- In our final chapter,
we'll look at the basics of rendering.
The first thing I want to cover is your choices
for renderer in eds Max.
You've got four different options for production rendering.
The first is the legacy scan line software renderer,
and that is the oldest one.
It's a fallback position in case some of
the other options don't work for you.
You might need to use legacy materials to
export to some other application that doesn't support
a physically based rendering workflow.
The Quicksilver hardware renderer uses your video hardware,
or your graphics card.
Quicksilver is primarily for draft renders,
but it's quality is getting better and better,
and in some cases it might be good enough
for production output.
The Autodesk Ray tracer, or ART renderer,
is useful for compatibility
with other Autodesk applications.
It's a common software component
of multiple Autodesk programs, such as Levit.
In eds Max the default renderer is Arnold,
and that's an advanced global illumination engine.
For most rendering projects, Arnold is your best choice.
Let's look at these one at a time.
First, the Scan line Renderer.
As I mentioned, it is the oldest one, but because of that
it's fast and simple to set up.
However, it's not physically accurate
by any stretch of the imagination.
The legacy Scan line Renderer uses a completely
fake lighting model from the 1990s,
and therefore it's very difficult to get
photo realistic results.
It has basic features,
but those features are no longer being developed.
The Scan line Renderer has reached its end of life,
but it's still there in case you need interoperability
with similarly antiquated applications.
The Quicksilver hardware renderer uses the video card
to draw images, and that makes it a GPU renderer.
It uses the graphics processing unit to accelerate
the rendering, which is on the order of seconds per frame.
But Quicksilver is not a general purpose GPU renderer.
That means it's not able to execute arbitrary code to
do interesting things like calculate global illumination,
or bounce light.
Quicksilver can only do the things that
a video application programming interface,
such as Direct or Open Gl, can normally do.
Such as directly illuminate a surface.
The rendering quality is somewhat dependent
upon the capabilities of your video hardware.
If you've got a lot of video RAM,
and a more recent and faster GPU,
you'll be able to achieve better and faster results.
But still, Quicksilver has limitations.
Like I said, it doesn't do global illumination.
And in fact it actually doesn't do ray tracing of any kind.
Even if you have a video card that is capable
of real time ray tracing, such as an Avidin RTX card,
Quicksilver is currently not up to date
with that technology.
Quicksilver is really great at lighting
diffuse surfaces directly,
But it can't accurately simulate bounce light,
or realistic reflections.
Now, one good thing about Quicksilver
is that it supports both physically based,
and non physically based, lights and materials
so you can incorporate legacy features if necessary.
Quicksilver is the only renderer bundled with
eds Max that can do that.
It's suitable for draft and stylized renderings,
and if you don't need ray tracing,
it can be good enough for production output.
The Autodesk Ray tracer, abbreviated ART,
is a physically accurate, unbiased,
brute force, Monte Carlo path tracer.
Now that's a mouthful, but what it means is
that ART does it's best to reproduce the real world optics
of how light propagates in an environment.
And for that reason, it excels at photorealism.
However, the developers of ART went a little bit too far,
I think, because ART has
a kind of perverse attachment
to the laws of real world physics.
If you can't do it in the real world,
then you can't do it in ART.
But that is kind of crazy,
because a computer can do anything.
And very often we do things in the computer precisely
because we can't do them in the real world.
So from my point of view, there's no justification
for that arbitrary limitation,
but in ART it's by design.
You can't do anything that can't be reproduced
in the real world.
For example, you can't turn shadows off,
you can't exclude lights from objects,
you can't render one sided surfaces, and on and on and on.
So ART is kind of problematic, but it might be good
for quick and easy design visualization.
It needs almost no setup time.
You've really only got a quality slider,
and a couple of little switches to throw.
The biggest advantage of ART is that it is compatible with,
and included in, other Autodesk applications.
Last we come to Arnold which, like ART,
is a physically accurate, unbiased, brute force,
Monte Carlo path tracer.
However, Arnold is far deeper, and far more powerful,
than ART.
For one thing, Arnold is not limited by real world physics.
You can break the rules, disable shadows, exclude lights,
render single-sided surfaces, and so on.
For a visual effects, or animation project,
there's really no other choice here.
You're going to use Arnold.
You can't use ART because it ties your hands,
and makes it impossible for you
to do the things that you constantly need to do
in a CGI environment.
Arnold is also much more efficient,
and more flexible than ART.
It renders much faster, and can do more different things.
Arnold has many, many more features,
such as advanced lighting controls,
and a large library of shading nodes.
Really Arnold is suitable for all applications,
anywhere from a perfect photo reel,
to a completely stylized image.
Arnold does assume an energy conserving physical simulation,
which defaults to a photo reel setup.
But with a little bit of work, you can get all kinds
of different non-photo, real rendering styles from Arnold.
Those are your options for renderer bundled with eds Max.
Scan line for legacy applications,
Quicksilver for draft renders,
ART for compatibility with other Autodesk programs,
and Arnold for high end global illumination,
and really all production rendering.