Learn Chaos Group's V-RAY
V-Ray was initially created for visualization and later became used by animation companies. For a long time Pixar’s Renderman along with Silicon Graphics workstations was the only option but the dramatic increase of power of PCs changed the game forever.
Renderman never been easy to learn while its main competitor Mental Image’s Mental Ray since 1986, and Chaos Group’s V-Ray in 1997 brought photorealistic quality with their modern interface more accessible to the average user who did not need to program anymore.
V-Ray is built for artists and jacks-of-all-trades. a versatile and powerful world class renderer mixing CPU and GPU rendering seamlessly for feature films, television, advertising and architecture. V-Ray is an almost bug free software (at least for the moment !), Easy to learn the basics without being overwhelmed by the complexity, complexity accessible to senior users if necessary.
Learn Solid Angle's ARNOLD
Solid Angle’s Arnold replaced Mental Ray for rendering in Maya in 2016 after being purchased by Autodesk. Created by Marcos Fajardo in 1997 based on Monte Carlo ray tracing, it is now a standard rendering software for most VFX and animation companies. I have used Arnold for the first time at Sony ImageWorks for the animated feature “Monster House” in 2006.
Now integrated with Maya (and therefore free!) Arnold is largely recognized as a proven production ready renderer. Very straightforward, it is an obvious choice for junior artists but is a very versatile and powerful for experienced users. Flexible, it is used by small boutique shops to the larger VFX companies. Originally CPU based, Arnold now use GPU technology and make him again a frontrunner in the rendering field.
Learn Maxon's REDSHIFT
Maxon’s Redshift is a native GPU accelerated biased renderer created in 2012. Because of its legendary rendering speed, It became extremely popular in recent years. Similar to Tesla Cars in the auto industry as the only electric cars, Redshift was for a while the only available GPU renderer, recently V-Ray developed its original CPU and GPU combination, Arnold is now GPU based since 2019. The future of Redshift stay unclear because of those formidable opponents.
I learned how to use Redshift in 2018 and was very pleased with the rendering quality allied to an interface very similar to the softwares I already knew. Seasoned lighting artist would have no problems transitioning from V-Ray and Arnold, nevertheless, Redshift has specific methods and specificities we need to explore in details
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