First thoughts

[Macker]

A little late to the party but these are my first thoughts:

• Wow. I just pulled in a scene that would eat up 64Gb of RAM when rendering in VRay in CPU. Absolutely astonished that it even displays on screen - let alone is navigable at 10-40fps! This feels to me to be the equivalent to ray-tracing that Enscape was to Sketchup.
• I'm disappointed opacity mapping isn't supported. I fully understand the reasoning behind this but am at a loss as to how I'm going to deal with it from a production point of view; I use lots of purchased 3D models that I am unable to change myself. Is there perhaps a way of developing something that will swap out maps for meshes based on its UVW coordinates? I seem to recall that Rendering.ru's "VRay Pattern" did something along these lines. Could something similar not be developed so that I can swap out mapped leaves for geometry leaves en-masse?
• Are animated transforms supported (path constraints/follow/etc)? And animated people/bipeds?

Kind regards,
Chris

[vladimir.nedev]

I'm disappointed opacity mapping isn't supported. I fully understand the reasoning behind this but am at a loss as to how I'm going to deal with it from a production point of view; I use lots of purchased 3D models that I am unable to change myself. Is there perhaps a way of developing something that will swap out maps for meshes based on its UVW coordinates? I seem to recall that Rendering.ru's "VRay Pattern" did something along these lines. Could something similar not be developed so that I can swap out mapped leaves for geometry leaves en-masse?

Clip opacity is supported. It's disabled by default however and it's under the Advanced roll-out, see screenshot.

Are animated transforms supported (path constraints/follow/etc)? And animated people/bipeds?

Animated transforms are supported, but animated deformation is not.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Macker]

Is it possible to create/record a camera path in Lavina? Or can camera paths be imported?

I quite like (although it could be greatly improved) the method Enscape utilises - allowing you to set simple keyframes, and record various changes to time/DoF/focal length within those keyframes.

[vladimir.nedev]

Is it possible to create/record a camera path in Lavina?

Yes, the button for this is in the lower right corner of the Lavina window, see attached screen-shot.

Or can camera paths be imported?

You have to export an animated .vrscene from 3ds Max with the render camera being animated.
There is an option in the .vrscene export dialog in 3ds Max.

I quite like (although it could be greatly improved) the method Enscape utilises - allowing you to set simple keyframes, and record various changes to time/DoF/focal length within those keyframes.

Please, take a look at the short video about the animation editor in Lavina : https://youtu.be/prd_3AgjZOo

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Macker]

Wonderful, thank you Vladimir!

[Macker]

Another question;

Will you be supporting the VRay Multisubtex in future? I've used it on quite a lot of projects to switch between maps using the object ID (allows me to keep instanced geometry whilst changing textures).

Also vrayenvironmentfog?

[vladimir.nedev]

Will you be supporting the VRay Multisubtex in future? I've used it on quite a lot of projects to switch between maps using the object ID (allows me to keep instanced geometry whilst changing textures).

Yes, there are some other features before it, but it's close to the top of the TODO list.

Also vrayenvironmentfog?

This will probably have to wait quite a bit more, as it will probably have quite a negative impact on performance, and there are more basic features not done yet.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[tricky]

Animated transforms are supported, but animated deformation is not.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

So we would never be able to have walking people (for instance) in Lavina?

[vlado]

So we would never be able to have walking people (for instance) in Lavina?

It is on the roadmap; at some point we will implement deforming meshes - however it will be a little bit further down the road.

Best regards,
Vlado

[tricky]

It is on the roadmap; at some point we will implement deforming meshes - however it will be a little bit further down the road.

Best regards,
Vlado

OK - thanks Vlado. Long time no speak. A colleague introduced me to Lavina and it looks quite exciting so far. Just need to consider upgrading my GPU so I can see how it works for our pipeline, but they are expensive things!

[npg]

Maybe the news coming in 12 days will help inform your decision...

https://www.nvidia.com/en-eu/geforce/special-event/