Can anyone point me to a tutorial / quick reference to using Mental Ray as renderer in Houdini. Is it available in Apprentice?

Thanks in advance,

Anders

sundstedt
Is it available in Apprentice?

Nope, only Mantra.

(I wanted to post this somewhere else but didn't really find anywhere else to post it)

Why isn't mental ray part of the standard version of houdini? I know that everyone here loves mantra n all, but mental ray's a good renderer, and has a very good staple in the effects industry. It's almost the default renderer for the 3 main 3D programs, so wouldn't it make sense to have mental ray as an _included_ optional renderer in houdini? Yes, I know that you can pay $2,500 to have it included, but that sounds too pricey for mental ray, plus you'll still have to pay for mr on top of that. For renderman, I understand paying that much but for a renderer that's included with 3 of the 5 main 3D programs, that's high to me. And I haven't yet mentioned the quality and depth of mental ray vs mantra. Yes, I know mantra is good, but some places think that mental ray is better, so why not have mental ray as well? It has its reasons to be included alongside mantra if not only to make houdini a bit more of a mainstream 3D program. So does anyone know why it's not included or atleast optional for less $?

If Mental Ray were included Side Effects would need to increase the price of Houdini by however much the Mental Ray licensing costs. (The customers who don't want/need Mental Ray won't like very much.) The alternative would be not to increase the price, but then that is additional money out of Side Effect's pocket, which means they now have less resources (money).

The reason why Mental Ray was included in 3DSMax, Maya and Softimage is because after a couple of years on the market it became apparent that their default internal renderers were horrible at best. So they each made a deal with Mental Images to have Mental Ray included and then dropped support for their old internal renderer.

The main difference between Houdini and these other packages is that Mantra is infact a very good renderer. It has its problems, but its price vs. preformance/features is outstanding.

ReggieFourmyle
… For renderman, I understand paying that much but for a renderer that's included with 3 of the 5 main 3D programs, that's high to me.

I'd agree that that sum of money ($2500) for the current state of mental ray output that doesn't include a phenomenon builder in VOPs does sound rather high, especially if you consider the depth of support of Renderman for the same cost. If nothing more was planned for H9 for mental ray then I'd probably think that it should be cheaper than the Renderman interface.

However, any customers paying for the mental ray output might very receive active support from SESI since the payment might directly be applied to further development; but it seems be in a the-chicken-or-the-egg kind of state right now.

I've heard MR is a good renderer, but also that it's motion blur is almost prohibitive to the extent that some facilities (including here) have been rendering without motion blur and using a 2d process to add it.

I think if you're doing stuff at film or HD you really want to have a fast renderer, which is where I think renderman and mantra excel.

wolfwood and jason: I agree with both of you on all points. I don't think that houdini should come with mental ray at the expense of sesi nor at the expense of its users. But at the same time, I think the current renderplus cost is only appropriate when applied to renderman. However, offering two renderplus versions may not be worth the confusion. What I think would be best for sesi is to allow the current mental ray interfacing to be free with houdini, but not include a mental ray license. I can't imagine that this would cost sesi much and might make up for any small costs by added appeal from large places that use mental ray (I heard ILM is using mental ray largely now?). Mental ray's user base has been growing for a while, and houses that use mental ray primarily seem to be more and more common. Maybe sesi will do what they did with halo, charge for it at first to make up for the production costs and then include it in the main program. If not include it for free, maybe they could charge very little for it to make it more appealing to big houses that already use mr, to integrate houdini more as their main 3D app.

jesta: You work at a vfx house? holy crap, that's surprising and scary. Okay, jokes aside, quality was not the issue I was concerned with, I'm asking for mental ray for the sake of houdini. Sesi wants it to be more popular than it is, and so do I. That's my only concern here.

As far as I know Houdini has all the neccesary hooks into MR. So in theory if you're working at a facility that uses XSI or Maya you'd already have MR available. I guess the logic at SESI is why offer integrated MR when most likely the facility already has a bunch that are available to use.

I've heard a bunch of people have used MR through Houdini quite succesfully.

That said it would be great to be able to build shaders using the VOP interface, and I'm not sure how easy it is to take a shader created in XSI or Maya and use that in Houdini.