Ozone 5 now released, works with VRay - Jipeeee!!!

[Morne]

I've been waiting for this one for a while and now it's finally here:
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/ozone/ozone_5.0/

It's only US$295
...the sucky part is that it's US$95 per render node

What you guys think?

[JeffG2]

Looks nice.

[sandykoufax]

Isn't that a Atmosphere module of Vue 9 xStream ? ah?
Is it better than Dreamscape ?

[yyk]

Interesting but so far I haven't heard much good about the integration of Vue to 3DS Max so I'm skeptic about their other products also. If someone has first hand experience on how this really works with Vray, please chime in Registered to their Ozone forum just to find out I'm still not given access if I don't already own Ozone.

[joconnell]

I'm not a huge fan of that policy. I bought vue 5 or 6 a few years back only to discover when I got access to the forum the amount of people complaining about serious problems with it.

[SteveC]

I got this yesterday and have been playing around with it, nothing too in depth at the moment,
just seeing if it integrates in to my workflow and I have to say that so far it does look promising.

I use linear workflow in all my scenes, with vray physical camera and sun and I render to the vray
frame buffer. Once I set up the Ozone gamma settings to match my max gamma settings it was
pretty much plain sailing, the scene simply rendered how I would expect it too without Ozone, only
this time I had a very nice sky with clouds etc in it.

I did notice a few things, the light cache took longer to calculate and the sky took longer to render,
which was expected, and also at render time Ozone created its own camera in the same position as
the Vray Physical camera, although the render was done through the Vray Physical camera, so this
was not a problem.

Like I said, it's early days, and I've only really looked at how Ozone fits in to my workflow but it does
look promising.

see ya
Steve

[yyk]

I got this yesterday and have been playing around with it, nothing too in depth at the moment,
just seeing if it integrates in to my workflow and I have to say that so far it does look promising.

I use linear workflow in all my scenes, with vray physical camera and sun and I render to the vray
frame buffer. Once I set up the Ozone gamma settings to match my max gamma settings it was
pretty much plain sailing, the scene simply rendered how I would expect it too without Ozone, only
this time I had a very nice sky with clouds etc in it.

I did notice a few things, the light cache took longer to calculate and the sky took longer to render,
which was expected, and also at render time Ozone created its own camera in the same position as
the Vray Physical camera, although the render was done through the Vray Physical camera, so this
was not a problem.

Like I said, it's early days, and I've only really looked at how Ozone fits in to my workflow but it does
look promising.

see ya
Steve

Thanks for your input! Would love to see some examples rendered and some info on render time differences if you have the time. Does this thing only alter the "background" or does it create true atmospheric effects for example can objects be inside or partially inside the cloud layers, like mountain tops etc?

[SteveC]

Hi yyk,

I'll sort out some test renders when I get time and post the time differences.Very interesting
question about how the pluggin interacts with elements in the scene, this is something else
I'll have a look at.

When you look at the scene in the viewport you dont actually see anything that represents
the clouds etc, all you get is the direct light that ozone creates to represent the sun, which
I just delete and use the Vray sun. In the atmosphere editor you can adjust many things like

cloud base
height of the actual cloud itself
clouds opacity
cloud density
cover
sharpness
feathers
detail
altitude variation
Ambient light
Shadow density

Just looking at what adjustments can be made I would pretty much expect it to
interact with scene elements, it would be a major flaw if it didn't.

There is actually a hell of a lot that this plugin seems to be able to do, such as
Fog
Haze
God rays
Stars (not sure what this is unless it literally means stars for night views)
Rainbows
Ice Rings (again not to sure what this is, need to read the manual a bit more)
Lens flares

I would be mega impressed if all these work with Vray. I could email you the
pdf manual if you like, to give you a better idea of what the potential is and
when I get chance I'll upload some test renders to check out just how interactive
it is with scenes.

Steve

[Morne]

Hi Steve
Looking forward to some of your test renders!

[yyk]

Hi yyk,

I'll sort out some test renders when I get time and post the time differences.Very interesting
question about how the pluggin interacts with elements in the scene, this is something else
I'll have a look at.

When you look at the scene in the viewport you dont actually see anything that represents
the clouds etc, all you get is the direct light that ozone creates to represent the sun, which
I just delete and use the Vray sun. In the atmosphere editor you can adjust many things like

cloud base
height of the actual cloud itself
clouds opacity
cloud density
cover
sharpness
feathers
detail
altitude variation
Ambient light
Shadow density

Just looking at what adjustments can be made I would pretty much expect it to
interact with scene elements, it would be a major flaw if it didn't.

There is actually a hell of a lot that this plugin seems to be able to do, such as
Fog
Haze
God rays
Stars (not sure what this is unless it literally means stars for night views)
Rainbows
Ice Rings (again not to sure what this is, need to read the manual a bit more)
Lens flares

I would be mega impressed if all these work with Vray. I could email you the
pdf manual if you like, to give you a better idea of what the potential is and
when I get chance I'll upload some test renders to check out just how interactive
it is with scenes.

Steve

Thanks again for your time, indeed, if all the features work right away this will prove pretty handy I think. I need something like this for a future project, and since it's not that expensive and I've got some free time tonight and tomorrow I decided to buy it. I'll post my first impressions later!

[SteveC]

I've managed to have another look at ozone and done a few test renders
to guage some render times.

Below is the basic test scene with the following settings

render size 1280x720, IR map=high, LC= 1000 all other settings at default,
camera set up using sunny 16 rule, Vray sun and rendered to Vray frame buffer.



IR+LC render time= 1' 12" Image render time= 26"

The next scene uses exactly the same setting as above but now incorporates
the Daylight Atmosphere at default settings.



IR+LC render time= 5' 42" Image render time= 4' 24"

The next scene again uses exactly the same settings as the base scene but now
incorporates the Daylight Atmosphere with small cumulus clouds.



IR+LC render time= 4' 29" Image render time= 9' 40"

The renders were all done with default settings in the atmosphere , however with
the amount of tweaking that is available to the clouds, haze, fog etc I recon these
times can be brought down quiet nicely to an acceptable level.

Next time I'll do some tests to see how the atmospheres interact with structures
that may protrude in to them and also have a look at some of the other effects
available like the raindow, lens flares, god rays etc.

Hope this helps.

See ya
Steve

[Morne]

hmm maybe because you were using mostly defaults, but the clouds doesnt seem to fit the scene, I mean "background" seems too dark

[trixian]

Steve. How come the lighting on the clouds doesn't match the lighting of your scene? I'm specifically thinking about the direction.

[yyk]

Made some tests but the manual isn't too specific regarding the workflow with Vray. The lighting does seem a bit "off" in my tests too but my guess is it's got something to do with the fog. Ozone gamma setting didn't seem to have any effect on the rendered image, however switching Vray to gamma 1.0 produced more contrasted and appealing skies. I'd love to access their forum and study the topics there but am still unable to register correctly The rendertimes varied from minutes to twenty minutes on my i7 rig, depending on what sky I was using. A bit busy at work atm but will propably do more tests tomorrow..

[SteveC]

Hi Trixian,

I think its because when you create an atmosphere, the atmosphere creates two things in your scene,
one is a direct light and one is a camera. Although these don't appear to be used to view your scene
or illuminate it (I'm using the Vray phys camera and Vray sunlight), I believe the direct light is used to
illuminate components of the atmosphere, such as the clouds etc.

The location, direction and azimuth of the direct light created by the atmosphere pluggin is editable,
which I didn't adjust for the test renders, so when I get a chance I'll do another quick test render
and post it on here.

see ya
steve

Update, just done another couple of small test renders to confirm the the atmosphere direct light
affects the atmosphere clouds, which it does, so its a case of adjusting the atmosphere lights
direction and azimuth to suite your Vray sun.