Rendering Software Poll

[Al Hart]

We found this poll on:

http://www.productdesignhub.com/

Which Render Software Do You Use Most?
Maxwell
HyperShot
VRay
PhotoWorks
Mental Ray
Brazil
YafRay
fryrender
Indigo

It would be a great question for the entire world (the other 1/2 which doesn't already use SketchUp But I was surprised that they had left off 3DS Max (which I presumed was popular). I asked them why they didn't include 3DS Max (and I also suggested several other SketchUp rendeirng packages), and their response was: "Thanks for your suggestion, but we like to keep our poll options short for now."

Is anyone aware of any other similar polls, which are querying 3D users in general (rather than users of a specific 3D modelling package)? Perhaps on a woodworkers, or similar focus group forum?

[solo]

I can understand why they left out 3Dmax, as 3Dmax is seen more as a modeller than a render solution, even though it does have a crude native renderer within it most professionals will use mental ray or vray plugins for rendering in Max.

[Al Hart]

@solo said:

I can understand why they left out 3Dmax, as 3Dmax is seen more as a modeller than a render solution, even though it does have a crude native renderer within it most professionals will use mental ray or vray plugins for rendering in Max.

AHA - thanks

Al

[Gaieus]

Yet there are other renderers which are not specific to SU (or any other 3D modelling package) so their reasoning is rather cheap. It seems that they are simply ignorant and now get irritated when a question like that is asked.

[johnsenior1973]

@gaieus said:

Yet there are other renderers which are not specific to SU (or any other 3D modelling package) so their reasoning is rather cheap. It seems that they are simply ignorant and now get irritated when a question like that is asked.

What is Hypershot? It's a rendering program. What is Mental Ray? It's a rendering program.

Repeat that for every single option on that poll.

What is 3DS Max? It's a 3D modeling, rendering and animating package. The vast majority of images I've seen on pro galleries using 3DS Max have other rendering software used. IMO it was a valid poll question.

[Gaieus]

I wasn't talking about Max. But other renderingpackages like Kerkythea for instance which is a standalone app and has plugins for a bunch of 3D modellers (including Max and SU, too).

[Al Hart]

I got confused because I thought people were using .3DS output from SketchUp to render in MAX.

Here was their later reply:

@unknownuser said:

3DS Max is more a modeling software for animators or concept art designers. And we also made our choices based on the posts and discussions that are posted on our forums. Thanks anyways.

[Frederik]

IMO they've made at least one fundemental mistake, by not including a "Others" option in the poll...
I can accept that they want to limit the number of options, but when leaving out other applications, they should as a minimum allow users to vote "Others"...

[kwistenbiebel]

Hey guys...3dsMax IS in the poll. Mental Ray is the default 3dsMax render engine and it is listed as one of the options.
By the way, Mental Ray is included in revit by default as well (but difficult to tweak in there).

Actually, it is quite a good render engine almost par to Vray. But it is even more difficult to control.
It comes down to what you get used to.
Some say that Maxwell or unbiased in general is easier to set up but I think not. And it is definitely not 'as easy as taking a photo'.It was a great marketing trick, but I think Vray easily gained back its cientele a while after that catch phraze was launched...

[olishea]

Podium!

[Al Hart]

@kwistenbiebel said:

Mental Ray is the default 3dsMax render engine and it is listed as one of the options.
By the way, Mental Ray is included in revit by default as well (but difficult to tweak in there).

I guess I live in isolation, mostly working with SketchUp Rendering engines. But I assumed, for some reason, that 3DS MAX has a renderer which was much, much better than the SketchUp options.

If Mental Ray is good, then why are people purchasing the nXt engine for use with Revit and AutoCAD. (Of course, we like to think that they want to work with someone who makes a better user interface, and is more responsive to their needs.)

I wish I wasn't going to be on vacation during SigGraph. Are there other trade shows which would be goo to visit to learn more about what is available in the rendering world?

[jenujacob]

i agree with pixero.
mental ray has a very tight integration with 3dsmax and other autodesk products like maya and revit.
revit started integrating MentalRay only with its last release or so. till then Accurender Nxt was the default render in Revit. so older users prefer Nxt over MR. but considering the fact that MR is being shipped along with these products as its native render i think more and more ppl are gonna use it and depend less on other plugin render like Vray or FinalRender. this is all assuming that MR doesnot go the Vray route and become detached from 3dsmax. Mental Images is a different company after all.. so who knows...

[Pixero]

@al hart said:

If Mental Ray is good, then why are people purchasing the nXt engine for use with Revit and AutoCAD. (Of course, we like to think that they want to work with someone who makes a better user interface, and is more responsive to their needs.)

What is good?

MentalRay is a very good render engine. In fact it was the reason I became serious with 3d after seeing the renders from the game Riven. (As a side note, Karl Stiefvater wrote all the Lume shaders that are now part of 3dsMax for Riven. And they are still used today more than 12 years later.)
It is good in the sense that it can produce beautiful renders.
It is good in the sense that it gives the user much control of many aspects of the render so you can tweak settings to your specific needs.
It is also good in the sense that it renders very fast.
It is good in the sense that anyone with a little programing skill can make "plugin" shaders for it for even more customisation.
It may not be the easiest render engine to use for a novise 3d user (it has become better in the latest Max release though) but who says that is what counts for beeing a good render engine? For most professionals speed and quality comes much higher I would think. Close followed by user control.

I have tried most renderers out there and most if not all has fallen on either speed, quality, control or the inability to render heavy scenes without crashing.
I currently use Vray for SU and it has become better than it was in version 1.0 but its not as good as the Max version and there is no way for me to use custom shaders like OrenNayar and what not that I would like to use for my renders.
When Autodesk releases the SketchUp plugin I believe I will start using MentalRay again to a much higher degree.

[david_h]

I am learning 3d Max with VRay, but right now with the rendering I do. . .I would have to say

1)My right hand with a good set of pens, markers and pencils.

2. podium

[Jaycephus]

It's my understanding that the underlying engine in SolidWorks has been Mental Ray (for about a decade), yet the implementation of the interface in SolidWorks is so bad to this very day that it is easily worth paying up to $1K for a plug-in renderer like Hypershot, VRay, or one of the newer commercial offerings, if you are doing commercial work where time is money, and quality cannot be compromised. I've also used Mental Ray in XSI, and the complexity is pretty high, and necessarily so due to the need to enable features used for moving, deformable objects in an animation, special effects used primarily in movies, and so on. The power is there, but the ease of use wasn't, as of a year or two ago. My personal preference is something like Podium or Hypershot that does much of the work for you, taking away confusing options in the process, while still enabling renders as good as, or likely better than you could obtain in Solidworks' MR-based renderer (PhotoDoesn'tWorks) after hours and hours of PAIN.

Yeah, as noted already, I'm sure they left off Max because no one would use the native renderer for product design renders, especially when it ships with MR included.