mental ray vs. vray

[dimaknight]

This is one for the experts, which one is better for rendering car models. and alot of the site I've seen are tutorials directed for mental ray using maya. Are there any sites that address lighting and rendering setups for 3d max.

not this is a bit off topic, I'm running a p4 with 2x 256mb graphic cards and 1gig ram, and when I'm rendering an image with vray that fairly detail, i get a error mesage while rendering. Is this because I don't have enough momery. Any ideas how I can fix this.

Thanks

[crazy 989]

1Gb of Ram - I had that, its not ideal, more is better, although you can only go to 3gb with windows, never tried vray, mray - the best tutorial is in the max package, in the help files and documentation on it, Most light setup's and such are usually kept secret by each artist, so you need to find out a way man, Im not a pro at mray so cant really give you any tips tbh, apart from just trial and error is your best method

[helicase]

MR + PS can produce great results. But for ease i think vray wins by a lot. And perhaps if you are good at PS and Vray, its possible to get better results then with MR alone. These are tools, the product always depends on the person using the tools.

[dimaknight]

I agree the vray does seem the way to go, I've gotten pretty good result from vray so far. But in order to create a realistic car that make it difficult to determine real or 3d, is it behind the materials or rendering settings that gives it that affect.

Cause I use the setting that was on one of the tutorials and the material seem to do their job but ultimatly my renderings don't look half as good as some peoples.

[KatanaSquirrel]

The biggest problem I've found with VRay is that it makes bump maps go screwy, best way is to use displacement, then under your vray settings change them the subdiv's down so your render time doesn't go up by hours. I usually will get about 20 minute render time without GI.

[ray-xtreme]

In MAX 2009 Mental Ray is very good...
But Vray 1.5 SP2 could be good too... we just wait for SP2...