Animation in Grasshopper with V-Ray

[Zoomie]

I'm writing this topic because searching for methods on animation within Grasshopper results in many old threads and I'm very confused at this point.

So, with the new V-Ray 3.6 for Rhino and Grasshopper, what are the options? How can I export a sequence of renderings that is automatically rendered and saved when animating a slider in GH?

It seems to me if there was an input to the Export Scene component to launch the process automatically with a button / input, this could easily be done every time the GH definition updates. Why is rendering and exporting a scene only possible with a right mouse click? Or am I missing something obvious?


Thanks guys!

[Peter.Chaushev]

Hello,

There is no solution available yet. Animation support is currently being developed.
This feature and a number of other improvements for V-Ray for Grasshopper will be included in the release of V-Ray Next for Rhino.

Kind regards,
Peter

[Zoomie]

That's unfortunate because the function is already there in my opinion. I could easily write a little script that would simply wait a few minutes and then update the GH definiton, triggering another scene export with a new file name - if the function to export could be triggered within GH and not via righ-click...

Anyway, looking forward to your next release!

[vsardenberg]

It's a little bit frustrating. Grasshopper is about automating modeling and drawing production. If we need to flatten all data trees and we are not allowed to loop for batch rendering, VRay for gh becomes more like a strange curiosity than something I would incorporate in my workflow.

[Zoomie]

Has anyone ever tried to manually export vray scenes from grashopper one frame at a time and then render them with the normal batch render?

I guess when you're desperate this seems like a feasible solution...

[skdeisher]

I wanted to follow up on this; I'm now in V-Ray Next and having a hard time understanding the relationship between animated geometry in Grasshopper and the Rhino animation function in V-Ray. I'd like to do an animated Render in Project, but the output option to Render Animation is within the Render component, which is sequenced before the Render in Project component. I can connect my Render component to Render in Project, but the only output options in that node are to output a camera animation or a sun animation. How do I render a Grasshopper definition within a scene? For reference, I'm looking at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp71E3dlCwQ and am not sure what is happening at 0:24, since I see no input for the water and rock geometry on the Grasshopper side and there is no Render in Project component being used in the definition.

[Peter.Chaushev]

Just left a reply to your identical post at https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...30#post1039730
For convenience, allow me to copy it here:

Good catch! Some parts of this video were edited as the original GH node network appeared too complex for just a quick glimpse.
We'll soon have some tutorials on this topic publicly available.

As for rendering animation from Grasshopper in Rhino, Object animation in Grasshopper can only be rendered in Grasshopper.
Using the "V-Ray Render in Project" component can only transfer animation data for Sun or Camera animation (but not both).

EDIT:
To transfer an object animated in Grasshopper in a Rhino project, the only currently possible way is actually to bring the Rhino project in Grasshopper by exporting it as a .vrscene file, then importing it in Grasshopper via the V-Ray Proxy Scene component and rendering the animation in Grasshopper.

Our dev team is actively working on improving this workflow and reducing the amount of time needed for such setups. Some of these changes will make it in the upcoming Update 1 of V-Ray Next.
In the meantime, should you have any further questions or suggestions, please post them here!

Kind regards,
Peter