VRfR 3.6 Any tutorials on animating proxies?

[Pretty Picture Girl]

Hi,

I am wondering if there are any sort of tutorials for VRfR 3.6 on how to use, create and where to get animated proxies, like water surfaces, animated trees and the like.
It's nice to see in a demo video but it would be nice if someone can actually show how its done. Possibly with a demo Vray & Rhino file.

Especially on trees I can hardly imagine that someone actually moves the leaves and branches individually, saves these movements and stores them.

Would be awesome to get some info on that!

More on a general note, I feel its a bit sad that we tend to get thrown a bone (=here read new Vray version) and than the paying software users are left out in the wild as to figure out how the new features are to be used.
There were times in history when software products were released with wonderful working manuals, descriptions, samples and tutorials. All relating fully to the newly released version.
Guess that where the good old days though...

Pretty

[Peter.Chaushev]

Creating animated proxies can be done in any software capable of producing and recording object animation as .vrmesh, .vrscene or .abc files. This is not doable in Rhino or V-Ray for Rhino and therefore we have not documented the creation process.
Once such a file is imported as a V-Ray proxy, the following settings can control its animation (for .vrmesh and .abc only):
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...tionParameters

Further discussions on this topic:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...628#post976628
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...y-for-sketchup
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...animated-water

The V-Ray for Rhino documentation and guides are under constant development. Your feedback is noted and passed to my colleagues!

Kind regards,
Peter

[Pretty Picture Girl]

Thanks Peter,

maybe it would be worth passing that on to McNeel and colaborate with them to implement this functionality fully in either (Rhino and/or Vray) next service release.

In the demo reel this is a prominent feature for 3.6 plugin.
Unfortunately, it feels a tad bit deceiving to show this so dominant as a feature and then not beeing able to use it without other software.

Thanks anyway,

Pretty

[Peter.Chaushev]

This is a prominent feature indeed. It was implemented after being requested multiple times by users.
The implementation is not partial. The limitation of the host app (Rhino) does not prevent V-Ray users from loading and rendering animated proxies (which is what was advertised in the demo reel) created using other V-Ray products or other software, such as Blender. Furthermore, animated alembic and vrmesh models can be found on various sites.
Whether further animation export capabilities are going to be implemented in Rhino either directly or through Bongo, depends on McNeel.

Kind regards,
Peter

[mgibeault]

That V-Ray can capture simple Rhino animations is already a very nice and welcomed feature!

[J@R]

Hi Peter.Chaushev

I've been testing the very welcomed addition of animated proxies in VfR 3.6 and am curious as to whether this could potentially be implemented with Rhino's grasshopper, i.e. being able to reference an animated alembic file / VRmesh with grasshopper geometry.
Here is my attempt at trying this with the most recent release:


AnimatedSurface.gif800x450 502 KB
The red surface is the alembic file i've imported but as you can see once the animation starts rendering, the green balls referenced from grasshopper are stuck on the first frame.
Do you think it is within reason to get this working in future releases? or even potentially integrating a timeline component that would allow you to scroll through frame by frame the imported animation in grasshopper?

Thanks a lot,
Jack

[aaouviz]

Hi Peter.Chaushev

or even potentially integrating a timeline component that would allow you to scroll through frame by frame the imported animation in grasshopper?

Thanks a lot,
Jack

Hey Jack, Have you tried out Centipede? http://www.ceedstudio.com/ceed3/?p=482

I haven't had time to try it out myself, but perhaps this is worth testing out - for the time framing at least. Would love to hear how you go.

[J@R]

aaouviz thanks for the reply but yes sadly I have tried centipede, its problem is that its very restrictive in terms of animation capability. It can only animate objects based on number sliders so when i'm trying to animate i.e. a freeform surface undulating and morphing into a particular form it is near impossible to animate it the way I would like. What I am suggesting is basically integrating a GH/Vray slider component so the user can scroll though to render a particular frame in the imported animation or the entirety of it (at the moment it will only reference the first frame).

[Peter.Chaushev]

Do you think it is within reason to get this working in future releases? or even potentially integrating a timeline component that would allow you to scroll through frame by frame the imported animation in grasshopper?

Hard to say right now. Your comment has been logged and will be considered in our future internal discussions.

Kind regards,
Peter