Mentalray EOL

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Bullit
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Mentalray EOL

Post by Bullit » 18 Nov 2017, 01:45

The official end of an era that already have ended while ago.


http://images.nvidia.com/content/newsle ... AQ-201.pdf

via CGpress http://cgpress.org/archives/mental-ray- ... unced.html

CafeNight
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by CafeNight » 18 Nov 2017, 07:13

to much dead already.
whos next?

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Draise
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by Draise » 18 Nov 2017, 19:25

It's like all the licensing overhead to maintain Softimage is now becoming a non issue with its inner workings also going EOL.

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FXDude
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by FXDude » 19 Nov 2017, 05:32

Draise wrote: 18 Nov 2017, 19:25 It's like all the licensing overhead to maintain Softimage is now becoming a non issue with its inner workings also going EOL.
Perhaps a benefit in an unfortunate circumstance, but is still mostly unfortunate.

MR is every bit as flexible (also depending on host app) as Arnold (or vice-versa),
except for (at least traditionally) it's major drawback of usable worry-free light transport,
which was exactly the point of their GI NEXT.


Their pathtracer which they were finally actually making quite a bit of headway,
   ( only once they actually had a reason to ... which says alot about AD development pace in general )


Here is an MR / Arnold comparision comparing exterior and interior settings.
https://antoniobosi.com/maya-render-tes ... ray-render

Arnold was slightly faster in exterior settings, but for interior, the difference was astonishing.
MR is some 12 times faster (1h vs. 12h) for similar amount of noise levels
(and same low amount of prep-time while suitable for animation)

While it was the worst possible conditions for Arnold, (or any pathtracer for that matter) namely ::
       --> setting-up for almost noiseless result in a mostly indirectly lit setting,
            lit by variable warm and cool colored dusk or dawn (magic hour) skylight source through a small portal.

... and while it's possible to take some shortcuts with Arnold like using combinations of constant colored lights..
(funny that we talk about "cheating" with Arnold, but for legitimate ends of avoiding very (very) long rendertimes per frame)

... it was enough to show how MR managed to overcome it's previously biggest drawback,
further compounded with the many advantages of the very optimal MILA material layering.


______________
The author also made a comparison with Vray, (both 1h renders for interiors)
https://antoniobosi.com/home/render-com ... ray-render

and made this comparison (of MR pathtracer) with Vrays approximation methods,
because unlike Arnold, it's possible, and pure pathtracing in Vray is even slower than Arnold .

Except althought it's possible to use approximation methods in animation with Vray,
it's still somewhat of a pain to setup and get it working,
which also needs to be re-addressed for every particular shot or setting.


Nevertheless, it can very-much be considered as yet another casualty.

Here's a link to MR's eol thread
https://forum.nvidia-arc.com/showthread ... standalone

What I find silly and unnecessary, is the all-out removal of availability.

Stopping developing / supporting it is one thing, but like removing it entirely, specially for such a long-time tried and true participant, is like doubley unfortunate, for absolutely no reason.

Sell it cheaper, but don't remove accessibility altogether!
 

CafeNight
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by CafeNight » 19 Nov 2017, 12:23

so what killing Mental Ray? Iggnorance?
like softimage

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Mathaeus
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by Mathaeus » 19 Nov 2017, 15:54

Obviously they were not able to sell enough, once AD left them without support. Trials to port it to another apps as standalone, even in 'best' times, like MR for C4d, were commercial disaster, that I know. They lost competition for Solidworks renderer, Modo was winner, around 2008. While others like V-Ray, Red Shift, Octane, Arnold before acquisition, were perfectly able to live alone, and that's it, despite long stories, tests, whatever. I think it's ethically just fine to give the best cat food to my cats, today. Just to close an 'era', finally.

P.S. "Next" in that field, probably is Renderman, I think it's is clinically dead, more or less . Owner is using another solutions for movies. While it will take a while for them to admit the defeat, anyway.
Last edited by Mathaeus on 19 Nov 2017, 19:31, edited 1 time in total.

Bullit
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by Bullit » 19 Nov 2017, 19:26

MR was competing at least with Cycles(GPU) Octane(GPU), Vray, Arnold and Redshift(GPU) for C4D

luceric
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by luceric » 19 Nov 2017, 23:48

well, as you can see from that thread, they are ending mental ray, and sold the business of making iRay plugins to third parties, effectively ending selling any products to consumers. So they weren't going to continue sales of mental ray because getting out of that is the point. It wouldn't surprised me if they have looked for a buyer for it. Still, a day for end-of-sale notice is a little savage; I assume they must have the numbers to know they can pull this off.

jonmoore
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by jonmoore » 20 Nov 2017, 17:41

The problem with this brave new world of physically based path tracers is that they forget that render engines should be capable of far more than facsimiles of reality. And Mental Ray is awesome for NPR based work. Sure you can do cartoony stuff with Arnold or Redshift but neither have the range of shading options of MR for NPR work. I mentioned this on the Soft mail list but it's worth repeating here. I think we've been chasing physically bases results from our render engines for so long that we've forgotten that a render engine needs to be capable of far more than recreating reality.

Bullit
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by Bullit » 20 Nov 2017, 17:51

MR could do great quality real render by 2005 , it could fight Vray, it is just Mentalimages, Avid and Autodesk appear that it didn't wanted that for some reason. I remember seeing the CTRL shaders in Cgsociety forums, then asking myself why they didn't promoted and push that. Specially Softimage/Avid since at that time had no alternative render while Max could go Vray etc.

If it died - and i am including Softimage - it was their own big fault too.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by Mathaeus » 20 Nov 2017, 21:43

jonmoore wrote: 20 Nov 2017, 17:41 And Mental Ray is awesome for NPR based work.
Not that much.... yeah MR in Softimage was able to deliver a few features more in toon&ink area, but for huuuuge price, as it used a kind of occlusion, slow as hell. One had to render a small sequence first, adjust parameters and repeat the procedure, just to get acceptable level of flickering. What was a simple setup in any other vector renderer, in MR was typical long and painful work. To be fair, Maya or Max MR version offered built in MR contour shaders, way faster for price of simplicity, but still not fast as 'vector' renderers of that times, or nowhere close to speed of 3delight for SI (which one is also close to nowhere, btw). Btw Blender has a nice contour rendering for those who need that.
IMO first problem of MR was 'framework syndrome', it was able to do everything but not able to compete to anyone. That's probably good for facility with huge renderfarm and shaderwriter, working on relative short sequences combined with live footages, TV commercials and such, and that's all. Too slow for individuals, but also for long sequences - Renderman vs MR ratio in 'best times' when it comes to feature movies, it was 10 : 1 or something.
Second is maintenance, what belongs to which team to fix. For example in Maya 2016, still it was impossible to replicate in MR, few smoke rendering tutorials that worked in Maya SW render 2004, some simple switching of attributes, because (from what I heard), one team was waiting for another to enable the feature.
Third, total lack of concept, it was a mid-level ray tracer with bad scanline possibilities. At the end, full of partial features not cooperating together. 'GI next' in mentioned tests does not work with hair - so what if there's carpet in that room... Other, successful renderers are much more conceptually clean - there's always a recognizable 'starting point': GPU, path-tracer, ray-tracer, scanline, vector renderer, which makes them recognizable, easy to figure out what to expect from them.
And yeah, bugs.... 2012 when I got Modo, I've searched for procedure, what to do if renderer hangs at 90% percent of image - it was impossible for me to imagine that Modo renderer is not doing this....

Long story short - I don't know what MR for SI meant before 2004, but for any time later, MR was a no1 killer of Softimage, and nothing else - or exactly, idea of using just one 3rd party solution for all rendering. Alternatives appeared to late.

Bullit
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by Bullit » 20 Nov 2017, 22:59

Long story short - I don't know what MR for SI meant before 2004, but for any time later, MR was a no1 killer of Softimage, and nothing else - or exactly, idea of using just one 3rd party solution for all rendering. Alternatives appeared to late.
Oh yeah, if it wasn't for ICE extending Softimage life Mentalray would have been the reason for its dead before 2010.

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FXDude
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by FXDude » 21 Nov 2017, 00:26

Hum.. MR was SI killer?
:-j

There was no point where SI was at a disadvantage rendering wise (to this day with all updated Arnold... Redshift.. Sycles.. Octane.. )

Had arguably the tightest MR integration, possible Renderman was through 3Delight (way easier than actual renderman),

and Both Arnold (2009?) and Redshift (2013?) were in SI only for quite a while before anything else...

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FXDude
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by FXDude » 21 Nov 2017, 00:38

Oh! and MR still lives in plain vanilla XSI which although it's probably best to use other renders for animated GI, it otherwise works fine (and very flexible) for a ton of stuff.

luceric
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by luceric » 21 Nov 2017, 01:01

the exact same renderer in 3dsmax and Maya apparently killed softimage. wow. Only in the messagebord alternate reality.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Mentalray EOL

Post by Mathaeus » 21 Nov 2017, 01:06

FXDude wrote: 21 Nov 2017, 00:26 Hum.. MR was SI killer?
:-j
Exactly it was reason for me to finally start leaving SI as tool for making money, around 2010 - also I always felt free to recommend the same to anyone else who can't afford Arnold (wasn't so hard to convince people, by the way). Last time I seriously tried to render something in SI and MR, it was around XSI 5, I think, but switched rendering to Max because I had chance to do so, and yeah, MR rasterizer in SI was broken for period of six months or so, while it worked in Max, perfectly (without shared memory, just by writing to hdd, but worked).

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