In article <398f4dc7@news.povray.org>, "Doug Eichenberg" 
<dou### [at] nlsnet> wrote:

> I haven't use 3DSMax yet, so I'm not sure about this...
> but my understanding is that 3DSMax is not actually
> a raytracer.  Supposedly it's something called a
> scanline renderer?  Anyone know the difference?

As far as I know, it is a hybrid renderer. It uses scanline techniques 
for basic rendering, but can use raytracing to get accurate reflection 
and refraction.


> Would that account for the difference in rendering
> times between it and POV?

Yes.

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I have had the opportunity to put my hands on it.
It uses raytracing when it comes to reflection and refraction *IF* you
apply real raytracing properties to the objects in the scene.
Like 3DS, it can fake reflection and thus becomes a mere scanliner.
As for the render times, 3DSMAX is slower to POV when refracting. If you
avoid raytracing features, it can be very fast.
One thing though, it is a memory hog. Don't expect to make it work
properly with 64 Mo.

You can model easily virtually anything you like with it, but in my
opinion the 3DSMAX renders do not match the quality of POV.

Fabien




> I haven't use 3DSMax yet, so I'm not sure about this...
> but my understanding is that 3DSMax is not actually
> a raytracer.  Supposedly it's something called a
> scanline renderer?  Anyone know the difference?
> Would that account for the difference in rendering
> times between it and POV?
>
> --
> Doug Eichenberg
> http://www.nls.net/douge
> dou### [at] nlsnet

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> You can model easily virtually anything you like with it, but in my
> opinion the 3DSMAX renders do not match the quality of POV.

That's a bold statement Fabien!  I've seen some very impressive stuff
from 3DSMax (and it better be good for what they charge).  Of course,
I've seen some great POV stuff too...

--
Doug Eichenberg
http://www.nls.net/douge
dou### [at] nlsnet

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Doug Eichenberg wrote:
> 
> I haven't use 3DSMax yet, so I'm not sure about this...
> but my understanding is that 3DSMax is not actually
> a raytracer.  Supposedly it's something called a
> scanline renderer?  Anyone know the difference?
> Would that account for the difference in rendering
> times between it and POV?
> 

Like the others said, it's a hybrid renderer. It is pretty handy to have a fast
scanline engine for rendering animations, but an option to use the slower
raytracing engine for some effects.
There are also other renderers that plug in to Max, if you can deal out the
extra $$$. I have seen very little of them in action, though.

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg

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Doug Eichenberg wrote:
> 
> That's a bold statement Fabien!  I've seen some very impressive stuff
> from 3DSMax (and it better be good for what they charge).

Bear in mind that Max offers modelling facilities very few POVers have access
to. I'm sure that in *most* cases POV has the potential to outmatch 3DSMax, in
terms of overall rendering quality and accuracy.
Also, the majority Max images you find on the net are created by handsomely-paid
professional artists, while POV users are predominantly amateur enthusiasts with
limited time and resources.

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg

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> to. I'm sure that in *most* cases POV has the potential to outmatch
3DSMax, in
> terms of overall rendering quality and accuracy.

Another very bold statement.  I think you'd be very surprised with the
results if you used MAX, its scanline renderer produces amazing results,
especially with the new types of surface shaders and antialiasing effects
(such as alias-soften).

Its raytracer, while usually being a lot slower than POV-Ray (in R2.5
anyway, MAX R3 is a lot better) easily equals the quality of output of
POV-Ray.  It's really the user that makes the difference, i.e. there are
some very bad MAX users (who usually aren't that serious and don't own the
product) but there are also some very good and skilled users.  A little like
with Maya.

--
Lance

The Zone
http://come.to/the.zone

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It's main rendering engine is a scanline renderer, but the shaders have
raytracing engines built into them.  For example, you can have several
objects that don't have reflections in the scene and they'll render
lightning fast, but you can just change one object's material to one that
uses raytracing (either by adding a full Raytrace material, or by adding a
material that has a Raytrace slot in the reflection or refraction map
slots).  The advantage of this is that you don't have to use a full raytrace
material if you don't want to, you can use any material type and just add
the raytracing to the reflection or refraction slot of that material (or any
other slot for that matter, such as diffuse color, or even shininess).

--
Lance

The Zone
http://come.to/the.zone

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Doug Eichenberg wrote:

> > You can model easily virtually anything you like with it, but in my
> > opinion the 3DSMAX renders do not match the quality of POV.
>
> That's a bold statement Fabien!  I've seen some very impressive stuff
> from 3DSMax (and it better be good for what they charge).  Of course,
> I've seen some great POV stuff too...

Interesting... all 6 winners of the March-April 2000 IRTC (The City) were
made wiht POV! "Eat my dust, 3DSMax users!" POV-Ray probably has a much
worse learning curve than 3DSMax, but used properly, POV has the
potential to create much nicer images, especially with MegaPOV and the
hopefully soon coming POV 3.5/4.0. What irks me is the people who pirate
the full-features rendering suites and think they're so great after they
model some dippy object, when the modeller did most of it for them and
they don't even own the thing! Well I'm sorry but any idiot can model
dippy objects in Rhino and then stick in a lighting macro and render it
with 3DS, and make it look like it comes naturally to them...

Hey, wait, it's "Internet Raytracing Competition", not "Internet Scanline
Competetion"! They've been cheating!

--
David Fontaine     <dav### [at] faricynet>     ICQ 55354965
Please visit my website: http://www.faricy.net/~davidf/

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> hopefully soon coming POV 3.5/4.0. What irks me is the people who pirate
> the full-features rendering suites and think they're so great after they
> model some dippy object, when the modeller did most of it for them and
> they don't even own the thing!

Hmm, indeed.  It's also the reason that most MAX renderings are c$*# -
because they're made by people that haven't bought the program and aren't
dedicated...

> Hey, wait, it's "Internet Raytracing Competition", not "Internet Scanline
> Competetion"! They've been cheating!

Read the rules and you'll find otherwise... and besides, MAX has a
raytracer.

--
Lance

The Zone
http://come.to/the.zone

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Hello All,

This is just to remind you that Pov-Ray is very great, moreover
it is free, but don't forget that commercial product are really
really impressive and fast. You can make scene very quickly 
because of the very nice modeler and the rendering time are
really impressive even if you use raytracing and radiosity 
(and for the test you just use scanline so this is very fast).

For those who don't believe me just look the quality of
the images I posted in the images group. This image just
show the quality of the renderer not the modeler. But
anyone know that the modeler of commercial product are
very impressive (just search for site which contain monster
etc.. made with 3ds, there are plenty :)).

Pov-Ray is great this is sure but you don't have the facility 
that you have with commercial soft. So with Pov-Ray you can
sometime create scene which are not simple with commercial
software (you use the properties of scripting) but this is 
rare, and now most of the commercial product have scripting
capabilities so...

Conclusion: Pov-Ray is incredible but only to do some 
particlar things not all things. (everyone know that it 
is impossible to model some particular thing without 
importing mesh). But for rendering quality, the level is closed
to the best commercial one (Mental ray etc...)

Fabian.



> 
> I haven't use 3DSMax yet, so I'm not sure about this...
> but my understanding is that 3DSMax is not actually
> a raytracer.  Supposedly it's something called a
> scanline renderer?  Anyone know the difference?
> Would that account for the difference in rendering
> times between it and POV?
> 
> --
> Doug Eichenberg
> http://www.nls.net/douge
> dou### [at] nlsnet

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