I'd only use mental ray for the occasional specific task. heres a few things it does off the top of my head.

1. Ambient occlusion. Gives a nice result but then vray has vray dirt now so....

2. Fast sss. Is easy to set up and is slightly better than vrays fast sss but doesnt work with motoin blur.

3. Mental ray caustics are fast and easy to set up.

4. it has some nice contour effects for doing cell shading.

Other than that I think for all your GI and reflection refraction renderings vray is the best bet. and for everything else scanline is still the fastest option.

People who really know mental ray well say that it is more accurate to real world lighting and the latest version has many of the features that vray has but because vray is so much easier to learn and set up it is really the renderer of choice in my opinion.

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ahh, interesting. i find Vray's rendering settings a little intimidating so many settings. But hey i guess ill just have to learn it ill do some research on vrays dirt .Thanks for the post

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Never give UP.

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i agree that mental ray render faster than vray,and it is easy to set up . before i use mental ray but now im using and studying vray especially the lighting coz for me rendering on vray is more more realistic .....and very challenging although i have hard time on lighting ...lol......... vray is great!!!!!!!!!

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i wish i can do that too......
i need more practice....

hehe, yeah, wont hurt to struggle a bit, to get a good result.

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Never give UP.

[Link to s95.photobucket.com]
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