3DMax is probably the 3D software that has the most external rendering engines that can be integrated with it.
Today we're going to take a look at the 13 best 3Ds max rendering plugins, we'll start with the following list:
13- Radeon ProRender ( Radeon Pro renderer)
ProRender , officially known as FireRender , is AMD 's open source path tracer. This 3ds Max plugin was developed by the folks at Render Legion , who created the famous Corona renderer. It is based on OpenCL and benefits from AMD 's high-performance Radeon™ Rays technology.
ProRender is a powerful physically based rendering engine. It can simultaneously use and balance the power of multiple GPUs and CPUs on the same system .
Radeon ProRender is a free rendering plugin that comes with a library of materials that you can use in 3Ds max for free.
12- Indigo Render (Indigo renderer)
Indigo Renderer is an unbiased GPU and CPU renderer that accurately simulates the physics of light. Indigo 4.2 has just been released, with a brand new multi- GPU engine and workflow and UI enhancements.
Indigo was initially released as freeware until version 2.0 became a commercial product. The Indigo 3 series introduced many important features such as real-time editing capabilities, while version 4 of the software adds pure GPU rendering via a vendor-neutral OpenCL path tracing engine.
11-FurryBall (furry ball)
FurryBall is a 3Ds Max plugin for real-time GPU production quality . FurryBall RT offers advanced rendering techniques implemented directly in 3ds Max with support for multiple GPUs . FurryBall was developed in 2009 for internal AAA studio purposes. FurryBall was used to render the entire feature film Goat Story 2 in 2008 . This may be the world's first cinematic CGI feature film rendered exclusively on the GPU . In 2015 , the latest FurryBall RT version was released with a completely rewritten core.
10- Arion Render ( Arion renderer)
Arion is a hybrid CPU/GPU renderer. It is interactive, impartial and progressive. There is a standalone application, but there is also a plugin available for 3dsmax .
The plugin was created by Spanish company Random control based in Madrid . They are the creators of Maverick rendering technology and ArionFX , a post-processing tool for HDR images.
9-Maxwell Render (Maxwell renderer)
Maxwell Render is an unbiased 3D rendering engine developed by Next Limit Technologies in Madrid, Spain . This standalone software is used in the film, animation, and VFX industries, as well as architectural and product design visualization
Maxwell Render was released to the public as an early alpha version in December 2004 (after two years of internal development), using the Global Illumination (GI ) algorithm
Maxwell Render it's trademark Multilight feature, which allows real-time changes in light intensity and color, was used in the feature film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button .
Maxwell 5 marks the release of a completely rewritten rendering engine that uses the GPU much faster than previous pure CPU capabilities. The new version also offers integrated cloud rendering for use on internal networks or third-party render farms.
8-Iray (Iray)
NVIDIA Iray is a 3Ds Max plugin for accelerated rendering on the GPU with photorealism and physical accuracy. When combined with the parallel processing power of Nvidia graphics cards, it achieves a level of speed that can reduce iteration times for scenes during the creative process.
Iray excels in ease of use during scene configuration, with greater photographic realism and high interactivity.
Iray offers three rendering modes to support a wide range of design needs, workflows and content complexities:
- Iray Photoreal final product render with full global illumination support
- Interactive Iray Interactive and editable ray tracing
- Real-time Iray large display function and real-time version (optional)
Since the rendering modes share the same high-level scene description and the same materials, Iray is able to support perfect image blending when switching between modes. The result is a unified user experience
7- Final render
FinalRender is a 3D rendering engine developed by Cebas as a plug-in for 3D Studio Max . FinalRender offers a lot of great tools for optimizing global illumination for still images and animations. They have a really nice and flexible system to render anything you want.
With Drop 3 , we get even more speedups on GPU and CPU fina . It comes with CPU -based noise reduction technology. In addition to the latest NVIDIA RTX noise reduction options. FinalRender also provides a CPU - based Ai-Denoiser for Intel's Open Image Denoiser .
6- FSTORMRENDER (storm renderer)
FStrorm is a GPU plug-in renderer for 3dsmax . Developed by Andrey Kozlov , it is a fast rendering engine with many unique features such as improved tone mapping, light sampling, native BRDF model, glare effects, improved ray tracer and optimized QMC sampler. Kozlov was one of the main developers working for a company called OTOY , the creators of the Octane renderer, and he was also responsible for the implementation of Octane into 3ds max .
Kozlov stopped working for OTOY and launched Fstormrender a year later in 2016 , after which he was sued by OTOY claiming that he stole their code to create FstormRender , so they filed a lawsuit against him in New Zealand, causing FstormRender to temporarily shut down, and then the case in Russia went ahead, reversing the order and granting Kozlov the right to sell FStormRender licenses, which cost € 20 a month for one PC .
5-Arnold (Arnold)
Arnold is an unbiased, physically-based, ray-traced 3D rendering application created by Solid Angle . Notable films using Arnold include Alice in Wonderland, Thor, Captain America, X- Men: First Class, The Avengers, Space Pirate Captain Harlock , Elysium , Pacific Rim , and Gravity .
Arnold 's lead architect is Marcos Fajardo . What is now Arnold came about in 1997 when Marcos decided to write his own renderer .
Solid Angle, the company behind Arnold , was acquired by Autodesk in early 2016 . The acquisition was officially announced on April 18 , 2016 .
4-Octane Render (octane renderer)
Octane Render is an unbiased rendering application with real-time capabilities. It was created by New Zealand company Refractive Software , which was acquired by OTOY on March 13 , 2012 . Version 1.0 was released on November 28 , 2012 ; later versions of Octane Render continue to use the web version for deployment . The Octane renderer is the first commercial unbiased ray tracer to take full advantage of the GPU , giving it a significant speed advantage by allowing users to more easily modify scenes in real time.
Octane Render only runs on Nvidia 's CUDA technology and is limited to Nvidia video cards; Octane Render 2019 is planned to run on Vulkan , so will be able to run on both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.
3-Corona Renderer (corona renderer)
Corona Renderer is a modern high performance (no) bias photorealistic renderer available for Autodesk 3ds Max and as a standalone application.
The development of Corona Renderer started in 2009 as a personal student project of Ondřej Karlík at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Corona has grown into a full-time commercial project after Ondřej founded the company together with the former CG artist, associate professor and researcher at Charles University in Prague . In August 2017 , the company became part of Chaos Group for further expansion and development.
2-Redshift (redshift)
Redshift Rendering Technologies Inc was founded in Newport Beach, CA in early 2012 with the goal of developing a production-quality GPU -accelerated renderer with support for biased global illumination techniques.
Redshift has " out-of-core " rendering, which means that if the GPU runs out of memory (because there are too many polygons or textures in the scene), it will use system memory. In some cases this may come at a performance cost, so it's generally best to use a GPU with as much VRAM as possible to minimize the performance impact. Certain types of data, such as textures, are actually well suited for out-of-core rendering. This means that even if your scene uses 4K/8K textures, you can still expect great rendering performance!
1- Vray ( v- ray)
V-Ray is a rendering plugin that works perfectly with 3ds max , it was developed by Chaos Group , a Bulgarian company founded in 1997 in Sofia. V-Ray is a commercial plug-in for third-party 3D computer graphics software applications used in visualization and computer graphics industries such as media, entertainment, film and video game production, industrial design, product design, and architecture.
Vray is one of the best plugins for 3ds Max and the longest existing one. Although this plugin is not new, it has been continuously developed and enhanced over the years, it used to be difficult to tweak settings to prepare a scene, but now it is much easier and enables better quality renders to be created in less time .
Vray has powerful CPU and GPU rendering functions to meet the needs of high-end production. V-Ray GPU CUDA renders on CPU and GPU to take full advantage of all hardware.
In conclusion, I hope this article was helpful and gave you at least an overview of some basics of 3dMax rendering plugins before you decide which one to use in the future.