In my experience render times between Arnold and Mantra are very similar, only thing is that Arnold uses memory in a more efficient way (again in my experience) but you can do some really crazy stuff simply using Mantra, plus it is free and so far I have never found Mantra limits in production, even sending some insane amount of geo.
my 2 cents. jb > On 2 Jan 2016, at 18:27, Tim Leydecker <bauero...@gmx.de> wrote: > > Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to gently push > people more > and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner. > > I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version. > > Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a node still > often drives sweat into my hands... > > It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well as pretty > much anything related > to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a pleasing result > to start with. No gamma issues. > > Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults already. > That helps a lot in the first steps. > > But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm, something > different thought. > That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected actually, > indirect bounce cleaning is expensive. > Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is heavy to > calculate and indirect bounce noise seems > not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available in Houdini > 15. > > Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise threshold I > mean. > > Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels familiar > enough, thought. > > I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with from > Redshift3D. > > -- > > In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t want to miss > an external asset creation package > to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya, > Softimage, Max, etc. > > Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache generation to be > then pulled into Houdini. > > I can see myself using Houdini more and more for both first steps in FX and > actual rendering shots. > > I like Houdini and the free entry ticket is great, I´ll be upgrading to the > Indie soon. Just for playing. > > Cheers, > > tim > > > > > > > > > Am 17.03.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel: >> I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save >> the life of a fellow artist. >> >> So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can >> compete against people straight out of collage. >> This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists >> here in South Africa. >> At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to >> happen in maya for me. >> My brain doesn't work the way maya works. >> I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, >> just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to >> allot of back tracking. >> >> At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of >> Houdini FX. >> It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was >> one, of only a few houdini artists around. >> Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns. >> >> The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me. >> >> I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I >> can with Maya after a year. >> The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as >> one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is >> fun and pretty easy. >> >> This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non >> destructive open work flow. >> So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole >> "there is a script for that" mentality... there is a sop for that >> >> G >> >
