V-Ray v.s. Fryrender?
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I think best practice is to combine Vray with one of the unbiased engines (Fry,Maxwell).
Downside: it is expensive.A cheaper alternative for Vray could be using Podium(cheap) or Kerkythea(free) , and using Indigo(free) as your unbiased solution.
In good hands, the alternative engines can produce good results as well.
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@kwistenbiebel said:
A cheaper alternative for Vray could be using Podium(cheap) or Kerkythea(free) , and using Indigo(free) as your unbiased solution.
I completely agree with Kwistenbiebel on this...
But just to ensure that nothing is being misunderstanded here... Kerkythea have both biased and unbiased render methods...
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Im by no means a pro with vray but I am getting comfortable with it. I love the program and it really has helped me sell my ideas but there were some scenes that I did, that took an entire day of just experimenting to get somewhat close to what I was looking for. It is frustrating with some of these rendering programs like podium and vray (sorry if that sounds like a knock)when you keep having to experiment because you dont know what to expect sometimes from the model and meterials. It can slow workflow down significantly at times. But I guess that should be expected. Also it seems like vray and others dont always have the exact answer, there are always work arounds that you have to use in order to get the desired image. Fry and maxwell dont appear to be that way, is that correct? I mean it may go along with the whole being unbiased? I know the render times will be considerably longer for fry and maxwell than podium, indigo or vray but the idea of knowing what to expect without having to do test renderings is very intriguing; especially when you want to consider animation because you can in theory, and catch me if im wrong, just set up a model and the scenes and let the computer go. The biased programs would constantly need to be checked for each scene to make sure everything is acting correctly, especially the lighting, right? And where does the market stand with each engine, my initial impressions were that vray was the most popular...does this hold true? Or are fry and maxwell just as popular? At least in the architecture and design world?
And stinkie, would you say that it shouldnt be too complicated to learn a program like fry or maxwell if you are fairly comfortable with v-ray? And I want to try indigo, just have not had the time. It looks fairly intuitive and can produce some very impressive images.
Biebel:I already use podium and it as great app. i, as well as probably you, am just patiently waiting for v2. would you say that vray or fry produce better images and which one do you think has a steeper learning curve? You seem to have mastered both and can produce great stuff in them. And if you were to need to produce final imagery for a project or presentation, which engine would you run it through? And where does the market stand with each engine, my initial impressions were that vray was the most popular...does this hold true?
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If you want to make visualization your career you can select any of these. It's like mastering a musical instrument: Be prepared to spend a LOT of time (think months not days) rendering, tweaking, rendering, before you will start getting consistently good results. The tool is less important than patience and talent. What you see on the render galleries is 10% technology and 90% skill.
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If on the other hand you are primarily a designer looking for a tool to test your designs and occasionally create presentation images you must select the fastest renderer you can find, one that will render a test image of decent quality in small minutes rather than hours. This will allow you to use it to test design options,something that will be impractical if you select a slow rendering application. From the perspective I can strongly recommend Vray. Do not think that because it is fast the technology is inferior to any of the other rendering applications, - you will find that many of the premier commercial rendering studios use it.
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But make no mistake it's still going to be hard work before you produce anything decent. Don't spend any money if you're not prepared for the commitment in time.
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There are 2 fundamental issues here, speed and complexity/ease of use. Biased renderers like Vray are fast. Vray is very fast, and is the render engine of choice for lots of professionals. It's not quite 100% accurate, but it produces some great images anyway. Fry and Maxwell (and Luxrender) all use the Metropolis Light Transport algorithm to create physically accurate simulations of lighting, but this takes a lot of time - at least with the current level of hardware sophistication. In 5 years or so, we'll most likely all be using this technology for day to day rendering.
Vray is a great render engine, and can produce results as good as unbiased renderers. The drawback is that it's complicated. Very fast, but very complicated. If you want your images to be truly stunning, you have a steep learning curve. The unbiased renderers are easier and quicker to set up.
I don't think Kerkythea is in the same league as these other engines. I have tried it and looked at the gallery - a lot, and that remains my own personal opinion.
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Just as a note: There is no render engine that will give you a 100 % physical correct solution (even if it uses the 100% accurate algorythms).
Why? Your input material will always suffer from multiple issues. For instance, your input texture images are photos, meaning they already been exposed to lighting and probably (read: for sure) not the same lighting condition as the scene you want to render.This is the reason why photoreal rendering will never be as easy as taking a photo.
You need to tweak your input textures/materials a lot in order to produce photoreal output, no matter what engine is used.Photoreal rendering IS about trial and error.
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@Steeler,
Yes, Vray is the most popular render engine as it has a long history in a 3dsMax combo.The unbiased engines like Fry, Maxwell and Indigo have the reputation being easier to setup.
But they also need workarounds. 'As easy as taking a photo' is really a myth.
Getting really good output from an unbiased engine also means hard work.If you insist on buying one of the really expensive render apps, I would choose Vray as it probably is the most versatile one for all lighting conditions. (you'll need some workarounds for the bugs though)
Learning curve is high, but once you get going ... .I am looking forward to Podium v2.0 as I think it will be of an equivalent quality at a more reasonable price. A date of release is not known yet however.In the mean time, the cheap v.1.5 still is bang for the buck and has a good speed/quality ratio (but you know that already
)@Frederick,
You are right, Kerkythea has both unbiased as biased.
Personally I value its biased (Vray like)engine more than its unbiased(Maxwell like) engine, and I hope focus will be more on beating Vray in the future than beating the unbiased monsters.
Kerkythea definitely is a fine app. -
That's obviously correct, but unbiased engines should always give you a greater degree of accuracy with less fiddling around. Biased renderers rely on optimising much less accurate rendering algorithms to balance speed and accuracy.
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Actually, the Vray algorythms are physically correct correct as well.
It's just that the software allows you to add a degree of bias to it. More bias, more speed but less quality. -
Hmm, interesting. The developer of another global illumination render engine using similar algorithms told me that Vray wasn't physically accurate.
From my understanding, any biased engine using FG sampling can't be 100% correct because it relies on interpolation between samples. The further apart the samples, the less accurate the solution will be. These solutions also rely on other algorithms to increase sample density in the corners and other high contrast areas. Although with lots of samples interpolation should give accurate results, unbiased algorithms don't (AFAIK) rely on clever maths to arrive at a solution which makes an educated guess at what is happening between sample areas.
However, I don't have a really detailed knowledge of this stuff, so may well be wrong.
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@steelers05 said:
Im by no means a pro with vray but I am getting comfortable with it. I love the program and it really has helped me sell my ideas but there were some scenes that I did, that took an entire day of just experimenting to get somewhat close to what I was looking for.
I've seen some of your images, and I'd say you're definetely on the right track.
As for spending a lot of time experimenting, well, that's just the way it is. Kwisten is right: even if you're using an unbiased app, you'd still have to put a a fair amount of time in getting everything just right. No way around it. BTW: use Asgvis' standalone mats editor - fast, and pretty easy to use. Handy app.@steelers05 said:
And stinkie, would you say that it shouldnt be too complicated to learn a program like fry or maxwell if you are fairly comfortable with v-ray? And I want to try indigo, just have not had the time. It looks fairly intuitive and can produce some very impressive images.
Toxicvoxel pointed out: "What you see on the render galleries is 10% technology and 90% skill." He's absolutely right. Look, the best way to know what app suits you best, is to try a couple. Download some demos and spend a few days with them. And don't think one app will be 'a cure for all' - they all have their advantages and drawbacks.
This is important too: don't be too ashamed to choose the easy route. I use Maxwell daily. Do I know anything about shutter time, iso values etc? No. If I want dof, I just render a depth map. Much easier, and a much more flexible approach. In other words: be practical. Figure out what you can't do without, and learn that. All the other stuff will follow gradually.
@kwistenbiebel said:
'As easy as taking a photo' is really a myth.
Yup, that truly is BS.
@kwistenbiebel said:
I am looking forward to Podium v2.0 as I think it will be of an equivalent quality at a more reasonable price.
As am I. Podium V2 might very well become a very popular app. Fingers crossed!
@kwistenbiebel said:
I think best practice is to combine Vray with one of the unbiased engines (Fry,Maxwell).
This I totally agree with. I find that Vray (in my case) comes in very handy for checking out compositions, checking for light leaks etc.
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Ok where to begin here:
First thanks for all the input guys. You gave me a lot of good insight. With taking all that in, I guess my next concern is the time it will take me to learn. I know plenty of you commented saying that fry and maxwell can be easier but just looking through the manual, it looks like a lot more options than even v-ray. I could be wrong but it is going to be a lot to take in. I guess the only way for me to find out is by downloading the demo. Im just concerned with only having a month to play with the demo, when it just might take me a month to read the manual?\
and I go back to school in a week 
. I dont know if I will be able to get comfortable enough with it in a months time to get a good idea of its capapbilities and if it is worth purchasing. I wish they had an unlimited trial with a stamp on it to prevent it from being used commercially. And my final concern is my computer...it is a single core laptop with a 2ghz processor and 1gb of ram. Ive been able to get by running v-ray and podium on it without too many problems, but is it even worth it to try and run fry on there? I mean thats part of the reason it takes me so long to learn these programs, because I need to wait an hour just to see what happens to an image when I make on little tweak...it really slows down my learning. -
Hmmm, your computer sounds as if it might be a bit lacking for unbiased render engines, although id still recommend trying fry, if only for a bit.
If your worried about running out of time in the demo id recommend giving indigo a try. Its free so youve got a lot of time to learn it, if you so choose. A lot of the settings are also pretty similar to fry and maxwell, so it eases the transition quite a bit if you ever want to try either of them.
The most important thing is to have fun while learning your render of choice, if your finding it boring do something else for a while and go back to it in a week or 2.
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I'd suggest remus makes the best point relative to your choices! Computing power - I think this will cause you to rip hairs with any unbiased option. You need grunt!!!!!
That said I have a feeling as computing power grows as even quad core machines are cheaper and cheaper by the day and 8 core machines likely to be more common place, 64 bit is proving faster with maxwell for example. I think you need to consider this and future proof yourself!!! Are you going to buy a new machine in the future???
One other thing to consider is that if you are exporting from SU think about the poly count limits that currently dog SU as an exporter for rendering and look at apps that enable instancing and if possible external referencing of components!!!
I know maxwell aims to shortly enable the option to replace low poly components upon export with high poly MXS files (maxwell geometry) meaning trees and plants as an example created in apps such as Onyx or xfrog can be bought into maxwell studio and material edited and saved. This file can then be later referenced to a low poly proxy in SU!!! This will mean a great increase in realism in any output and a much smoother workflow in SU.
Think also about the available materials libraries and what is available! Vray has been around for a long time and there is tons of materials available, maxwell's material gallery now has thousands of materials available, Fry has really just kicked off so not so much available there.
I don't think these choices are easy as the workflows and resources are so varied! but mate if you find you can get any output fromm vray you are far more up the ladder than me as I couldn't understand one quarter of the options available to get good output.
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@richard said:
.... but mate if you find you can get any output fromm vray you are far more up the ladder than me as I couldn't understand one quarter of the options available to get good output.
Well, Vray is actually more about knowing which buttons to leave UNtouched
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The options in the render settings panels are very elaborate and touching the wrong one can seriously influence the output.
Best way is to start with presets, both for render settings as for materials.
You'll notice that your input can improve by just changing some of the parameters and leaving all others untouched.And I agree with Richard about having enough computer power.
For unbiased rendering this really is a must.
I purchased a 8 core render beast some months ago, and I must admit that for the first time 'unbiased' became more or less feasible. For exteriors, I hardly notice a render speed difference to Vray.
Interiors however are another ballgame. even with hugh CPU power, you still want to leave it running a whole night to get it crisp. -
@kwistenbiebel said:
@richard said:
.... but mate if you find you can get any output fromm vray you are far more up the ladder than me as I couldn't understand one quarter of the options available to get good output.
Well, Vray is actually more about knowing which buttons to leave UNtouched
. ( ...) Best way is to start with presets, both for render settings as for materials. You'll notice that your input can improve by just changing some of the parameters and leaving all others untouched.True! In order to get decent images out of Vray, you needn't know all the ins and outs of the inner workings of the app. Took me a while to figure that out. I would recommend reading the manual, though - just to get a basic understanding of what everything does.
@ steelers: Richard and Kwisten are right, for unbiased rendering, you'll need serious computing power.
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@unknownuser said:
@ steelers: Richard and Kwisten are right, for unbiased rendering, you'll need serious computing power.
I woulnt say thats necessarily true, but if you havent got a lot of computing power you do need a lot of time and patience.
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Yeah I was affraid everyone would tell me that about computer power. Im debating getting one built but im still a poor college student. Thats what makes fry even harder to buy, cause I dont think they offer a student discount...I wonder if there is anyone to ask on their forum about that? But I have been running vray on my computer and that alone takes patience...even podium does with my wimpy computer. And as far as vray is concerned, you all are right. It took me reading through the manual a few times and just playing around to get a little bit of a grasp on it, but to me, once you get a hold of what to touch and what not to, workflow really moves fast. I would even argue that it can be quicker than podium at times (but I think v2 will change that). I found that messing aruond with the material editor first and then the rendering settings was a very sensible approach to learning the program. The encouraging part about fry and having a slow computer is that I believe you can pause renderings and start them back up again. That will really help so that it wont imobilize my computer for days. And I did just download the demo and it actually is for an unlimited amount of time and did exactly what I thought with the output limitations and stamp. But please anyone keep commenting on this topic if you want to because all the information that I can get, the better.
But I do want to kinda go a little off topic and I think this may be an appropriate place to talk about it since a bunch of you are already involved with the post and I dont think I should start a new one. Anyway, If I wanted to do animation...how would you rank programs in order what I should try to learn first. Obviously I have to deal with the rendering engine first but what next? The adobe products seem to be the way to go, but which ones are relevant. It seems that flash, illustrator, and after effects are all good ones to help enhance images and animations...am I wrong? I just look at the capabilities of each and they all seem like they do different things but also work together and when I see plugins like Knolls lighting effects, I just cant even begina to think about the endless amount of options for illustration. But thank you in advance to anyone insight guys...you have already helped out a lot. Now to play with fry and hopefully my computer doesnt die.
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When you say animation, what sort of animation are we talking about here? 3d or 2d? they are vry different beasts requiring different solutions.
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Honestly both. I may be wrong but I see some of biebels stuff and it looks like a mix of 2d and 3d. It seems as though a lot of people will take a single rendered image and manipulate it a little bit for part of an animation and then another part will be the 3d simulation. It looks like a nice way to create longer and sometimes more interesting animations without having to do a million scenes for a model to produce a 30 second animation. I guess im looking to know how to do animations that are professional and suitable for architectural illustration primarily...and maybe toss in product illustration (but that seems to be a similar process just different modeling and rendering techniques).
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