Blender vs 3ds Max+Vray for Interior Design

this blend is usable for interior design work yes definitely you can do anything in it including architecture and design projects the question is how convenient and how fast it is in this video i will compare blender with industry standard which is combination of leads max and v-ray where most designers work to find out which program is the best tool of course a lot of people work with corona render but the difference differences there are not significant i am a professional interior designer with about 10 years experience in 3ds max from a technical point of view blender definitely looks better it runs fast load quickly takes up little space doesn't leave tons of junk in the system work on mic and linux as well 3dsmax is fast enough at least i have no complaints about it it just feel a little bit slower in opening different menu settings and other small things blender only loses when cancelling an action it feels unusually long delay even for simple actions contrary to popular opinion the loading time of 3ds max for me does not seem to be too long maybe because i have it installed on an ssd and all my scenes and textures are stored there as well the second and next launches are much faster but still far from instantaneous blender also starts up not instantly especially when we have installed a million plugins to restore their core capabilities of 3ds max for launch speed cinema 4d is still the leader but that's not topic for today by the way both programs crash sometimes but blender slightly more often from my experience the interface of blender is quite simple and user friendly i like that everything is in its place and grouped into categories the big problem with 3ds max is that it keep new features in a prominent place for people to use them rather than sorting them into categories so some sections of the interface has been forgotten for years and have features that are decay told this creates complete cause when there are dark corners where the user has never entered and doesn't know what's there and there's a lot of that going on i'm sure that every 3ds max user doesn't know half of the what program can do myself included the same problem is in photoshop controls are a matter of taste and habit in the end everything can be customized but i really like the way things are done in 3ds max where everything you need is on the left right at your fingertips often the buttons themselves don't match the context of the function q w e r is selection move rotate scale at t i assigned to select and place a is an angle snap s is just a snap z fixes the camera on the object c is the transition between cameras which is again very important in design 1 2 3 4 5 are responsible for switching between vertex h loop polygon and element editing modes f buttons are responsible for settings of the view so f2 turns off the visibility of polygon field f3 is a wireframe f4 shows the polygon mesh so everything is at your fingertips in blender you can break your fingers constantly moving all over the keyboard with the standard layout the modeling possibilities are quite similar in both cases there are things that may be lacking fortunately most of the problems are solved by plugins the fundamental difference number one is that the creation of objects in blender takes place at the 3d cursor location in 3ds mag they are created in place and during object creation you can use 3d snapping for exact location and dimensions this eliminates the constant need to move the 3d cursor actually in 3ds max there is no counterpart of 3d cursor and somehow i have never had the desire that it would be added all works without it this method allows much faster creation of objects in the manner of any 3d editor in blender by the way there is a plugin that allows you to do something similar called quick shape the second fundamental difference is is that in 3ds max you can edit previously created objects for example to change the size and number of divisions after modifiers has been applied and that is how we got to the modify stack if you work correctly with modifiers then working in 3ds max is much less destructive for the model than in blender in 3ds max you can do almost everything with modifiers and go back within reasonable limits and yet it is mistake to call this approach procedural the first fundamental difference is that in blender h or point can exist by itself without being joined by polygons the particular use of such possibility is rather questionable unlike radio where a lot of things are tied to point parameters but it is often the reason for crooked geometry in general bad geometry constantly plugs blender and there are a lot of tools there to fix it take extrude for example which when cancelled creates polygons of zero length which can screw up the geometry in three tests makes it usually on the occurs if you have two points in one place the fourth major difference in modeling approaches is that splines play very large role in 3ds max this is largely because 3ds max is focused on architecture design and let's say more technical modelling this distinguishes from maya which is designed for movies and animation same as most other 3d graphic programs its playing tools are very much more like what you see in solidworks in rent autocad where they the main way to model and in 3ds max you can also make everything you want out of splines this also includes very convenient work with coordinates and a lot of snap settings those who have used autocad will be very pleased moving objects around in blender seems fine at first glance expect that the buttons are scattered all over the keyboard but when it comes to precise movement the right number of millimeters from the desired point for some reason everything becomes difficult in 3ds max there are good 3d snaps and then the local movement in right direction is specified this is obviously more convenient because a floating little window will replace two clicks in two distant places on the keyboard in blender snaps are very limited but the cut tools plug-in is very helpful which resorts all the possibilities and gives even a little bit on top but there are still too many unnecessary actions with it at least because these tools still need to be selected and you get one more click continuing the theme of precise movements let's talk about alignments to along one side of the object with another or the center of one object with a pivot of another in 3ds max there is standard tool that allows you to do it maybe not very convenient and obvious but it is here the same tool is used to align the equivalent for example if you align it to the minimum z-axis of the object it will be at the bottom of it in blender you can get these features including origin alignment with the align tools plugin the big difference between 3ds max and blender is how they handle polygon selection from the invisible side of the model in 3ds max as in most other programs there is a switch that gives you the choice of whether to select polygons on the invisible side or not and it is conveniently located right next to the vertex h loop polygon and element toggle buttons this is a big problem in blender selecting polygons on the invisible side can be only done through x-ray mode all these problems are accompanied by a giant thread on the blender development forum for myself i decided that it is easy for me that the polygons on the invisible side always can be selected therefore i installed a simple script that replaces the standard selection it's called select through i found it in the same thread on the forum let's continue installation when we select an object in blender if a small part falls within the selection frame it is added to the selection if we are selecting polygons we need the selection frame to grab the point in the center of the polygon to select it this way most of it has to be selected the problem is that when the polygons are small it is difficult to achieve an accurate selection of half of the polygon in 3ds max there is a switch next to the selection tool which allows you to choose between selecting objects and polygons when the selection frame touches a small part of them or when the selection frame completely overlap the object or polygon now let's move on to the most simple things in modeling category the mirror tool in blender is very similar to the one in 3ds max the simple tool only allows you to select the axis of the mirror however in 3d smart there is a glorious symmetry modifier that allows you to position the symmetry axis anywhere and rotate in any direction it automatically trims the object at the joint and connect their points this always result in a clean and neat geometry the array implanter is implemented as a modifier while in 3ds max is just a tool that acts like a regular copy i like the idea of the modifier better because it gives you much more possibilities for further editing for the array i would say it is specially important in terms of functionality they are similar but blender makes it much easier to set intervals using dragging with all my life for precision using exclusively numbers to set intervals in 3ds max makes its array implementation much less convenient in terms of polygon modeling in general all is not so good in 3ds max with all the functionality of edit poly some simple shapes are difficult to do when other programs have added many useful tools in this case i'm talking about the spin tool in blender it works in a clear and direct way it probably has a hinge from an edge but it works quite weird and gives not so predictable results or you can take for example the h slide in blender it's a handy tool that makes your life little easier the same can be said about a few other basic tools editing polygons in blender is quite handy and the edited poly tools in 3ds max are like 10 years ago it didn't change much as for comparing lattice in blender and the set of fft modifiers in 3ds max the implementation in blender seems incredibly over complicated 3ds max automatically creates control points according to the overall dimension of the object in blender you need to apply the modifier separately and create a lattice object independently which need to be adjusted to the side of the object fortunately there is a plugin called quick deform which allows you to do it as quickly and conveniently as in 3ds max speaking of modeling for interior design it is difficult to ignore that sweet tools to work with objects in blender fabric brush and fabric filter are amazing tools for creating variety where it needs to be and it's not just fabric tools themselves 3s max has them too it's about how easy they are to use and it's not just about fabric all physics sculpture texturing and they're easy enough to use them in everyday work you want to use them and not perceive them as additional sorts of problems and that's where i think blender has a very big advantage i actually use a lot more tools overall in my working blender than when i work in 3ds max so we done the modeling now we need to assemble a scene from the models importing models into 3ds max is never a problem because almost all the models that exist are created basically for 3ds max however blender is also capable to import effects the large number of forms including fbx and obj compatibility with other format is good and i have not noticed any problems with importing it is was to make a very important note if you take a file from 3ds max with v-ray materials you can just export it into fbx and then input it into blender and the materials will be automatically converted and you don't have to reconfigure them at least if you don't have any complex maps in them i found this incredibly important for the convenience of my work because over the years of experience i've accumulated a huge library of models that i use in my work importing from other dot blend files is quite complicated a dot blend file is an archive rotating all the data in the scene as separate files and from them it is possible to choose independently what should be copied into the scene for copying is available absolutely everything that is inside the problem is that sometimes it's difficult to find what you need among the necessary and unnecessary data in three smack the input is limited to a simple selection from the list of objects however nothing but objects can be copied but for some reason there is no need to copy anything other than objects the import icon for me is revit where models can be copied directly and easily embedded into each other which is similar to usd structure as well as standards and project settings can be copied separately by category it's also worth mentioning that both programs do not work well with the usd format they still have a very long way to go to integrate it but hopefully they will end up with the same capabilities as houdini for example for the interior since it is important to put together the architectural details of the building on blender site there is a great plugin called archipack it exists as a paid and free version it can quickly and easily create walls windows doors floors stage roof and much more for all of these categories you can set the right dimension set the settings and all of these tools work well together i would say it's an essential thing for architects and designers it also has a very good floor generator to create a pocket floor on the site of 3ds max is a live link with revit you can walk on a project and revit and immediately see changes to the scene in 3ds max considering that i do the design documentation and drawings for each project in revit anyway such good integration i would consider as a significant advantage the interesting thing is that 3s max also has built-in tools like occupy but they in a very rudimentary state i remember them back in the first version i used 3s max 2009 and they haven't changed much in that time they are still as useless as they were in interior design the placement of accessories plays a very important role they fill an interior with life show scale and balance the composition in 3ds max there is a great tool called select and place it helps a lot with the placement of accessories you just take a model and put it on the table for example there are very simple settings like which access will be at the top some models are created with the y axis up you can specify this in the settings and that's it go on arranging the bases and plates i didn't find anything similar in blender and when you have a lot of accessories for example you need to fill a shelf this tool saves a lot of time now it's time to talk about textures and materials blender is very famous for its good and very convenient algorithm for automatically creating adverbs and it's true working with adverbs is much easier than in 3ds max as i mentioned before it falls into the same category as sculpting fabrics and simulations but there is another problem i'm a professional interior designer and i know a lot of other designers and architects but you know what i don't know a single person out of those dozens of high-end professionals who has ever used androps as such why you just don't need it in architectural visualization when there is a brilliant magnificent uvw mapping 3ds max you don't really think about it in that way until you miss it in blender this is the most basic tool that makes a projection on the object of any primitive shape mostly it's a plane or a cube the only basic settings are the physical size of the texture position and rotation and that's all you need but at the same time it's crucial after all the manufacture of the style specifies what size it should be on rendering it should be exactly that size such a simple but so important tool is just not available in blender after long searching i found a plugin sure uv map which can do almost everything but to set the position of the texture is still easy in 3ds max and like the standard but by default disabled matrix uv plugin it knows how to set the proportion automatically again it is easy to stretch textures to the right size in uvw map just by scaling the cube when comparing the material editors the programs both have room to grow in the latest mix all the materials that are used in the scene are in one place you can attach a texture to multiple materials and if you change it it will change on all materials accordingly when you have a lot of materials then you get a real house on the screen where it's hard to understand what is going on what we have for grouping are several tabs in the material editor but it all get messy when you work with it if you want to create a separate tab for each room and you have common material for several rooms the material would stay on the top with the first room not the one you're working on there are no grouping tools in the form of folders labels color codes as in houdini for example in blender you can only see one material at a time visually everything look much cleaner nothing gets in the way but all you have when choose them are names and small previews when the number of material gets over a hundred when material of imported models pop up when you actively import materials yourself for example from quixote mega scans you realize that the names don't tell you anything anymore it's just the character set of letters and you're trying to figure out which one belongs to which material when i'm working with materials i don't always want to see a real-time rendering i just want to know that all the textures are in place i can only see the final result later that's why image quality in the viewport plays an important role in the workflow with blender that's great it looks really good you can adjust the normal map without running the renderer the lighting is soft in 3ds max is more basic looking and with v-ray it just looks awful like from the early 2000s most of the materials from v-ray are not supported they look flat with no hint of their glossiness a bump or normal map is out of question you won't see them forget about pretending global illumination all the walls that not directly face you are just hard black shadows but in blender this beauty is not given for free but at the cost of loading these materials on the finished scene which is one room it takes me as much as 20 seconds and the most important thing is that as soon as you switch to any other task this cache is simply deleted and if you accidentally or by your own will click on a workspace with a beautiful display of materials be prepared to wait 20 seconds without a chance to undo it the very first time you open the scene this losing will even out the difference between opening blender quickly and opening res max for a long time and throughout the day this difference will only increase on the other hand a fairly primitive view in 3ds max is enough to see what material is applied to the object adjust the position and size of textures check how well they fit onto the object and the amazing thing is that i can't remember even working with 3ds max without having textures displayed like what is called solid in blender i'm used to having them always in plain sight the lighting in blender is done well it's especially easy to set up the environment everything is designed so you can just pick up an hdr map and adjust it intensity in v-ray you have to create a light source and go to the material editor and load the hdr map from there unfortunately blender doesn't have a simple on and off switch for lights you can do it through the nodes but it's not as easy as a normal switch this is especially inconvenient when there are so many light that you want to edit them all at once in groups experimenting with configurations vray has a light listers that collect all the light in the scene in their properties grouping them into samples that can be conveniently edited unfortunately nodes hide a lot of useful features that should be in plain sight such as light temperature it's also worth noting that cycles recommends placing portals on windows in theory this has been abandoned long ago in favor of adaptive dome light which handles this task automatically render blender has a built-in color management system called filmic blender which is the analog of aces to make it work properly you can assign the color space to a texture in the material editor and that's just great it having color management system is very important to me in 3ds max and v-ray it's so bad and complicated that i even created this channel to explain how to work with it in blender it's very simple and easy to use it's default now all you have to do is not mess up the texture color space in the material editor but the best thing is that after applying it to a render the output image stays 16 bit which allows you to work with the dynamic range in the compositor it works so well that just for sake of it you can already switch to blender finally now we can make interiors without terrible overexposed highlights or black shadows this is probably my favorite thing about blender of course it is because that's what make a render photo realistic when the render is ready you can just save it with all the layers and related information it has to be planted this is the opposite of pirelli with its vray emg format which saves all the settings and layers and for some reason it can automatically save all the layers in one exr file in blender there are slots that overwrite and clear themselves when the program is closed in v-ray there is a history where all the renders are permanently stored until the allocated size of the history runs out and then the old renders will be overwritten i have set the size of 10 gigabytes and that's enough to store renderings for their past few weeks given that absolutely all data with all layers and settings are saved automatically and sometimes i do not even save separately the final endings completely relying on the history i ran the sequence of five to ten cameras then come back see what i got and start to save in separate images despite all the integration of rtx and optics cycles on gpu is very slow after viewing usually my rendering resolution is three and a half thousand by two thousand sometimes up to five thousand in width regardless of the scene the final render time is usually around 40 meters with vray gpu plus rtx the amount of noise is so low that i often don't include the generous result in the final image or only include in certain places in post processing where noise might be slightly visible but for the most part i am very careful with the noising in cycles it took me about an hour and 20 minutes for about the same scene at three and a half thousand by 2000 resolution which is twice as long i used both rtx and optics there was so much noise that i couldn't do without a denoiser also i'm used to progressive rendering in vray when the image isn't rendering in squares but all at once with weary this is not a problem rendering time is not much longer and the quality is quite good even for the early stages but in cycles it just turned out some kind of horn of course there is e-cycles which gives much faster result but the rtx version was 450 dollars with one here general so it's about the same price as a v-ray and if it's twice as fast as cycles is just as fast as v-ray i honestly can't write it now let's talk about small things about rendering in blender it's very difficult to enjoy the vertical camera shift in v-ray the switch automatically removes the vertical perspective this is critical for architectural rendering in your real-time rendering program from the v-ray developers called house vantage already has this feature vertical perspective alignment that's been said there is essentially nothing in this program at all but they know how important it is so they decided to add this feature right away another small complaint is the lack of horizon line displaying blender it is important for the correct alignment of the scene with the background thanks to the good color management system the renders in blender are incredible just like in v-ray but in blender they are more predictable in vary it's only something wrong with the contrast or exposure and you need to fine tune it to get good result and while the work process in 3ds max ends with the render you can start the compositing process in blender some people think that they built in additional tools in blender are not very useful because specialized programs do a much better job however i enjoyed using the built-in compositor i don't do complicated compositing so i don't have a specialized tool for it i just do small edits in photoshop so i was quite satisfied with the small features of the built-in compositor that came as a bonus to the 3d graphic functionality as i mentioned earlier i loved the background exposure a bit and made it more natural other than that i did some basic color correction and added some glow to the windows but if i had done the animation it would have saved me a lot of time unfortunately there is no proper save button in composite and the forum thread about this has been going on for years of course you could save the result via the renderer node but then it would be 8 bits instead of 16. yes there are ways to save it but it's much more complicated than it needs to be in houdini with the same nodes for some reason there is no problem with this and data can be saved at any stage i like blender it's good it is especially good for interior design but only with the plugins listed early of course it has a lot of room for growth and it's not for nothing that cs max is considered the standard in interior design it has a lot of tools that you can't find anywhere else but in the card software itself blender without plugins is much more like maya or cinema 4d it lacks precision and is more focused on features that will help artists create game models or animation stairs max is originally designed for architecture and design and the more you work with it gain experience in the design projects the more you appreciate 3ds max with its integration with revit textures with specific dimensions snapping similar to autocad because you know that a deviation of one millimeter in furniture production is unacceptable and autodesk is doing the smart thing by releasing three different 3d modeling programs for three different purposes there is max for architecture and design microphone animation and games endless for those five people who work in industrial and automotive design and they know why they need alias but blender falls somewhere in the middle it's a great platform from a technical standpoint that has great plugins that give you all the missing functionality you need for interior design and give your artist tools like sculpting simulations and animations that you haven't used before built in real-time render eevee gives you a reason to start doing animation i think i can cope with the remaining disadvantages that were left and will continue to work in blender also i will not abaddon 3ds max somewhere i'll get better at blender somewhere i learned how to solve remaining problems and somewhere the developers will fix it but that doesn't mean i have to stop at blender there are so many tools to try you

Channel: MrPrevedmedved

Views: 11,591

Rating: 4.7509155 out of 5

Keywords: blender, 3dsmax, archviz, vray

Id: ukPswzRUXac

Length: 31min 5sec (1865 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021