Eames Chair Interior

[jonmoore]

This scene was converted (and heavily adapted) from an old Richard Yot tutorial scene. The purpose of the test was to see how Vray would handle a mix of native 901 PBS materials with Vray native materials. All the materials on the Eames chair are Vray native materials and the floor & plant are Modo native (converted to 901 PBS materials first).

It's very easy to convert Modo materials to Vray (although I've found you have to boost bump/displacement values a tad) and the 901 native materials look great via the Vray engine too.

Encountered one strange bug. When saving from the Vray Frame Buffer the background image from my sIBL environment lighting setup wasn't included (even though it showed in the VFB window, so I was unable to tonemap a 32bit image and ended up screen-grabbing a TIFF for a bit of curves tweaking in Photoshop. In saying that I was able to achieve a balanced exposure with no need for Reinhard within Modo so this wasn't much of a hurdle. Not sure if this is an old bug as I'm using the Mac beta (which hasn't been updated since the beginning of June).

Very speedy too. A 1600x1060 image rendered in a shade over 20 minutes on a Mac Pro (cylinder).

[jonmoore]

Updated the uploaded image, having managed to tonemap the 32bit exr (background intact). The problem I reported before was not with Vray for Modo but with Photoshop automatically converting the alpha to transparency (I was using a very old version of Photoshop on my test machine).

[swizzelz]

Looks great! Thanks for sharing. I'd be very interested in seeing a comparison modo render. Would it be easy to substitute the vray materials with modos?

[jonmoore]

Looks great! Thanks for sharing. I'd be very interested in seeing a comparison modo render. Would it be easy to substitute the vray materials with modos?

It's not just a case of swapping render engines as they each react to light in different ways (so it would take quite a bit of time to try and match the renders in a fair manner) but the thing I've been most impressed with is how easily you can convert existing Modo scenes to Vray scenes if you convert all your Modo materials to PBS ones first (new in 901).

The relative merits of different render engines is a very subjective thing but for me Vray excels because of the subtlety of its surface shading the speed with which you can work when composing scenes. The big question I have regarding Vray for Modo has more to do with the way it's going to be priced. A number of the studios I work with use VrayForC4d because of the unlimited render nodes you get with each license. I suspect that Vray for Modo will follow the traditional Chaos Group pricing structure so much as Vray in Modo is (subjectively) a better workflow experience than VrayForC4d, the economics of the purchasing decision for small/medium size studios will be complex. My personal opinion is that Vray in Modo feels very similar to working with Vray in Max/Maya (and that's a very good thing) but VrayForC4d is still very compelling because of the cost benefits of putting together a DR setup (and it must be said, the stability of C4D in general).