Quote -
-Monte Carlo Method.
-Metropolis Light Transport (w/ multiple intensity variant algorithms). <- kind of the same as the MC, but with some differences.
-Contrast controls (temporal and spatial).
-Multi-Pass Rendering.
-CAT Image Compositing.
-Selective Material Overrides.
-Mental Ray Connection Shaders on all material. <- you can omit that one, if you insist the renderer specific shaders are irrelevant.
-Material and Object based Photon Emission.
-Global Displacements.
-Volumetric Refractions.
-Final Gathering.
-Scripted Pre and Post Rendering operations.
There's more too, I'll see what you have to say about why none those have any direct impact on the rendering process compared to a raytracer that doesn't have them first.

What do any of those features have to do with raytracing in general, which is the only thing I was referring to in the other thread?  Multi-pass rendering?  Global displacements?  None of these things have anything to do with either thread in question.  I never said Mental Ray couldn't do all these things, or argued that it wasn't a great renderer for those kinds of advanced features.

All I'm saying is that the process of raytracing IS general for the most part, and the same basic principals make up the process for every raytrace engine out there.  That is to say, raytracing is a process of following rays from a virtual eye or camera point OUTWARD, rather than originating at the light source.  It works by tracing a path from the imaginary eye through each pixel in a virtual screen, attributing the contribution of each light in the scene to that pixel.  As each ray is cast from the eye, it is tested for intersection versus objects within the scene. In the event of a collision, the pixel's values are updated, and the ray is either recast or terminated based on material properties and maximum recursion allowed.

So what are you in disagreement of again?

Quote - @luvver_3d:
I'm sure I just read your post in the Poser Forum where you quoted my opinion on 3ds Max 9's MR renderer vs. C5's renderer, and then replied that there aren't any advantages between one raytracer and the next.
Since "a raytrace is a raytracer."; how could anything assosciated with MR, then, have any qualities or advantages that are any different than 'any other raytracer'?
Every tool has it's advantages and disadvatages, is my opinion. I don't view it as somehow sacreligious to discuss them; and I use whatever tool I have that is bested suited for whatever I need to do at the time.

Not trying to be nasty or anything, just curious about what it is that made you reverse your opinion so completely on the issue in the space of two days' time?
And don't worry, I'm not going to be hounding after you or anything, it's just that I had posted in both the threads, so the post notification ebot brought me to the threads.

You obviously didn't read all my posts in the other thread, or you would have the answer to this already.  In the other thread, I said "raytracing is raytracing", and that's absolutely true.  For what operaguy wanted to do, any raytrace engine would work well enough.  You explain to me how reflections or refractions or raytraced shadows in Mental Ray are any better than the same things in Carrara or Vue.  They're not.  Why?  Because raytracing does the same thing in all of these apps.  Pretty reflections can be had just as well in Carrara as in Max or Maya.  End of discussion on that.

Now on the matter of the sss skin shader, we're no longer talking about RAYTRACING in and of itself.  We're talking about application-specific shaders that were designed specifically for working with a particular render engine.  Of course it's not the same.  In that case, one can be better than the other.

Anything else?

Quote - Note, if you think you're going to do a rigging job with Character Studio that compares to hundreds of hours of professional JCM/JSM design - well, maybe you'll get there someday, certainly not on first effort.  I don't believe there is even an equivalent technology in Max, for JCM/JSM.

Yes, there's the skin morph modifier in max that allows clothing to conform to your figure- like conforming clothing in poser, and you can wire morphs in the morpher modifier to be controlled by joint rotation, ala JCM's in poser.  You can also go one step further than poser and wire your texture parameters to be controlled by your morphs as well.  Maybe that's possible in poser too, I don't know.

Hi guys.  The misss fast skin shader is actually a Mental Ray shader.  It's available in Maya, 3dsmax, and XSI because they all use Mental Ray as a rendering engine.

The quality that makes it unique to all other sss shaders I've seen in Carrara, Vue, etc.,  is that the Mental Ray fast skin shader uses multiple layers for the subsurface scattering effect, and multiple specular layers, which can all be controlled by maps.  It blends the multiple layers in a soft "overlay" effect, which makes hard shadows and bumps appear more diffused under each layer.  It acts kind of like real skin, which we know has multiple layers as well, and scatters light more deeply as you go down each layer.

Quote -
In response to "raytracer is raytracer" comment, I have performed extensive studies on mental ray's (non-physical) sub-surface scattering and I am confident that nothing in the 3d world looks as good as it does, period. Also mental ray is exceptionally fast as long as you don't use motion blur.

Yes, the non physical sss shader (misss) in Mental Ray is great- i'm assuming you mean the sss fast skin shader, but it takes a little work getting the best results from it, wouldn't you agree?  First of all, it's scale-dependant, so you have to model to scale in order to get the best results, and if you don't, then you still need to know how to manipulate the scale settings to accomidate the size ratio.  Also to get the best results you need to create custom maps for the different skin "layers".  You don't have to do this, but it makes the result much better.  And if you decide to use blurry reflections on the skin shader to simulate radiosity of the environment, your render times increase dramatically. in some cases.  So this doesn't seem like something operaguy would want right now.

As far as the misss shader being the only thing of it's kind in the 3D world, what about the DT3D skin shader for maya, which has 54+ control layers for the sss, and lots of specular layers and such?  Plus, it doesn't require raytracing, and is oren-nayar shader based.

Quote -
There are TONS of rendering/shader issues that 3ds max can do that Carrara can't.

Probably, but what difference do they make if you don't use them?  Operaguy is talkin about increasing render speed by importing a poser scene using bodystudio into max, setting up lights, and rendering.  He seems to want an option that will translate as close as possible the poser materials he already had made in poser.  Vue can do this well, and much easier than 3dsmax in my experience.  Carrara may not translate the materials as good as vue, but the importing of a poser scene seems more stable and reliable than the one offered by the max plugin.  just my experience using it.

Quote - Max9 ships with MentalRay, I find it hard to believe that MR would be seriously compared to the C5 render engine.

Again, for doing what operaguy suggested he wants to do, there wouldn't be much difference in render quality, and much less learning curve, so things move along faster.  If all we're talking about in terms of requirements is raytracing, then what's the advantage of Mental Ray over any other raytrace engine?  It's not like he's going to be taking advantage of MR's scripting or writing his own specialized object shaders.

Quote - We won't discuss modelling capabilities, or anything else.
I don't want to sound as if I'm cheerleading for Max; but I'd just hate to see somebody interested in taking up 3ds Max be put off of it by that sort of mis-information. It isn't one of the industry leaders for no reason.

I don't think anything I said is misinformation, but rather the facts as I have experienced them.  Max is one of the industry leaders for reasons operaguy doesn't seem to need right now.  He just wants to speed up his poser animations, and there's a lot of programs that can do it for him in one way or another.  I just don't think max will be the answer he's hoping it is.

Quote -
The option of actually working with Max's rich toolset -- on Poser mesh or not -- is another choice I may make. Think I'll let me son be the pioneer on that!

::::: Opera :::::

Well, if you go that route, then that's a horse of a different color.  Max seems to have come a long way with it's character animation tools, and just it's overall animation tools in general.  Max was the only software I ever attempted to rig my own stuff with, and it wasn't that hard using biped for the skeleton actually.  But still, nothing beats poser for getting down to the business of animating.  Hands down, poser is the easiest way to make a short movie or video in my opinion.  Especially if you're flying solo on the project.

Quote - If I were concentrating on characters, I'd research tools like Cinema or Maya rather thoroughly. For example, I gather that interposer pro does for cinema exactly what us max users wish to have for Max.

Eh, I've seen lots of characters made in max that rival anything done in maya.  and 3dsmax does have a program - two of them in fact- that will convert poser characters into fully rigged 3dsmax bones or biped characters.  Gesturemax and some other one I saw at Daz. Pcharacter or some such name.

I was under the impression operaguy was not interested in workin with the characters directly in max though.

Quote - luvver, Poser firefly is a raytracer. I am getting not bad results with it under raytrace. However, we have heard the litany so many hundreds of times about how horrible firefly is, slow as anything, etc. etc. etc., that I am going on the assumption that if one can get one's scene into a "big league" platform with "big league" render engines, one would be able to achieve Poser-like results, but at a much greater speed.

I've already had a failure in this, with Carrera. Is it possible all the fuss to go to the "big leagues" ain't worth it?

What say you?

::::: Opera :::::

I'll probably get a lot of people who disagree with me here, but I think the same problems you faced in Carrara you will face in Max, plus a lot more too.  People talk about real sss and all that in 3dsmax, and this is true.  But once you start using stuff like that, any minor speed advantage you did have is gone right out the window, and lots of problems in animation will start to surface, like artifacting.  I'm not saying these high end renderers aren't better.  they are for some things, but once you get into those "things", they are no longer that much faster anyway.

Quote - I am hoping that for $179 I can move a Poser scene, with dynamic hair, cloth animation, and procedural shaders into Max and with little/no fuss light/render there with a terrific increase in overall speed. We will see.

::::: Opera :::::

This is where I think you will be greatly disappointed.  Maybe if you get the new 64 bit max, it will be better going, but in max 7 at least, rendering the dynamic hair that bodystudio brought over was definitely much faster when using the scanline renderer, but the scanline renderer isn't good for animation.  You need to beef up the antialiasing to get nice results on textures and edges, and this will slow it down to near poser speed anyway.  Max can do procedurals, but they aren't in the same ballpark as poser in my opionion.  Procedual materials in max get mapped to object coordinates by default, which is fine for 80% of the time, but  this is no good for animated objects like poser figures, because it makes the procedurals look like they are swimming through the object.  and if you make them explicit mapped- meaning they follow the normals of the objects uv coordinates,then you might end up with some size/scale problems that are a pain.  I'm not a max pro by any means, so these were the things about it that really frustrated my experience with it.

Quote -
The reason I bring things into Max is for modeling and more nuts and bolts kind of work. I find setting up lighting and enviroinments etc sort of a pain in Max (when Carara or Vue are available).

Yeah, I think a raytracer is a raytracer.  I don't see anything in 3dsmax renderings that can't be done in Vue or Carrara for that matter.  Some people point out speed as an issue, but once you start using 3dmsax skin shaders and quality render settings, things slow down no matter what renderer you use.  Mental Ray isn't known for speed either.  Vray might be a little faster than average, but it's a pain to set up the vray materials .  you can't use all max materials with it.

I think also jonthecelt brought up a good issue about transfering poser dynamic hair and cloth.  It might be better to use the ones that come with Max, for faster rendering.  I never had success animating in Max though.  It was just too difficult to pose figures.  Unlike poser, I could move the animation timeline back and forth, and it showed me in near realtime what the motion looked like.  In Max, the timeline was so slow, this was not possible.  I was able to preview results as a render, but not in the viewer directly.  This could be hardware issue though.

I think the new version of Vue brings over animation of hair and cloth, and a good approximation of procedural shaders too.  You'll have to check that out.

Since you already have to get Max, I guess you can try using it with Poser since you have nothing to really lose there.  But I never had any success rendering Poser animations in Max.  Lots of crashes, and saving Bodystudo scenes in a max file, then coming back later to work on it seemed to always screw up all the materials I had painstakingly set in max.  Maybe the new version fixed this, or maybe it was just 3dsmax that didn't like poser.  Either way, I quickly found that the easiest way to render animations from Poser was either in Poser itself or in Vue or Carrara.  Just warning you that it will not be a cake walk.

Operaguy, before spending a boatload on Max, did you try the Vue option?  It translates the materials very well, and will bring in Poser scenes just like bodystudio claims to I think.

I had the bodystudio with Max 7, and it does not bring over all the procedurals.  In fact, it doesn't bring any of them over, and I don't think the new one does either by that description.  You will find yourself spending a lot of time redoing the materials so they match up with what you had in Poser, and some of them, like the faceoff skin shaders, can't be reproduced.  You'd have to use the Max skin shaders, which render slower.  I think Vue can translate all those skin shader nodes, and it renders almost as good as any Max renderer I've seen.  If all you are looking for is a renderer, Vue is much cheaper and just as good I think.

Just a thought.

Congratulations on completing a feature-length project. That's a feat in and of itself these days. However, if you're up for some critique, I have some to give. I can't speak for the plot or story, because the teaser you've shown here doesn't do much to enlighten me to that aspect. The visuals, however, seem very lacking. The first things that jump out at me are very poor character animation, texturing, and lighting. The characters in the teaser move like puppets rather than organic beings in most of the shots. In one snippet, a female character with "long" hair moves about, and her hair is stiff as a board. The environments, although seemingly surreal, still leave me wondering what I'm looking at for the most part. Water looks like metal, metal looks like water, and everthing looks shiny and new. In other words, the entire thing screames "raytraced!". If the texturing were more interesting, I think it would look a lot more professional. Same with the lighting, which in most shots, seems overly simplistic and "CG". I would have loved to see some more natural lighting effects in the outdoors shots (even if it's an alien environment). Otherwise, you end up with an effect that resembles CG back in the mid to late 80's. I don't mean to completely "slam" your achievement here. I think it's great that you had the vision and fortitude to put something like this together, but I also hope that the storyline and dialogue serve to overshadow the seemingly lacking visual appeal in the teaser.

Maxxx, if the tree was part of the background plate, occluding an object in motion behind it would be no easy task, and certainly isn't efficient. It works for simple composites, but you'd have to create a dummy object in the scene that matches the tree's movements exactly (imagine all the leaves and branches moving in the wind), then apply a matte material to that object in order to occlude the dino when he passes behind it. It would be easier to erase the foreground tree entirely from the background plate, and replace it with a CG tree. Another way might be to mask out the tree in a video fx editor, and place the dino layer behind it in post. Time consuming and painstaking, either way. As for lighting, I agree IBL is probably the best way to match up the overall ambience, combined with carefully placed manual lighting rig to enhance the effect. It doesn't have to be high dynamic range, but at the very least you'd need to be able to take a series of spherical photos on location to create your 360-degree light map from the scene lighting. Camera equipment for such a task is very expensive, but you can fake that part by using the "X-mas ornament" technique, which should give you around 250 degrees of environment. Then you can fill in what you need with manual lights. As Maxxx suggested, always render out in passes so you can tinker with the colors and get a more accurate composit in post.