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Oh no, Spiez!
Maxwell uses two operations [+ -] and numbers [1,0] and some logical operators

vray render does not look good... why that dark place above the green wall on the grey wall... why... Nahh, Maxwell is mucho better... mucho mucho... he he

vray is using an arealight (with all the optimizations this implies) to lit the scene while maxwell only use objects. now just try with an object, it will be slower/more grainy for sure.
now if you want to have fun again, compare with SMALL emitter object : maxwell will handle it quite nicely, vray (and brazil, finalrender, mental ray..) will just show up few white points in a full black frame buffer.

lwan wrote:vray is using an arealight (with all the optimizations this implies) to lit the scene while maxwell only use objects. now just try with an object, it will be slower/more grainy for sure.
now if you want to have fun again, compare with SMALL emitter object : maxwell will handle it quite nicely, vray (and brazil, finalrender, mental ray..) will just show up few white points in a full black frame buffer.

he he yes. !.. the famous small white point on a black night... he he ideal to render large cities at night..

The V-Ray Progressive Path Tracing method is not unbiased. It is not converging to a scientifically correct solution like Maxwell, but it's an alternative to bucket rendering and in fact PPT is a less accurate rendering method than the traditional V-Ray bucket rendering approach.

Hm. Those two images aren't really set up the same (one entire edge of the green tile is absent in the M~R pic). Shouldn't at least the camera position, angle and lens settings be pretty close to identical for something like this? And as far as realism, look closely at the way the shadow of the ball, under the ball, is done on the tile. The Vray shadowing there doesn't give quite as realistic representation of what it should look like when compared to the Maxwell Render shot (which has it nailed in my eyes).

Also, the way you have presented your post... it hints of you being out to 'rip M~R a new one.' For some CG purposes M~R is probably not the best renderer, but Maxwell absolutely has its place and appears to be apart from the pack in some very good ways. I, personally, am very excited at its superior possibilities coupled with its ease of scene set-up. Look at the M~R disco-ball renders a few threads up: shine a single emmiter onto a mirrored ball and you get the correct spots on the walls, done without needing to spend hours on setting up 'simulation trickery' (which, in the end, likely still wouldn't give you as close a match to a true-life equivalent the way M~R appears to be able to do).

I have not used Vray, but if it is as capable of doing the disco ball scene -- would be as easy to set-up -- then post a comparrison of that. I am not married to M~R, so if other renderers can do the same things (better?) I am keen to see it. But this comparison post here -- a ball sitting on a tile surrounded by three simple gray planes -- just doesn't impress me much I'm afraid... especially since even with such a simple scene the M~R looks much better/less CG-ish than the Vray, at least to me.

MetinSeven_com wrote:The V-Ray Progressive Path Tracing method is not unbiased. It is not converging to a scientifically correct solution like Maxwell, but it's an alternative to bucket rendering and in fact PPT is a less accurate rendering method than the traditional V-Ray bucket rendering approach.

yes it is. an unbiased computation method does not have to be scientifically correct, just have to converge to the exact solution. vray PPT will with sufficient time converge to an exact solution.

Hm, heh.. something tells me that there are alot of users from the Vray forum replying in this thread not sure why but just a feeling i get hehe

But does it really matter what's the best approach to rendering ? use whatever you feel like and want to and be happy with it.

/ Max

its not the tools, its the artist who uses them.

morbid angel wrote:its not the tools, its the artist who uses them.

Tell that to the guy who's trying to render on the Amiga!

jeffg wrote:

morbid angel wrote:its not the tools, its the artist who uses them.

Tell that to the guy who's trying to render on the Amiga!

Here is a quote from 3ds max 7 manual on particle flow:

For optimal performance, the most important thing you can do is to use the fastest available CPU. Also, when using particle systems with many particles, install as much memory as possible in your computer, especially if you're using caching.
If he/she is using amiga in 21st century I have only one thing to say:
Im sorry bud

Spiez wrote:...why Maxwell developers (that really have done a superior product and maybe discovered new methods) wont explain at least a bit of the theory.

Are you serious? C'mon...

buffos wrote:Please MetinSeven, think twice before you post smthg you dont know.

Buffos, please don't reply things like this to me before you've done proper research yourself. What I wrote is exactly what Vlado himself told me in a discussion at the V-Ray forum. Next to a Maxwell user I am a long-time V-Ray user as well.

I will quote Vlado from my topic about Progressive Path Tracing at the V-Ray forum:

Metin_7 wrote:Is the result the best possible result you can achieve with the VRay engine if you wait long enough, comparable with the non-biased approach of Maxwell?

vlado wrote:No. Often you can get better (and probably faster) results with traditional methods, like QMC GI. Further on, currently VRay can generate up to 2^32 different QMC paths internally. The max value for the light cache subdivs is 60,000 which allows for 3,600,000,000 different paths. When you distribute these over the entire image, this may turn out to be insufficient. For a 2000x2000 image, you can only get 900 paths per pixel, which may not be enough to bring noise to an acceptable level. Traditional methods are not that limited and are able to put more samples into it.

Best regards,
Vlado

I like both Maxwell and V-Ray indeed and just wanted to point out a little misunderstanding about V-Ray's Progressive Path Tracing method, that's all.

As far as I know, V-Ray doesn't use the Metropolis Light Transport algorithm, but its own customized QMC method.

All I want to point out is that V-Ray's Progressive Path Tracing results are not comparable with Maxwell's results in the sense that V-Ray's PPT does not converge into an ever-evolving solution that continuously becomes better and more scientifically accurate than what V-Ray's traditional methods can offer. PPT is not an attempt to simulate the way Maxwell works, but only a way to simulate Maxwell's non-bucket based, denoising rendering method.

Nuff said, as far as I'm concerned.