new vray ambient occlusion script

[giraffe]

thanks a lot

[Infrared digital]

Can this be used for animations ?

oops - didn't see that above

[Olli96]

can it be that the script doesnt work with the vray physical sun and camera ? all i get is a black image. when i switch to a standard camera with standard lights it works...

Olli

[percydaman]

you would have to reexpose your camera to see it most likely. Or use another means of creating vray dirt pass.

[Olli96]

alright, thanks percy.

[dlparisi]

Just untick "Exposure" on the vray camera for it to show up properly. The script turns off all lights so there's no compatibility issue with the vray sun.

[Olli96]

great, thanks for the tip. trying it later

[zoobadoo]

cool tool, it's true you can do al this by hand, but i like the one button approach.

one question though, as always there are multiple pictures nand rendertimes to handle, so is it possible to use the script in the queue? i got a normal render after submitting it.

and a small thing; i use the color mapping multipliers very often, they influence the render (dirtmap mode) which i think they shouldn't.

[Bathyscaph]

Thanks. This is a handy little script.

[ruud3dv]

Thanks, great script.

I do run into an error though, when in the vray framebuffer-tab a file is specified that doesn't exist yet, i get the error:

-- Runtime error: Error opening bitmap: E:\Project\1086\Final\1086-AO-01.exr'

Happens during the taking of a snapshot of the vray settings in line 161:

val=getProperty renderers.current i

Can still save but 3dsmax is very unresponsive after this, have to restart max.

[Laserschwert]

I really like this script! But now that VRayDirt supports transparencies, I wish this would be included in the script as well. Although that won't work using the "Material Override" anymore, and the script would have to check every material in the scene for opacity maps and keep those (not to mention restoring the original materials after rendering), which might make the process a lot slower than it is now.

Would it be possible to include a "keep opacity maps"-option in the MaterialOverride? Or to make it even "simpler" (at least for us users), a VRayAmbientOcclusion render-element that (optionally) takes opacity-maps, bump-maps, etc. into account...

[vlado]

In newer builds and in SP3, VRayExtraTex works properly with transparent objects, so if you use that with VRayDirt, you'll get what you need.

Best regards,
Vlado

[dbuchhofer]

Laser, If you can describe a little better the steps you need the scripting part of it isn't that difficult

[Laserschwert]

Laser, If you can describe a little better the steps you need the scripting part of it isn't that difficult

Well, the script basically has to check the opacity of each material, and replace it accordingly. There are 3 cases I guess:

1. No transparencies
If the material doesn't have a map in the opacity-slot and the opacity-spinner is set to 100, the material is replaced with a simple VRayDirt-material (VRayDirt in the diffuse slot, 100% self-illumination).

2. Opacity-map
If the material has an opacity-map, it gets replaced with a standard-material that gets that opacity-map, a VRayDirt-map in the diffuse-slot (with "work with transparencies" checked) and 100% self-illumination.

3. Material opacity
If the material has no opacity map, but the opacity-spinner is set to anything below 100, the material is replaced with a VRayDirt-material that has the appropriate opacity.

I think this would be the "simplest" way. To take it further you might want to include reflection and refraction of the materials as well, or add an include/exclude-list to your script.

Of course, after rendering all materials would have to be restored to their originals.

[plastic_]

Of course, after rendering all materials would have to be restored to their originals.

that's the problem...the current vray ambient occlusion script doesn't mess with the scene, only with the render settings (global override). replacing all materials at rendertime and restoring them afterwards, is something that sounds risky and slow, especially with large scenes and complex materials. the original purpose of the script was for quick tests and previews.
since i'm focused on archviz, where scenes can have thousands of objects and huge bitmap textures, i never considered this method. i'd hate to release a script that might crash max.
i will look at vlados suggestion though, when SP3 is out, maybe i'll find a new way for transparent objects.