Volume Scatter Vray Proxies : a solution (or how to render PFlow as Vray Proxies...)

[jstrob]

Have zero regrets about buying forest, it's very, very useful.

Yes John! It seems like the only solution right now for my situation (instancing millions of object on PRT loader. The other solutions are almost there and will probably do the trick in a few months I guess. Or Bobo add the ability for Frost to pass instances to vray or Vlado add the ability to the VRayInstancer to pick PRT. We can maybe use pflow and cache before using VRayInstancer it but it add an extra very long step.

[jstrob]

It's possible of course, so long as there's an API for us to hook into.

Here is a quote from Bobo: "Also, we exposed a PRT I/O API for anyone who would like to write a V-Ray scatter that uses PRT data as distribution guide, but I don't think anyone had done that yet. So far only FumeFX 4 has added support for that API, but that is unrelated to your case."

[jstrob]

Well, even if we start today, it would take 15 years to get there

15 years is half a blink of an eye in the universe perspective!

[jstrob]

Just an update to say finally Forest Pack Pro is not a solution either. When I scatter my forestPack instances on Frost, that one has to create 1 plane for each particles and that's the deal breaker. Frost is then exploding the ram and the render never starts when I have a millions teapots instanced for example.

So multiscatter is not working, forest pack neither.

My only hope is that Frost can pass instances to vray or the vray instancer can pick PRT particles. Then I would be able to import millions of particles grain sims from Houdini and render them with vray inside of max. Until then I guess I have to learn Mantra and make my render in Houdini...

[vlado]

My only hope is that Frost can pass instances to vray or the vray instancer can pick PRT particles. Then I would be able to import millions of particles grain sims from Houdini and render them with vray inside of max.

Well, it depends on how long you can afford to wait; I can probably hack some PRT data import for the VRayInstancer for you by the end of the week.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jstrob]

Oh thanks! that would be so great! I can afford to wait cause I'm just testing this workflow to try to make it work. It's not for a paying job yet. But I have a lot of paying jobs coming soon so I may not have that much time left for testing.

[jstrob]

Hi Vlado, finally did you have time to check it out?

[kagemaru]

Here as well, it would be so cool to be able to read prt directly with possible magma channels.
Right now it's a real pain: vrayproxies/instancer read just alembic (really efficiently i have to say) and prt doesnt't, and the other way around for prt particles.

[wxyz]

Yes Please

Well, it depends on how long you can afford to wait; I can probably hack some PRT data import for the VRayInstancer for you by the end of the week.

Best regards,
Vlado

[larex39]

Hi Vlado can you please also add support for picking specific shape per particle by some channel from prts, because lot of times you want some specific particles to have specific shape, and this will helps a lot. (For example in vray instancer you can add specific number from 0 to xx to each source object and then you can read specific channel from pftloader which will contains this mumbers, and particles with number 1 in that channel picked number one source object etc....)

[jstrob]

I just read this on a vfxguide article about the an Andreas movie:

"Scanline modeled and textured over 250 assets, then worked with The Chaos Group to write a plugin that allowed the debris to be rendered in V-Ray and repeated to amass nearly 20 million pieces around the city. That work was spearheaded by Mohsen Mousavi at Scanline. “With this plugin we were able to reproduce and scatter and double up and triple up to get the desired effect for the really wide scenes,” explains Grill. “Also, every piece of debris was moving and the water was against that and reacting.”

Just curious to know if that's what ended up being called the vray instancer?

[jstrob]

Tadaaaam!

Thinkbox just added the ability to distibute real V-Ray instances to a PRT source!

That's great news!

[vlado]

Yep, that's great. Alternatively, you can use the PRTReader that comes with the nightly builds of Phoenix FD.

Best regards,
Vlado

[kagemaru]

Yep, that's great. Alternatively, you can use the PRTReader that comes with the nightly builds of Phoenix FD.

Best regards,
Vlado

Will we be able to render prt as points with pointparticlemtl then?
Cheers

[jstrob]

Yep, that's great. Alternatively, you can use the PRTReader that comes with the nightly builds of Phoenix FD.

Best regards,
Vlado

Ok that new PhoenixFD PRT reader can distribute V-Ray instances too? Great to know! With Frost we also have the ability to add variation to scale orientation, shape index, material assigment, animation timing.