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

[R2J2]

one thing that is stopping me from using it is missing time offset , (I need to advance plates to 1 usually, sometimes more)
and second missing output

[super gnu]

i started another thread regarding tiled exrs but it seems its being discussed here. in a simple scene with a landscape mesh, a satellite photo draped over (8k x 8k) and some proxy trees, i tried the original jpeg file in a standard bitmap loader, the same in the vrayhdri loader, and also converted it to a tiled exr and tried that.

the tiled exr was 400 meg, and the scene used more ram and took longer to render, as the above post. any ideas?

one other thing i noticed, bump maps look WAY nicer when loaded through the vrayhdri loader.. why is this? i got much more definition and 3d-ness than with the max bitmap.

[Deflaminis]

How does vray read a regular bitmap as an HDRI? That's... nuts! I mean loading it in is one thing but to light with it and get a very similar result is mind boggling. You could save a lot of overhead just in file size right there, or am I misunderstanding all this?

[super gnu]

yes.. a bit. it doesnt load a normal file "as an hdr" chaos have added the ability to read normal bitmaps to the vrayhdri loader, as it has some advantages over the standard max bitmap loader. it doesnt add any dynamic range to your images automagically or anything.

[Deflaminis]

yes.. a bit. it doesnt load a normal file "as an hdr" chaos have added the ability to read normal bitmaps to the vrayhdri loader, as it has some advantages over the standard max bitmap loader. it doesnt add any dynamic range to your images automagically or anything.

Ah ok, that makes a lot more sense. That's pretty amazing nonetheless to reduce the render time so drastically. Very cool Vlado!

[super gnu]

i wouldnt expect to get such huge speedups just by using the hdri loader. in specific cases on machines with a lot of cores, and a lot of textures in the scene, it will be faster than the max bitmap loader *if the bitmap pager is enabled* with the bitmap pager disabled you dont get the "many cores" slowdown, and the standard bitmap loader will be the same speed.

as i understand it, anyway. :P

[vlado]

Yep; the point being that sometimes you need the bitmap pager... in any case, there are a few speed improvements for vrayhdri that we are working on.

Best regards,
Vlado

[super gnu]

so, vlado, care to comment on the tiled exr behaviour when used as a texture? in my tests it seems to use as much, often more, ram than a jpeg when rendering, and is also slower to render. i didnt test extensively, but initial tests were very dissapointing, as im hoping to load a few gigapixels of bitmaps for the current project im working on.

also, any explanation as to why bump maps might look so much nicer when using a map via vrayhdri?

[crazy homeless guy]

So, ....is loading all my bitmaps as VrayHDRI files still a valid work method for potentially increasing speed, or has the later versions of Max / or max service packs fixed the problem that was causing the slow down in the first place?

[Morne]

So, ....is loading all my bitmaps as VrayHDRI files still a valid work method for potentially increasing speed, or has the later versions of Max / or max service packs fixed the problem that was causing the slow down in the first place?

bumpetibump

[vlado]

From what I know, the slowdown with the bitmap pager enabled is still there.

Best regards,
Vlado