with ugly artifacts, or find some sort of workaround for issues caused by MR, and then all the layers I have had to create to make useful motion vector passes for scene with a lot of depth and stuff in them. I hated MR for years, found some relief in 3Delight along the way and found Arnold absolutely liberating, making it fun again to shade, light and render stuff, not looking back once. Nowadays with offerings like Arnold, Redshift and several others (Vray I consider a bastard halfway between the bliss of Arnold and the dragging mess of Mental Ray) I would never consider using Mental Ray except perhaps for baking textures, because those tools really work well and Solid Angle never really gave it much attention. All this said, I think a lot of users out there still use Mental Ray effectively and I consider anything that can strengthen the XSI community valuable, so by all means release your stuff. My two cents - peace Morten > Den 28. maj 2016 klokken 21:55 skrev Matt Lind <speye...@hotmail.com>: > > > The people who complain the most about mental ray tend to be the ones who > never took the time to learn to use it properly. > > If you read the manuals, mental images states some modes are more taxing > than others for rendering.  For example, Segmented shadow mode incurs 15% > additional rendering time vs. the default shadow computation mode, and is > less stable inside of material shaders.  Segmented shadows is currently set > as the default shadow computation mode.  If you do most of your rendering in > passes, then you likely do not need segmented shadows and can revert to what > is now labeled "normal" shadow mode to regain some performance and > stability.  If your render pass doesn't need lighting, then turn shadows off > completely.  That's just one example. > > For XSI v1.0 thru XSI v5.11, the default settings Softimage chose for mental > ray were fairly efficient, but users commonly complained about black spots > when doing renderings involving lots of reflection or refraction (because > they didn't increase ray depth) or anti-aliasing wasn't super smooth > (because they didn't set filter to 'lanczos' or 'mitchell' instead of > default 'box', or didn't adjust the adaptive sampling properly).  In > essence, most complaints were due to user error - because users didn't take > the time to learn how to use the renderer > > To alleviate support issues, Softimage redefined the default mental ray > settings in XSI v6.0 to what they are now - which effectively activates a > bunch of stuff you don't need majority of the time and does a lot of extra > work that never shows up in the final rendered image.  This change can often > be blamed for inducing crashes and slower render times because many users do > not tweak the settings. > > If you learn to use the renderer properly instead of using a 3DSMax > mentality of pushing a button and walking away, you'll get better > performance and stability.  Much of that also involves strategy for setting > up the scene before sending it to the renderer - another area users make > gross mistakes because they don't take the time to understand the rendering > process. > > Matt > > > > > Date: Sat, 28 May 2016 09:25:06 +0200 > From: Mirko Jankovic <mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: Anybody still using mental ray? > To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com" > > *1. I don't want to throw away a expensive CPU based renderfarm.* > > It will be obsolete soon anyway so just make good planing for next render > tool, CPU or GPU road. > > > > *2. mental ray still has more shaders. It's slow sometimes but it is > rathergood when you want to do non physically based things. A bit like > Softimageitself, the all-purpose, swiss knife.* > > First time I heard something like this for MRay. Mostly it is in line I > wanna puke or quit 3d completely due to rendering part :) > When I discovered Arnold and then even more Redshift that is when a big > issue I had with SI, ie rendering was solved and 3d was fun again. > MRay was PAIN non stop! Swiss knife.. yea could say that, got ton of things > but nothing good for most of things :) > > Redshift saved my 3d ;) > > ------ > Softimage Mailing List. > To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. -- --  Juhani Karlsson 3D Artist/TD Talvi Digital Oy Tehtaankatu 27a 00150 Helsinki +358 443443088 juhani.karls...@talvi.fi www.vimeo.com/talvi ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm.

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