Question about Vray Standalone

[jpenguin]

Couple questions. Hope this is not the wrong section for it. I am a Maya user so I thought I'd ask this here

1. Is Vray Standalone included with Vray for Maya (or for other applications) or is it a separate purchase altogether?

2. What file can the stand alone use? Can it accept Maya ma/mb file or will I need to export/convert my scene?

3. For the same scene set up, is there any performance boost using stand alone V.S. standard Maya command line rendering with Vray for Maya as its engine?

[vlado]

1. Is Vray Standalone included with Vray for Maya (or for other applications) or is it a separate purchase altogether?

It is included with V-Ray for Maya. One V-Ray for Maya license comes bundled with 10 render licenses for V-Ray Standalone. You can also purchase the standalone separately if needed.

2. What file can the stand alone use? Can it accept Maya ma/mb file or will I need to export/convert my scene?

It only understands .vrscene files, which can be exported with the V-Ray for Maya plugin.

3. For the same scene set up, is there any performance boost using stand alone V.S. standard Maya command line rendering with Vray for Maya as its engine?

There is no difference in the render speed, but the standalone uses less memory to render. This is because running Maya itself, even if only in batch mode, already takes a certain amount of RAM. Further on, when rendering inside Maya, some of the render data is duplicated once in the Maya scene, and once for V-Ray. These problems are avoided when rendering with the standalone version of V-Ray.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jpenguin]

Wow a reply from Vlado Thanks!

A couple more questions.

Do you think vray stand alone will be able to handle scene with strange mental ray nodes?

This is the case we're having right now actually. Our rigs are provided from another studio and they already have quite a lot of mental ray nodes connected in ways we can't really figure out. When referencing/importing these characters into Maya we got tons of errors about mental ray connections. These scenes would render fine using mental ray if open in Maya first and render from the GUI, but fail completely trying to render with command line. Sometimes we get message that maya batch crashes, sometimes it says Maya exit with code 210, 211.

[jpenguin]

We're certain the problem is with Mental Ray, because the very same scene can still be rendered with command line using 3delight (even if we get the same mental ray connection errors).

[vlado]

Do you think vray stand alone will be able to handle scene with strange mental ray nodes?

Since the .vrscene file format is designed for V-Ray specifically it won't contain any mental ray stuff. The V-Ray for Maya plugin takes care of translating (or ignoring) the different parts of the scene, so if comes across a node that it doesn't understand, it will most likely skip it.

This is the case we're having right now actually. Our rigs are provided from another studio and they already have quite a lot of mental ray nodes connected in ways we can't really figure out. When referencing/importing these characters into Maya we got tons of errors about mental ray connections. These scenes would render fine using mental ray if open in Maya first and render from the GUI, but fail completely trying to render with command line. Sometimes we get message that maya batch crashes, sometimes it says Maya exit with code 210, 211.

This sounds more like a Maya issue...

Best regards,
Vlado

[jpenguin]

Hi. More question about vrscene.

So I set up the scene to save vrscene from render globals, how do I tell Maya to start exporting?

When I render the scene, Maya also gives me vrscene file. Is there a way to export only the vrscene without having to do the render?

[jpenguin]

hmm by the way, how to I render the vrscene file?

[vlado]

Hi. More question about vrscene.

So I set up the scene to save vrscene from render globals, how do I tell Maya to start exporting?

When I render the scene, Maya also gives me vrscene file. Is there a way to export only the vrscene without having to do the render?

The topmost checkbox in the "Translator" dialog allows you to turn off the actual rendering, so that only a .vrscene is exported.

how to I render the vrscene file?

You need to run V-Ray Standalone for this; depends on your OS, but on Windows, go to Start Menu > Programs Chaos Group > V-Ray for Maya > V-Ray Standalone command prompt. This will open a console window with the options of V-Ray Standalone.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jpenguin]

Thanks Vlado. Really appreciate your replies Interesting how we can choose RT for the stand alone too. What's the advantage of RT? Speed?

[bigbossfr]

RT is the IPR in Maya. Normaly, you use it to work, but no to render the "final" image because it is very limited.
It is to speed up the workflow.

[vlado]

Thanks Vlado. Really appreciate your replies Interesting how we can choose RT for the stand alone too. What's the advantage of RT? Speed?

The RT engine is quite a bit faster at raytracing than the regular production renderer (of course, partly due to the fact that some things are not supported). It can be very useful for quick previews of still images or animations, and in some cases even for final images. It supports most of the features of the production renderer (on the CPU anyways) including hair, fur, displacement, subdivision surfaces etc. When rendering from the standalone, it also supports motion blur.

Best regards,
Vlado

[t.petrov]

Thanks Vlado. Really appreciate your replies Interesting how we can choose RT for the stand alone too. What's the advantage of RT? Speed?

You can use -rtEngine=1 (cpu) or vray -rtEngine=3 (for opencl/gpu rendering).
If you want your rendering to finish you need to set a time limit or a paths per pixel limit in the RT Engine options in Maya.

[duckie]

You need to run V-Ray Standalone for this; depends on your OS, but on Windows, go to Start Menu > Programs Chaos Group > V-Ray for Maya > V-Ray Standalone command prompt. This will open a console window with the options of V-Ray Standalone.

Hi vlado,
I'm trying to do this on mac OSX and also on Linux. I did a vrayslave install only on both machines and I can't find a V-Ray Standalone. Where should I look?

On the mac machine I have
/Applications/ChaosGroup/V-Ray/Maya2013-x64/bin
and
/Applications/Autodesk/maya2013/vray/bin

On the linux machine I have
/usr/autodesk/maya2013-x64/vray/bin
and
/usr/ChaosGroup/V-Ray/Maya2013-x64/bin

On both machines these are the binaries that exist:
imapviewer
img2tiledexr
initVRaySlaveDaemon
ply2vrmesh
registerVRaySlaveDaemon
startVRaySlaveDaemon
stopVRaySlaveDaemon
unregisterVRaySlaveDaemon
vrayslave
vrimg2exr

I can't find a V-Ray standalone binary anywhere - where should I be looking?

Thanks

[vlado]

Just run the vrayslave command.

Best regards,
Vlado

[duckie]

But when I run the vrayslave command, it enters 'server mode - waiting for render requests on port 20207...'
So how do I specify a vrscene?