Which rendering engine is good for environments?
Octane, Mantra, RedShift, Arnold or VRay?

What I do is VFX, I am a DMP/Environment artist. So I'm curious as to which renderer will provide quick IPR so I can get quick feedback for my iterations. As well as a renderer that is able to get a image that is 80-90% looking good where I can spice it up in Photoshop for digital matte painting work.

If you use instancing correctly, Redshift is hard to beat for speed.

Hey Midphase,
But when it comes to final rendering at least to get to that 80%-90% mark does it do tha twell?

I have zero exp with Octane and Redshift, some exp with Arnold and Vray, so take that into consideration, but I find Mantra more than decent for exterior scenes and it comes with benefit of being “free”, as well as with best integration with Houdini for obvious reasons.

edit: forgot to mention one critical consideration when deciding between various cpu or gpu renderers - ram usage. If the work you do requires vast amounts of volatile memory, currently, gpu based renderers are either limited or a lot more expensive if they allow for gpu cumulative memory.

anyone using 3delight ?

Lots, I switched from Redshift to 3Delight last year and haven't looked back since.

You can watch some of my tutorials on my channel that showcase just how cool 3Delight is with Houdini: