Arnold::::
Her´s a freely available quick overview/tutorial for Arnold
I find useful as it shows both Colormanagement and the effects
of changing sampling settings both locally and globally.
I would regard this a good primer to jump into using Arnold
as it answers most questions, especially in terms of how to
set Colormanagement properly and how to make sure your textures
and lighting gives reliable results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20G9eqCCNIo
VRay:::::
Here´s a broad stroked overview of V.Ray 2.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VxxlVtzMj4
Here´s a taped presentation, showing some V-Ray RT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7B4u_aZPk
Here´s a primer on V-Ray´s Sampling options that can be regarded comprehensive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZURdN48My9I
LUT:::::
None of the above shows LUT workflow, which can fuck up Linear/sRGB display
and Colormapping all over again depending on who did the LUT and if they
cared to talk/check back with 3D but you can´t have everything...
There is a lot of things to break and destroy there.
Cheers,
tim
On 28.12.2012 13:50, Tim Leydecker wrote:
I can´t comment on renderman compliant renderers but have
some production experience with VRay and Arnold as a Lighter.
There is a freelance special for VRay (valid until 15.0.2013) currently.
http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/german_promos.html
Don´t know if this is restricted to Europe or even Germany.
--
While you will need to buy seperate plug-ins for Maya, 3dsMax and Softimage
when using VRay, Arnold gives you both SiToA and MtoA, e.g. you can use your
Arnold license to run out of Maya and Softimage.
Arnold is still beta, the pricing, package bundling and licensing is not
publically available to look up and compare with alternative options.
--
My personal experience with VRay leads me to trust it as an easy to use renderer
that has benefitted from being forced to overcome many of 3dsMax´s shortcomings
and limitations, like a lack of a renderpass system by implementing a great many
options to break out renderelements like MatteID, GI or Lightselect
framebuffers.
One can use VRay´s options to AA and filter samples just as globally as one
would
set specific sampling settings in Arnold, it´s actually very easy to just use
the noise threshold in Vray to balance quality against speed, while Arnold
sometimes
may require a more thorough understanding of which kind of sampling needs an
adjustment.
--
In terms of tutorials, 10+ years of archviz, commercials and feature film
production
usage shows, VRay has more youtube and google results but Arnold gains momentum
quickly,
especially since it has been added to the www.fxphd.com courses, which come
with a license
for training and a forum that may answer the questions that come with the first
steps better
than the beta list, which is more populated by folks with a long standing
production backround.
--
If asked to make a purchase decision now, I would most likely opt for VRay,
especially when
facing budget restrictions in the form of not having the headroom for a TD
dedicated to making
the renderfarm eat Arnold files artist friendly and bolt rendermanagement,
naming conventions
as well as texture format and asset management systems in place to work
conveniently with
large datasets and multiple shots or sequences that may require more than just
common sense.
The benefit I would see would be support for FumeFx, e.g. rendering smoke and
the likes easily
and the availability of a large group of Junior/Mid/Senior shading&lighting
artists capable of
using VRay in at least one of the three of the supported packages.
If forced to work stripped to the bone, VRay may proove to be the better
club/bat to swing initially,
even though both Arnold and VRay are capable of precise cuts when in the right
hands, using Arnold
as a mace may quickly become more costly, imo.
Cheers,
tim
On 28.12.2012 07:03, Andy Moorer wrote:
Hi gang, happy holidays.
I would be interested in hearing from people regarding rendering solutions for
Softimage, particularly anyone who can objectively compare Arnold, 3delight and
Vray. I've heard
from various people advocating/evangelizing each, but what I am really after is
a fair and unbiased comparison of the three, where they are particularly strong
etc.
Any takers? Not interested in a flame war, just trying to grasp the differences
between them, and perusing feature lists doesn't help much - opinions from
anyone who has had
opportunity to work with them directly would be invaluable. Being mostly a
particle/rigging type I don't have the insight some of you closer to the
lighting side of things
probably have.
