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I've really been trying to nail down a solid workflow for using Vantage as it appears to be a game changer with it's speed and responsiveness.
I LOVE lighting scenes and shots in Vantage, the ability to move lights in real-time mean I can be so much more creative in this area, where as in the past it was like pulling teeth sometimes when you're waiting on a render.
I also love being able to render out pre-vis / draft shots in minutes rather than hours.
So my workflow has generally been to use Vantage for scene set-up, materials, lighting, pre-vis. Then use Vray CPU and Backburner to render the high quality animations as there isn't a way to queue up animations with Vantage.
HOWEVER, there a subtle, but important differences between Vantage and Vray, such as the way both deal with bump maps, mapping, reflections and other things.
We need Vantage and Vray to match, it's as simple as that. I need to have confidence that the final work will look like the pre-vis and drafts, otherwise clients will rip it apart, or I'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out why they're so different. From what I understand, Vantage was designed as a pre-vis tool, and was never intended to replace Vray, but how can anyone work accurately or professionally when fundamentals like bump maps aren't the same across the packages?!
And I get that Vray GPU may be a closer match to Vantage, and I would look at that, HOWEVER GPU lacks things like AREA SHADOWS!!
I also get it that I could use Vantage purely for lighting, then switch back to Vray for fine tuning materials, but that's a lot of extra work and time. Plus I'm more than happy to render final quality stills in Vantage, so again I'd have to have 2 sets of materials for each use.
I am sorry for the rant, but frustration is building. I've spent 2 hours trying to figure out a workflow for accurately using bump maps (bitmaps) between Vantage and Vray, and it's driving my bananas! Needless to say I'm still going round in circles.
Maybe I've missed some important information on setting up materials for Vantage and Vray? As a veteran of Vray, using it since version 1, I think I'm pretty knowledgeable, but when things literally don't make sense, or there are BIG compromises, then I can't help but to get angry and frustrated.
As professionals, we need tools that work in production settings. We're being squeezed more and more with deadlines, and we don't have the time or resources to hack a way though a project, nor should we have to! I feel that there's a lack of real-world R&D, and the rush to push new features to justify the subscription costs undermines the effort for consistency and real-world pipelines.
This isn't OK.
