FinalRender SP2 out - with LOTS of presets - HINT ChaosGroup

[instinct]

Personally with a parameter like subdivisions i find quality a lot more confusing...what units would that be in ? 0-100 Percent ? What would 100 Percent equal ? There is also no fixed measure of quality as different glossiness values require different subdivs to be of a specific quality...would the parameters be linked then ?

There's some things that could use some renaming, but i don't consider subdivisions to be one of them

Regards,
Thorsten

[simmsimaging]

Why change the units at all? Leave the units as is, the point is really that, in practice, higher numbers means higher quality (and slower renders of course) in all cases that I'm aware of. Nothing about how you use it needs to change at all, it just becomes more intuitive what the units are actually *for*. The fact that subdivisions can be found in different areas doesn't change that in the least IMO.... and I don't understand why this would imply linking parameters?

On the note of units though: that is another thing that drives me crazy - units should be normalized as much as humanly possible. The fact that in one rollout you can have two meaningful units where one is in the range of 1000 and the other is .0001 can be frustratingly difficult to get a feel for. I understand that this can be unavoidable too, but not always - and wherever possible normalizing them to a common range would be good.

One thing though: because you understand this (and many other) software so well that it would probably be a bad idea to go by your standards of what needs to be renamed. It's a good bet that you don't fully realize how much you know, and what seems intuitive to you won't be to the vast majority of us I think a good rule of thumb might be: if you can code it then you probably shouldn't name it

/b

[joconnell]

I think the dmc sampler idea is great but the way everything is interlinked makes it difficult to understand on a conceptual level - at least for those that are more artistically inclined than technical / mathematical. Toni's article was brilliant for me as it makes it pretty clear how camera / aa rays interlink with material rays and the whole concept works but I'm still not 100% certain on how things like vray light subdivs or brute force gi get calculated - is it the same ratio system where the camera ray traces along the normal of the polygon it hits and then finds what light is shining on it, and then the light subdivs then go into the same increase / decrease cycle depending on what the dmc sampler thinks? Likewise in that regard if you have aa 1/4 then your first ray gets 1 aa sample and max material / light subdivs, but then if the dmc sampler wants more quality, oddly the material and light samples keep getting worse with each refining pass? That's a completely different discussion though.

I think the main problem isn't the name of parameters as such, it's more that the explanations are technical and a bit inhospitable. They kind of put users off learning further and so it's hard to teach the theories about how vray works so people can start experimenting for themselves. Getting in and starting to tweak elements can give some fairly unpredictable and unintuitive results for example.

[tricky]

One of the things that occasionally comes up for me is the combination of settings you can have in Vray that don't make sense. Its difficult for me to think of them out of context, but one would be:-

1) when you render an animation using prepass IRmap and 'use camera path', you then come to render the frames from the saved solution, but the 'use camera path' checkbox is still available. I find this confusing. Things should grey out if they do not have a function.

2) if you are using BF and LC for rendering, there is still the option with vray lights to 'use irradience map'.

3) I can't think of any more right now.

I think if these kind of things were 'tidied up' Vray would be a nicer place to be

[joconnell]

One option on the light issue is that if you tick it on while your primary is BF, you could get a callback messagebox warning you that it'll mess up your light in the render.

[glorybound]

Now that I got my mind around VRay, do not change it please . It took me 2 years to learn and it should be at least as complicated for newbees

[simmsimaging]

I'm pretty sure you really are just joking Bobby, but there really do seem to be people who feel this way

Users cannot hide behind the difficulty of the program forever - your real value has to be in how you use it. I think it's good to remember that while there is something to be said about "earning your stripes" with the software ( and there will always be room at the top for those who understand it best) - at the end of the day it's not a social club we're trying to get into As a busy guy I need *all* my software to be as efficient to learn and use as possible, and this is something that is a major selling point. As a business, that has to have some appeal to Chaos - who also do this for a living

/b

[tricky]

Now that I got my mind around VRay, do not change it please . It took me 2 years to learn and it should be at least as complicated for newbees

Right on!!

[glorybound]

Yes. a little tongue and cheek, but it did take me awhile to stop and learn it. People are generally lazy, for the most part, and if it isn't easy they'll just put it down. In Revit you have low-medium-high for your render presets; it really doesn't get any easier. I agree with an earlier post, with hardware getting so fast, optimizing a scene isn't as important. This is why I have spent the past year sharpening my pencil with composition, art history and techniques.

We pay a photographer big bucks to take photos of our projects. We all have cameras in our phone so why do we pay him thousands to take photos? He understands what makes a photo compelling and pleasing to look at. The software we use is just the artists tool.

[AJ Jefferies]

I'm pretty sure you really are just joking Bobby, but there really do seem to be people who feel this way

I can't imagine anyone would genuinley wan't things to be intentionally difficult Relying on what you do being difficult for others to learn is commercial suicide, especially in a creative industry.

[simmsimaging]

I can't imagine anyone would genuinley wan't things to be intentionally difficult Relying on what you do being difficult for others to learn is commercial suicide, especially in a creative industry.

You'd be surprised I think

Yes. a little tongue and cheek, but it did take me awhile to stop and learn it. People are generally lazy, for the most part, and if it isn't easy they'll just put it down. In Revit you have low-medium-high for your render presets; it really doesn't get any easier. I agree with an earlier post, with hardware getting so fast, optimizing a scene isn't as important. This is why I have spent the past year sharpening my pencil with composition, art history and techniques.

We pay a photographer big bucks to take photos of our projects. We all have cameras in our phone so why do we pay him thousands to take photos? He understands what makes a photo compelling and pleasing to look at. The software we use is just the artists tool.

Precisely: it takes a crazy amount of time honing our creative skills, and then doing some actual work, who has time after that for learning software? I guess all of us in this business do, but I would way rather spend less time on that. Beside, I could shift that into my "WTF caused this crazy result/made this stop working/crashed my computer?" part of my CG workflow.

It has nothing to do with being lazy. I work my ass off and invest the time needed to be good at my job, but because there is so much to do and learn, and always will be, I just hate wasting time looking up what obscurely named functions are for - only to find a simple explanation in the docs. Just flip those around and I could probably shave weeks off my year

And we haven't even touched on the kind of time Chaos/Vlado have to throw into support. Even taking a few percent of the questions away is not insignificant
/b

[MoonDoggie]

Can someone please explain to me why the autosave field of Irradiance map is an edittext box (where I can easily copy the file path) and the Lightcache it's not an edittext box, and I'm completely unable to copy the path there. This is off topic I know, but if we're talking about UI stuff a bit, I want this fixed, it's driving me crazy today.

-Colin

[Morne]

Can someone please explain to me why the autosave field of Irradiance map is an edittext box (where I can easily copy the file path) and the Lightcache it's not an edittext box, and I'm completely unable to copy the path there. This is off topic I know, but if we're talking about UI stuff a bit, I want this fixed, it's driving me crazy today.

-Colin

I know the feeling. I posted this on wishlist a few months back
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...hlight=textbox

[MoonDoggie]

I just don't understand the reason for making it different from the imap one. Is there a reason at all? It makes zero sense.

[thablanch]

Easy setup makes a wider user base...so more sales.. (that is why products like Sketchup and Maxwell are so popular.. they ain't better.. just way easier to use)