V-Ray 2.0 review - page3

Comparing V-Ray 2.0 to KeyShot 3.x and Arion 2.0.x

Before I do the final conclusion and compare the final image from V-Ray 2.0 to KeyShot 3.x and Arion 2.0.x I would like to mention something. V-Ray is a complete render solution mostly used for architectural visualization offering a lot of features. None of both compared renderers have so long development behind them as V-Ray. Moreover, all of these renders are in conctant development even in the time I was writing this review. For example Arion is now presenting his new version of Arion 2.0.4 with highly optimized new sampling method and KeyShot on the other hand presented a while ago the new interactive KeyShotVR for web presentation. Absolutelyy compare these three applications is nearly impossible because all three were made for a different purpose and have different advantages. Still, the final result of render quality and render time should be in every renderer optimized for the best performance.

V-Ray 2.0 vs Arion 1.6.x vs KeyShot 3.3 vs MentalRay

Highly quality renders in short time? This declares Chaos Group by the product description of V-Ray. So let’s take a look if it’s really true. To be able to test the quality and render speed of V-Ray I decided to compare it to KeyShot 3.3, Arion 2.0.3 and MentalRay. The tests were pointed on these three main factors; render speed, render quality and the real time (RT) renderer. As the object for comparison I choose the “Iron Man helmet” from one of our tutorials consisting from four different materials;  two metal materials with texture based look, a shader for the eyes and a black shader for the inside of the helmet. 

The testing PC had the following specifications:

• CPU – i7 2600K 3,5 GHz
• RAM - 16 GB
• GPU – GTX560 TI 2GB DDR5
• Windows 7 x64
• 3ds Max 2012 x64

The overall scene was built from the “Iron Man helmet” and a plane (a ramp) on which was in all three applications applied a neutral material consisting just from a diffuse colour which wasn’t taking or generating reflections. In all applications were used an hdri map for environment and reflections. The render set-ups and comparing conditions are listed in the tables bellow.

So, let’s take a look on the results. Next to the final render I did also two more to see how the quality and time will change with changing the settings lower or somewhere higher. The final renders which I used for comparison together with the rest of the outputs are in the gallery bellow. The “final” tag indicates that this picture was used for the comparison and the “low” or “high” tag was used to point out if the setting was higher than the final render or lower. The images are sorted from lowest render time to the highest where the render time is embedded also in to the image.

Conclusion

V-Ray is indeed a must have add-on for 3ds Max and the features which he offers together with the render quality are great. The comparison showed that V-Ray is not the fastest renderer but also not the slowest, but the output quality he can give you is simple great. The render options together with the wide range of shaders gives you an absolute control about the render and all parameters which could affect the final image. Comparing this to Arion or KeyShot can be this feature an advantage but also a disadvantage because a fast and not difficult renderers are for many people the first choice. I know that all four renderers are only as good as the user which is using them and you can get great images from all four.  Still, I don’t see a fair way how to say the final conclusion about who is the winner of this comparison so I will let you to decide this.