Vray vs Mental ray GI

hmmm - baked lightmaps will be fast but they will not adapt
to changes/animation in the overall scene condition... me thinks

vray has a feature where you can precalc the GI solution
in an incrementive way and only on frames you want.
these produces GI with less flickering;
Vray only updates every specific frame
you chose - let's say every 10th frame - 
and interpolates the GI solution inbetween-
so the GI noise is reduced - and noise is always the 
problem for GI renderings in animation

so would recommend vray, you will get away without
cranking the parameters up to high for a clean look.

but i have to confess, that i don't know if MR  
has such an option too or not....


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very insightful.  Well, it's still a toss-up (but not for long cause I gotta 
get this question dealt with FAST)
the environmental elements will not change at all during the animation, that 
much I know.  However, who knows how much light-tweaking we'll need to do, 
and Vray would be responsive to those kinds of changes.
Mental ray doesn't have the same flickerless system as Vray.  My co-worker is 
raving about the Vray 'light-info inside geometry' Vray has, so it's 
really tempting.  The only question is, having thought that Vray was mainly for

archetectural renders, is an entire animation going to take too long 
rendering with Vray?  we have no in-house render farm, BTW.  

also, mental ray flickering....Our characters are going to be rendered with 
Mental ray...reason being that the fast SubSurfaceScatter combined with GI 
looks GREAT...and also seems to cancel out any flickering on the skin!  the 
SSS provides just enough diffusion of light.  Interesting observation, at 
any rate.

very insightful.  Well, it's still a toss-up (but not for long cause I gotta 
get this question dealt with FAST)
the environmental elements will not change at all during the animation, that 
much I know.  However, who knows how much light-tweaking we'll need to do, 
and Vray would be responsive to those kinds of changes.
Mental ray doesn't have the same flickerless system as Vray.  My co-worker is 
raving about the Vray 'light-info inside geometry' Vray has, so it's 
really tempting.  The only question is, having thought that Vray was mainly for

archetectural renders, is an entire animation going to take too long 
rendering with Vray?  we have no in-house render farm, BTW.  

also, mental ray flickering....Our characters are going to be rendered with 
Mental ray...reason being that the fast SubSurfaceScatter combined with GI 
looks GREAT...and also seems to cancel out any flickering on the skin!  the 
SSS provides just enough diffusion of light.  Interesting observation, at 
any rate.