First Attempt at VRay
Hey all,
I’ve been having trouble finding someone who has VRay that would be willing to let me borrow it, so I’ve decided to just download the trial version and work from there. Within the first 20 minutes of fooling around I managed to create the image on the right.
My first impression of VRay is positive. The interface is tight and flows smoothly from lighting, to materials, to GI and depth of field blur. I felt at home very quickly since everything feels like it’s in nice, logical places and the settings respond in reasonable ways. On the downside, I’m noticing a distinct lack of presets and quick settings that prevent you from really going into second gear. This is something that the mental ray renderer discovered several versions ago and corrected for. Also, it has a really annoying habit of turning off GI and caustics settings between renders.
I’ll add more as it happens, but so far it looks like there may be VRay video tutorials in our future.
EDIT: I noticed also that the demo version is SP2 while the documentation is for SP4. There are a lot of features missing- I’ve e-mailed the ChaosGroup to see what we can work out.
By gabrielem January 20, 2010 - 4:58 am
Hey ! I follow your movies, the site is the BEST !!
Im new to Vray too, so keep going with that so we all can learn something more about that renderer
By L January 20, 2010 - 11:10 pm
As a Mr user doing arch viz, I’ve been meaning to get into Vray for so long. hows the GI hold up to FG + GI? Vray uses irradiance maps right?
must say Vray disp grass is so nice!
By Bluesummers January 20, 2010 - 11:55 pm
So far their solution is both fast and clean. It uses radiance mapping but in this strange grungy way that blends it into photographic noise rather than the usual splotchy effect. I’ll have to investigate it further before I can comment intelligibly though.
By Dustin Brown January 22, 2010 - 7:36 pm
I’ll be watching your progress with this. I’ve often wondered why people would spend the extra money on VRay when they already have MR. The answer most people will give you is that VR makes it faster and easier to get from A to B, whereas MR is more robust and customizable. As if VRay vs MR is akin to comparing something that’s approachable to mortal man vs something that’s quite esoteric. I’ve already invested a considerable chunk of my time learning MR, so now that I’m mostly over the hump I wonder if there’s any point to someone like myself using purchasing VRay.