V-Ray 2.0: VRayHDRI vs Bitmap texture and the bitmap pager

[trixian]

Can we get it with colour variation controls and randomization parameters, and the ability to load multiple bitmaps into the same node, extremely similar to the multitexture map from CG-Source, just with all the bitmap entries visible, pluged into the input slot of the map. (Won't be backwards compatible though since older versions of max don't have the slate editor).

[johnszot]

sorry, but can anyone clarify (?):

it sounds like this technique will lower the "overhead" time of loading the scene for rendering, but not actually the process of rendering the image - is that correct? for example, if a frame takes 3 hours to render using max native bitmaps, can i expect a 60% reduction time in rendering that frame?

sounds too good to be true....

[Morbid Angel]

Im a bit confused. So with the bitmap pager "off" does it still render slower then with vray hdr?

[Jiri.Matys]

So is it jpg on both test or once its jpg and once hdr?

[Markus]

If you were wondering why VRayHDRI now allows you to load other image file formats like JPG, PNG etc, here is a part of the explanation.

Below is a scene that was rendered on a dual Intel Xeon 5660 machine (2x6 physical cores; 24 logical cores). I rendered it once with the standard 3ds Max Bitmap texture. Then I rendered it again with the textures converted to VRayHDRI (but without converting the files to tiled OpenEXR files - just using the original bitmap files).

Can you find the differences

Best regards,
Vlado

[EDIT] After some more tests, the slowdown for the Bitmap texture appears to be caused by the bitmap pager being enabled (which it is by default).

Sorry to "hijack" this thread but i read that you are using a dual 6-core system....

Just a quick question about this. I read on the area that people have a massiv slow down in viewport performance regardless their videocards (ATI or nvidia / gaming or workstation card) on dual 6-core system and the lastest max. the last sp1 and hotfixes etc didnt help...
Could you experience the same on your system? If not i would be really curious about your config your config?

thank you very much Vlado.

best,
markus

[vlado]

Just a quick question about this. I read on the area that people have a massiv slow down in viewport performance regardless their videocards (ATI or nvidia / gaming or workstation card) on dual 6-core system and the lastest max. the last sp1 and hotfixes etc didnt help...
Could you experience the same on your system? If not i would be really curious about your config your config?

Yep, I did notice it, espesially with the DirectX viewport driver (e.g. I have to wait a few seconds from the moment I click to create a teapot to the moment it actually appears in the viewport). OpenGL is not that bad though and it's what I'm using now.

It appears to be more of a general issue with the 3ds Max user interface when using DX, rather than viewport graphics as such. For example, just clicking the viewport zoom or pan button causes a stall of several seconds even though nothing in the viewports has changed yet. Again, no issues with OpenGL...

Best regards,
Vlado

[Jiri.Matys]

Iam experiencing something similar at work. Not have 6-core machine, but have two GTX 295 graphics card and 4-core procesor with multithreading. I try to switch to openGL.

[simmsimaging]

I was watching EGZ Vray 2.0 training video and decided to try out the tiled exr conversion on my current job. Original RAM usage was 3.6 GB and it rendered in 4:40 min. After using the converter it rendered in 5:50 min, took 7GB of RAM, and basically jammed my entire system by sucking up a ton of page file as well. Aside from that, the render came out differently as some textures were significantly darker once converted.

I was anticipating at very least a match on render time, but shouldn't things have gone the other way?

b

[vlado]

I was watching EGZ Vray 2.0 training video and decided to try out the tiled exr conversion on my current job. Original RAM usage was 3.6 GB and it rendered in 4:40 min. After using the converter it rendered in 5:50 min, took 7GB of RAM, and basically jammed my entire system by sucking up a ton of page file as well. Aside from that, the render came out differently as some textures were significantly darker once converted.

I was anticipating at very least a match on render time, but shouldn't things have gone the other way?

b

Did you actually convert the textures to OpenEXR files or you left the original files?

Best regards,
Vlado

[simmsimaging]

Yes they were converted to exr.

[simmsimaging]

Just tried it again with similar results. RAM usage doubled from 4GB to 8GB, but it was still climbing when I killed the render. This is a totally different scene. So far tiled exr/VrayHDRI workflow is not working well for me. Is there something I could be doing that would influence this?

[jacksc02]

Brett,
Have you tried enabling/disabling the "page large files to disk" option in the asset tracker?

[simmsimaging]

I thought this bypassed the bitmap pager issue? Turning it off did not seem to make any difference.

as an aside: it would be great if the converter utility checked to see if any bitmaps already existed as a .exr instead of re-converting and overwriting them. It could save time going into older scenes and various iterations of them.

b

[simmsimaging]

Just bumping this: no one else having this sort of slowdown with tiled exr? I've been shying away from using it, but it seems like such a handy thing if it works well.
b

[Dave_Wortley]

I'm testing this at the moment as we have a particularily heavy scene with lots of big texture files and it's killing our server trying to load them all at pre-load, all the machines are hitting their page-file limit and a 2minute render is taking 42 minutes to load first!

I'll let you know my results Brett...