V-Ray for education update or Thea

magazines

Hello,
I'm an educator who teaches only a little bit of 3d stuff as a side to other digital imaging. We teach on the mac platform and do Sketchup for all intro stuff so I also dip their toes in the water with this. Upper division classes move to CNC or Maya.
So, I last installed the edu version of Vray on Sketchup 8 and we used this for a few years. I still have it on my home computer. Honestly I don't know what #version of Vray this is, but I think it's out of support as it was an AsGVIS product and links just go to ChaosGroup with a plea to buy the new version.
A couple of questions:

Does anyone know if that old version of Vray can be switched to a new computer and used with SU2014 (or 2013). Old computer is on the way out, I rarely use Vray myself but this would be of value to me to occasionally look at a quick render.
Should I pay the $ (edu is $140, cheap but not nothing) for Vray2 for SU and deal with the dongle? I only use this several times a year but if it really is miles better than the old version I may start doing a few more class days on it. The dongle is a limitation for us because for the labs, our IT dept prefers not to go this way. Can anyone clearly say what the major improvements are of Vray2 on SU? As far as I can tell it comes from the "RT" - is this a new form of the frame buffer and will it work well on 3 or 4 year old lab machines?
Is Thea an easier rendering platform for introduction - for quick results? Since rendering is far from the focus of the class, a rendering system that was closer to the easy intro quality of sketchup would be very useful. Plus no dongle for labs or my computer. Also the edu is almost half the cost of Vray, meaning if I got excited about using it in class I could pay for a copy for both my laptop and the home computer with Thea. Is the interface an easy transition for people who have experience with Vray?

Thanks for your consideration of these questions. Obviously rendering is not my main focus, but it is an area that we are interested in still introducing at beginning level. Institutionally, we are encouraged to only update/upgrade software if the developers are providing serious and beneficial new features. More and more, it seems new or yearly versions are produced more for money than progress.
Thanks again in advance for your thoughts!

rodrigonotor

@magazines said:

Does anyone know if that old version of Vray can be switched to a new computer and used with SU2014 (or 2013). Old computer is on the way out, I rarely use Vray myself but this would be of value to me to occasionally look at a quick render.

Yes, Some of my friends still have installed older versions of v-ray in 2013 or 2014

@magazines said:

Should I pay the $ (edu is $140, cheap but not nothing) for Vray2 for SU and deal with the dongle? I only use this several times a year but if it really is miles better than the old version I may start doing a few more class days on it. The dongle is a limitation for us because for the labs, our IT dept prefers not to go this way. Can anyone clearly say what the major improvements are of Vray2 on SU? As far as I can tell it comes from the "RT" - is this a new form of the frame buffer and will it work well on 3 or 4 year old lab machines?

From my very personal point of view, I prefer to use Thea instead of v-ray for many reasons including the dongle.

@magazines said:

Is Thea an easier rendering platform for introduction - for quick results? Since rendering is far from the focus of the class, a rendering system that was closer to the easy intro quality of sketchup would be very useful. Plus no dongle for labs or my computer. Also the edu is almost half the cost of Vray, meaning if I got excited about using it in class I could pay for a copy for both my laptop and the home computer with Thea. Is the interface an easy transition for people who have experience with Vray?

I make the transition from V-ray to Thea with no problem. The concepts are the same for almost any render engine. Thea can give you fast results, but you need a very good video card for work with GPU render mode. The new version of the plugin SU4Thea it's great and very fast also work inside Sketchup.

@magazines said:

Thanks for your consideration of these questions. Obviously rendering is not my main focus, but it is an area that we are interested in still introducing at beginning level. Institutionally, we are encouraged to only update/upgrade software if the developers are providing serious and beneficial new features. More and more, it seems new or yearly versions are produced more for money than progress.
Thanks again in advance for your thoughts!

Thea developers are great, they offer a excellent support and upgrades that are amazing with no cost.

As I mentioned at the beginning, is my very personal opinion.

Regards.

TedVitale_CG

@magazines said:

Does anyone know if that old version of Vray can be switched to a new computer and used with SU2014 (or 2013). Old computer is on the way out, I rarely use Vray myself but this would be of value to me to occasionally look at a quick render.

You technically can install V-Ray 1.49 in SketchUp 2013, but its unsupported and if you do transfer the license to 2013 we cant help you if you have problems. We will happily help you transfer the license to any new machine running Sketchup 8 though! Email support@chaosgroup.com and they can help you out, its very easy to do.

@magazines said:

Should I pay the $ (edu is $140, cheap but not nothing) for Vray2 for SU and deal with the dongle? I only use this several times a year but if it really is miles better than the old version I may start doing a few more class days on it. The dongle is a limitation for us because for the labs, our IT dept prefers not to go this way. Can anyone clearly say what the major improvements are of Vray2 on SU? As far as I can tell it comes from the "RT" - is this a new form of the frame buffer and will it work well on 3 or 4 year old lab machines?

Full disclosure, I work for Chaos Group as a 3D Artist on the SketchUp team. So obviously, I'm going to pitch you V-Ray for SketchUp. I wont lie, Thea makes a good product. They have some nice tools, and features. But, V-Ray is the industry standard, for both the Visualization and Effects industry and the Architectural Visualization industry. Companies like TiltPixel and NeoScape both use V-Ray for SketchUp and V-Ray for 3DS Max. The reason being, assets can be transferred between the two programs, and you would be teaching the product that is typically used in the architectural workplace.

New features in V-Ray 2.0 vs 1.49:
Faster rendering times
Custom user made Proxies for large objects (trees, foliage, cars, people and other high poly assets)
Real Time Rendering (RT) for fast scene previews and live model editing.
Dome lighting for in scene HDR lighting
More efficient lights
Faster materials and material creation
Batch scene rendering
Better animation support
the list goes on...

Yes, unfortunately we use a dongle, and yes its a yearly subscription fee for V-Ray EDU, but this is better for new releases of the product because you don't already own 200 outdated licenses of it, you just resubscribe for the next year with the new product.

With dongles if you are using only one seat of the product, its easier to transfer the license around. You unplug the dongle form your office computer, and plug it back in at home. Network licensing is just as easy. You can program a single dongle to have multiple licences on it that are checked our on a per-user basis. So a lab situation over a local network is not a problem at all.

@magazines said:

Is Thea an easier rendering platform for introduction - for quick results? Since rendering is far from the focus of the class, a rendering system that was closer to the easy intro quality of sketchup would be very useful. Plus no dongle for labs or my computer. Also the edu is almost half the cost of Vray, meaning if I got excited about using it in class I could pay for a copy for both my laptop and the home computer with Thea. Is the interface an easy transition for people who have experience with Vray?

I agree with Edgar(Rodrigonotor). The concepts are all the same with every rendering engine out there, but not all engines are created equal. Weigh the pros and cons of the two products, and if you have any questions, please, feel free to pm me and we can email back and forth in person. I would be happy to answer any other questions you have.