Master Zap leaving Mental Ray/NVIDIA, joining Autodesk...

[Marc-Andre Carbonneau]

Interesting moves…

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-is-100th-post.html

 

 

 

 

[Thomas Helzle]

Now that sounds like really good news!

Cheers,

Thomas

On 28 September 2011 17:34, Marc-Andre Carbonneau
<marc-andre...@ubisoft.com> wrote:
> Interesting moves…
>
> http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-is-100th-post.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

[Max]

Lets just hope its not for 3ds Max only.. (thats the feeling tho). Been too much time with a serious Mental Ray update..its falling way behind everything else.

Max

----Messaggio originale----
Da: marc-andre...@ubisoft.com
Data: 28-set-2011 17.34
A: "soft...@listproc.autodesk.com"<soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Ogg: Master Zap leaving Mental Ray/NVIDIA, joining Autodesk...

Interesting moves…

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-is-100th-post.html

 

 

 

 

[Sven Constable]

And its not that new btw (in terms of massive mentalray updates) ... The
future for Softimage especially the integration of mental ray is very, very
promising. Maybe you'll wait a sec befor switching to LW, Cinema or Blender
or whatever ;) Or Vray or arnold. My guess is, in 1-2 years, there will be
3 renderers out there and most of the small alternatives you talked about as
a a replacement to mentalray will be of no or low importance. Mentalray will
be back on top, besides renderman and arnold maybe.

cheers,
sven

-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Thomas Helzle
Sent: Mittwoch, 28. September 2011 19:02
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Master Zap leaving Mental Ray/NVIDIA, joining Autodesk...

Now that sounds like really good news!

Cheers,

Thomas

On 28 September 2011 17:34, Marc-Andre Carbonneau
<marc-andre...@ubisoft.com> wrote:

> Interesting moves.
>
> http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-is-100th-post.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

[Thomas Helzle]

Didn't you hear? Photon rendering is so last year, we now do Neutrino
rendering since it's faster than light! ;-)

Seriously, it's just as possible that in 2-4 years nobody can't even
remember what Mental Ray was ;-)
Everything renderman-like will most probably be forgotten for anything
trying to look realistic by then.
I personally think that even the current Vray, Arnold etc. is bridge
technology for the time being until unbiased will be close to
realtime, running on GPUs that have 128GB RAM and one core per
pixel... :-)

Or if somebody implements and optimizes a tech like this it may even be sooner:
http://agl.unm.edu/rpf/
Something like that could be a complete game changer IMO.

The main problem other than speed with unbiased ATM is, that for more
"artistic" stuff it's yet pretty unexplored, but I imagine that we
will see a lot more in this regard as soon as speed is no longer such
a major issue.

Even today, final render time is much less an issue for larger
companies than setup speed, and you can't beat BruteForce/unbiased for
realistic results in the later department. Just read some of the Sony
interviews about switching from Renderman to Arnold... :-)

Until whatever will happen in the future, I'll definitely have more
fun and better results with something other than MR.

Your mileage may differ :-)

Cheers,

Thomas Helzle

[Eric Lampi]

I recall a time when you needed serious cash to have a whole 8 mb of RAM and a later when a 1 gig drive cost $2,000. Real-time playback of a low res video clip was impossible on every computer except an Amiga. Here I sit, still waiting just as long for renders...

You could have 1 core per pixel and some guy out there is going to find a way to make it slow as hell, but it will look fantastic.

I'm not complaining though, bring it!

Eric

--
Freelance 3D and VFX animator

[Marc-Andre Carbonneau]

Yup...just around the corner: http://blog.renderstream.com/

[Sven Constable]

Thomas. You can change to whatever renderer you might hear of. I have no
problem with that. Or whatever 3d-software you may more comfortable with.
Softimage and Mentalray are not the top of the world. I am very comfortable
with it and if you are a pro with something else, you better do not change
to softimage nor Mentalray. You wouldnt change if some fanboy talks about a
replacement of your fav software like blender, would you? Think more in a
longtime, dude... Softimage and mental ray is not like vray, it goes a long
way. It will be there and more powerful than ever. Its for professionals...
Just wait :)

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

I can only assume that this is sarcasm

[Stefan Kubicek]

Or denial.

--
-------------------------------------------
Stefan Kubicek Co-founder
-------------------------------------------
keyvis digital imagery
Wehrgasse 9 - Grï¿œner Hof
1050 Vienna Austria
Phone: +43/699/12614231
--- www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at ---
-- This email and its attachments are
--confidential and for the recipient only--

[Thomas Helzle]

Yeah, makes you wonder, doesn't it ;-)

On 28 September 2011 23:27, Stefan Kubicek <s...@tidbit-images.com> wrote:
> Or denial.
>
>> I can only assume that this is sarcasm
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 1:49 PM, Sven Constable
>> <sixsi...@imagefront.de> wrote:
>>>
>>> And its not that new btw (in terms of massive mentalray updates) ... The
>>> future for Softimage especially the integration of mental ray is very,
>>> very
>>> promising. Maybe you'll wait a sec befor switching to LW, Cinema or
>>> Blender
>>> or whatever  ;) Or Vray or arnold. My guess is, in 1-2 years, there will
>>> be
>>> 3 renderers out there and most of the small alternatives you talked about
>>> as
>>> a a replacement to mentalray will be of no or low importance. Mentalray
>>> will
>>> be back on top, besides renderman and arnold maybe.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> sven
>>
>
>
> --
> -------------------------------------------
> Stefan Kubicek                   Co-founder
> -------------------------------------------
>          keyvis digital imagery

>         Wehrgasse 9 - Grüner Hof

[Matt Lind]

A lot of the issues I've seen with mental ray from users has been the lack of tuning the render settings. Also, around XSI v6.0, the default settings for rendering with mental ray inside of XSI have changed. With that change I have noticed an increase in problems.

Example:

Old default setting for shadows used to be 'regular' or what is now labeled 'enabled'. Today the default setting is 'segmented'. That alone incurs a 15% increase in computing overhead, and can lead to crashes in niche cases where trace depths can't be resolved properly. The difference between the two modes is 'enabled' traces shadow rays from intersection (shaded pixel) towards the light source whereas 'segmented' goes the other direction to more closely resemble real world physics (even if it's only slight). Any texture/material shader written for mental ray performing shadow computations automatically inherits and assumes 'enabled' mode and includes support for 'sorted' mode. If a shader is to work in 'segmented' mode, however, the shader writer is responsible for implementing support. This is where a great deal of issues can arise. You should only need segmented mode when doing a lot of work involving intersecting volumes.

Example 2:

Old ray depth limits where set to 2, 2, and 4 (reflection, refraction, combined). Today the defaults are 5, 5, and 10. This easily leads to increased render times if you don't manage your settings. I just trouble shooted a scene for a friend where this was the direct cause of inflated render times even though the scene content was dirt simple. The differences were pretty dramatic.

A good chunk of problems can be eliminated by paying closer attention to render settings.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Thomas Helzle
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 2:40 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Master Zap leaving Mental Ray/NVIDIA, joining Autodesk...

[Morten Bartholdy]

You just cracked me up, Luc-Eric :D

Quote from M Zap himself
(http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2011/09/this-is-100th-post.html):

"Integration of mental ray and iray into Autodesk products have always
been.. problematic."

No shit. This said I always found it better in Soft :)

--
Best Regards

Morten Bartholdy
3D/VFX Supervisor

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

that paragraph must be about either maya or 3ds.. on Softimage we
always had people dedicated to mental ray integration and halfdan
had a deep technical know-how of mental ray integration. Autodesk had
drafted him Maya to Max a couple of years ago. It's essentially
impossible to replace such a person after he left, after 10 years of
experience. the facts are, for integration you have to have a vast
general technical knowledge and the chops to handle architecture
complexity, - and the talent to coax replies from a very terse German
third party. There must have been more than 1 million lines of code in
the rendering module of XSI, if not more.

mental image didn't appear to care much about anything other than
standalone version. The vision of mental images was to make a
general, almost theoretical, architecture for distributed rendering,
but let integrator actually implement a rendering solution with that.
they only hired one guy to write shaders 7 years ago. I was told that
they did write the Maya integration, I'd be curious to know if that
isn't the case.anyways, autodesk's goal is to push integration towards
the third parties and not have this burden, which we have had, to do
everything.

[Leo Quensel]

Zap writes:

"Integration work was done by Autodesk, but there was never a dedicated
person with enough precise know-how of the nitty-gritty details to
handle it (or sometimes simply not enough priority put on it).
Well...... now I will be working there. 'nuff said :)"

Guess which software won't be getting any attention ;)

Leo

[Guillaume Laforge]

>" but there was never a dedicated person with enough precise know-how"

Completely wrong in the case of Softimage...

For me, interesting render engine integration is only by using a plugin architecture. Much more flexible for everyone involved.

Guillaume

[christian keller]

halfy did a good job, heya for all the houdini useres now !

christian keller
visual effects|direction

+49 0179 69 36 248
chr...@gmx.de

[Greg Punchatz]

Halfy rocks

Sent from my iPhone

[christian keller]

the half-dan one-man show ;-)

christian keller
visual effects|direction

+49 0179 69 36 248
chr...@gmx.de

[Thomas Helzle]

I didn't even know Halfdan left Autodesk, outch...

Good for him though! :-)

And thanks for your views Luc-Eric - very much appreciated as always :-)

Cheers,

Thomas Helzle

[Morten Bartholdy]

I think my wording came out a bit wrong. I always liked the way MR has
been integrated in Soft vs. Maya which we also use here. In Maya it is
sometimes a joke. My gripe is more with MR itself during the past years,
not the implementation. Hats of for Halfy and I wish all the best for
those who will be benefiting from his work now.

MB

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

In fairness to the other devs, i'd like to note that halfdan always worked with other people in rendering. In the early years, it was even the largest team.