VRed

What do you like best?

The renders out of VRED are second to none. The quality is astounding. The integration with physical studio setups is top notch and the speed of the VRAY engine is very good. The materials editor is also quite powerful and when integrated with Illustrator you get a great solution for custom textures.

What do you dislike?

The learning curve is extremely steep and the interface is a bit esoteric. The hardware required to use this software regularly is pretty heavy duty (since the render engine is CPU based) - so be prepared to invest in a core-heavy system (e.g. Xeon). Another thing we're not thrilled with is that the updates are fairly frequent (not bad) but they are often gigs and gigs large (bad).

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Jump in, GET TRAINING, and spend adequate time getting adjusted. The increase in performance based on familiarity is worth the time investment.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

We use VRED to provide very high resolution, very high quality renders of our digital designs, prior to physical prototypes. You're likely using an in-born renderer for your pre-production work, but VRED has enabled us to create work that looks like magazine spreads long before we ever print or machine the first part. This photo-realistic system has enabled us to visually evaluate parts with our customers digitally allowing us to save money.