I agree. Arnold is incredible. It kicks "ass" literally and figuratively!
On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Sandy Sutherland < [email protected]> wrote: > I would suggest that most Softimage folk are using other renderers such > as Arnold! > > S. > > * * > Sandy Sutherland <[email protected]> | Technical > Supervisor > <http://triggerfish.co.za/en> > <http://www.facebook.com/triggerfishanimation> > <http://www.twitter.com/triggerfishza> > ------------------------------ > *From:* [email protected] [ > [email protected]] on behalf of Ed Manning [ > [email protected]] > *Sent:* 07 November 2012 20:26 > *To:* [email protected] > *Cc:* [email protected]; [email protected] > *Subject:* Mental Ray Features, Integration & Autodesk's failure > > Hi all -- > > Not to start another flame war, but after months struggling with what > should be simple things, I have to ask: > > Why is Mental Ray integration so haphazard in AD products in general and > Softimage in particular? > > For example, MR now supports much-improved IBL, ptex, iRay, and per-object > sampling settings, as well as a set of new BSDF-based surface shaders. > > NONE of these are exposed in Softimage. Third-party means of exposing > some of these do work, but not very well. IBL, for example, seems not to > support transparent shadows at all. In Maya, they work. Having only global > settings for unified sampling is a crapshoot -- for some shaders, it's like > super-speed, while others actually get noisier and slower. Ray-depth-based > optimizations, which should be simple, have to be manually set, per > parameter, IF you can even get your hands on a third-party shader that > provides accurate counts of raydepth and type. Framebuffers only work > properly with third-party shaders (they slow down renders ridiculously when > used with the native "x" shaders) and don't properly account for > reflections and refractions that are more than one ray-hit deep. The list > goes on. > > The few features newly-exposed in Softimage, such as Unified Sampling and > MetaSL, are poorly documented if at all. The only help for working with > these tools, which we pay Autodesk for, comes from third parties, NVidia's > forums, and Maya users. I have to spend time translating tutorials and blog > posts from Maya-speak to glean the most basic information > > The failure on Autodesk's part seems to be universal, if worst in > Softimage-land -- even though more things seem to work in Maya (or even > MAX), there's little in the way of documentation or tutorials from AD. For > example, because Maya's render settings are so lame and poorly-oriented for > Mental Ray, there is a 3rd-party plug-in (Mental Core) simply to make it > possible for users not working at fully-pipelined facilities to set up MR > renders and get useful framebuffers and passes out. There is also this: > > http://elementalray.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/new-maya-rendering-ui-testing/ > > Basically, if I understand this, NVidia, not Autodesk, has written a new > MR render UI for Maya, which has to be installed as a plug-in, and which > bears a striking resemblance in its organization to the venerable Softimage > Render Options. > > So AD's devs can't even port a UI that they developed from one 3D package > to another? NVidia has to do it for them? > > Am I the only one frustrated & disappointed by this? > > > etm > >
