I was always under the influence that we were only allowed to use freeware on our animations. Looking through the animations i feel like some of them used vray or something besides mental ray. Is there a way to get it for free and im just missing something?
Maya or 3dsMax, from Autodesk is what you need to enter into the animation competition.
Those are the programs used yes but within those programs there are different rendering softwares to use. One of which costs around $1000. Vray
I think some of those animations are done by very talented people using mental ray, or the new render engine with 2012
Could you possibly post an example of one of these animations? I have always been amazed by what can be done with mental ray in 3DS. Our team actually looked into buying the V-ray rendering engine but found it was way out of our budget, extended render times way out of our time frame, and it was unnecessary for our simple application.
As I have heard a few people say, you can achieve much more than you believe you can in MAX with mental ray. The flexibility of the mental ray materials and the speed of rendering (also throw in the cost in there) are an unbeatable combination.
This collection shows some renderings from multiple programs as well as multiple render engines, and I have to say that most of the models using mental ray look absolutely stunning. Most of that is because of fancy texturing or work with caustics (both of which I highly recommend getting acquainted with). There are plenty of tutorials on how to make your MR textures look amazing, you just have to keep in mind your rendering time (at least our team would).
If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them to the best of my ability (however small my ability is).
What cost are you talking about? 3DS Max is provided free through the Autodesk Student Center. And by default the 2012 version comes with three render engines (Mental Ray, Quicksilver and the default Scanline)
I think i just need to find myself a mentor. Theres only so much i can learn myself i suppose. Need a little push in the right direction 
Easier said than done around here though lol
Check out the http://area.autodesk.com/ and http://www.cgsociety.org/. There are a bunch of really amazing 3d artists and tutorials on there.
Don’t forget about rendering time. If your animation takes 10 minutes to render each frame then a 30 second animation will requires 150 HOURS of rendering time!:ahh:
A couple of times our team had to use Scanline rendering because we didn’t have time for Mental Ray. This year we planned a little better (and borrowed an 8-core PC) so we were able to use Mental Ray on our safety animation.
Complicated geometry, caustics, fancy lighting, shadows, reflections and transparent objects increase rendering time.
Most of the big studios have rendering farms; rooms packed full of cheap PCs that do nothing but render frames. It’s not to difficult to set up network rendering with Max. I don’t know about Maya.
But you can do beautiful work with the Scanline renderer:
http://www.mrcad.com/blog-images/scanline-render.jpg
http://raph.com/3dartists/forums/attachments/336.jpg
The cost I am mentioning is the cost of buying a Vray engine. My point was that everything we now receive is completely free. I believe the Vray engine is about $1200, well out of most teams animation budget.
While were on the topic, autodesk is using a lot of resources to make sure FIRST teams are able to produce impressive pieces like we have seen a lot of in the past few days on CD. So much is possible with the given software I could not even imagine learning everything and still being unhappy about my options.
I guess what I am trying to say is: Thank you Autodesk for everything you do for us!
+1 for that! Its nice to see companies giving towards the future!
Vray is truely really great as i’ve worked with it, but mental ray is equally great. Especially with IRay now…
If you really wanted a cheaper rendering engine that achieves vray-style results…but not necessarily the exact same, here are a few
octane render is only 100 dollars
and indigo render is more expensive, but you can use the trial.
Use mental ray for rendering. It is included with 3ds Max and Maya, and is a terrific renderer. I use it in production in both apps daily, and have for years. If I may suggest, worry about the animation first. Yes, you do need to figure out the rendering, but what will really sell this is the story and animation. If you need help on the rendering, or any part of the process, feel free to ask.
-Adam Crespi
Autodesk Certification Evaluator