Vray or Fry

I am looking to get edu licence for Fry or Vray.... Could somebody point me in direction and kind of spell advantages or disadvantages ...learning curve etc. I currently teach Podium and SU and School of Arts and would like to introduce higher quality renderer.
Any comments would be appreciated.

Since students don't have super rigs at their disposal in general, I would settle for the speed of Vray.
You could always go for Fry quality in a second stage.

In a perfect world, having both would be the thing.

Cheers Chris... Valid comment. Can't really have long renders longer than session with students at the time.

VRAY

Hi and wellcome Sepo.

Vray is a very good render. And the best features (or pros) are:
a).-The biggest community because it was the first "external" and better alternative to the Scanline render engine.
b).-Thanks to a) has the most and best support you can find in everywhere.
c).-Is really fast. We could say faster than any other render engine.

The cons:
a).-Really difficult to configure or stablish the settings.
b).-Sometimes unexpected effects or results...
c).-In some cases it's quasi-impossible to reach some results, for example ilumination with only indirect lights and through a window...And soon I will post my images related to this. I don't know how reach this with Vray.

[u]

FRYRENDER[u]
The Pros:
a).-Really easy to set the configuration.
b).-Great results, great quality...Better than Vray or at least more real.
c).-Possibility of turning of and on the lights during or in the finish. You can always present to your client two renders at the same time: one at day and another at night or even infinite renders considering this posibility.
d).-You can resume the render.
e).-One of the fastest render engines in the market.
f).-You can stop the render till the quality (noise) be what you want to be. It doesn't stop if you don't want.

The Cons:
a).-Respect Vray Fryrender needs much more time (but depends on the scene...The scene that made me change says all).
b).-The lack of a render region...This feature has been eliminated from Fry I don't know why.
c).-The space in your Hard Drive: I suppose that this wont be an issue for your but if you are short with you hard drive, you will notice that depending on your scene the .dsi that makes possible that you can turn in on or of the lights and even de sunlight, occupes 45MB for instance...Compared with Maxwell is nothing because with Maxwell this was (for the same scene) 450MB...¡¡450MB!!...Of course: more than 20 emitters, etc...

The a) "problem" is not a problem because in the future a 4 cores will be the standard and 8 cores the same...And more cores if you want...But the diferences will be in certain terms the same. the b) contra is the most important for me.

Other users can tell you that you can't compare a biased render (Vray) with a unbiased render engine (Fryrender)...But the real life doesn't make this distinction and maybe you can find a scene that Vray can't solve...This is the reason why I changed to unbiased render engines...And exactly Fryrender better than Maxwell although this is expensive in terms of hard drive.

I hope this can be help you.

And if someone consider that something I have siad is wrong, please...Don't let me be wrong!!

Thank you!

Jorari thanks for your considered reply... It is difficult one ...I am tempted to go for Vray as I have used it and have general understanding how it works... Also being biased the render times are more acceptable.
You mentioned lights in Fry which you can switch post render... Is that similar feature like multilights in Maxwell?

Well i think both are good engines, but for student i would choose Vray.
It will proberly be much easier to learn in terms of more common used materials system and tutorials.
And it will take much less time, ofcourse fry render times can be faster for some scenes, but for the average ones vray will prberly be fastest.
Speed is the most important thing yett, and you will proberly gett great images with vray aswell

And yes the layerblending in fryrender is similar to multilight

Fryrender layerblending is like multilight Maxwell feature in terms of lights.

And...Vray easier to learn than Maxwell or Fryrender...I don't know what to say...Mmmmm...

The same slogan that it's said when you hear about Maxwell can be applied to Fryrender.

What happens is that people (as me) has started with Vray and think that starting with Maxwell or Fryrender could be more difficult...Is an effort of imagination and thinking how about if we have started in 3D wotrld with Fryrender instead of Vray and then you try to switch to Vray...Wow...I'm sure that you would probably say the same:"Fry is easier!" I started with Real 3d and Imagine in the Amiga 500, then with Scanline in 3DStudio v3 (over DOS), then Vray and then Maxwell and then Fryrender and for me, the easiest maybe Real 3D ( :-) ) and then Maxwell-Fryrender. With Vray you can control a lot of settings and is like if you have 4 render engines but when you start this could be everything but a help.

Other thing: when you launch a render with Fry you can continue doing things inside 3DSMAX because is a separate program which runs meanwhile...Or you can spend time wrinting in this funny forum!!