Ocean Rendering on VrayRT GPU

[labulle]

PhoenixFDOceanTex (and splash / foam I guess) doesn't work on VrayRT, may I ask if there is a plan to make it fully work with GPU rendering ? If so, is there a timeframe we could count on (even very approximative) ?

Thank you very much !

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey, check out the latest nightly

Cheers!

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Just a note though - the particle shader, as well as the fire/smoke shader are not yet working with RT/GPU - only CPU is supported in V-Ray 3.6. We are working at the moment on GPU support for V-Ray next for fire/smoke, and then in a few months the particle shader will follow.

[labulle]

Thanks for your super quick answer, great news !

However I can't make it work, on Max 2016, Vray 3.60.04 and latest nightly of Phoenix (27925), nor with Vray Next Beta and the latest corresponding Phoenix nightly.

Am I missing something (it says as usual "unsupported texture (PhoenixFDOceanTex)", either with RT/CPU or RT/GPU ) ?

I could use some help on this one ! Thanks again.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, dang it, hang on - the ocean tex is working in Maya but not exported for V-Ray for 3ds Max yet. It should be a matter of a few hours to get it working.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey, sorry for the delay - the ocean tex for RT/Max will be in Monday's nightlies. You need both a Phoenix nightly, and a V-Ray stable nightly as well. Please check it and if something's not okay, ping me

Cheers!

[labulle]

No problem at all, thanks for your hard work and updates, we're really thrilled!

Just one question though as I can't really find the answer anywhere : where can I get the latest V-Ray stable nightly?

Thanks!

EDIT : right, I completely forgot that nightlies access is granted by request. So, should I send a mail to support@chaosgroup.com or could you unlock our access directly ?

[georgi.zhekov]

You can send a mail to support@chaosgroup.com and they will help you out

[labulle]

Really guys, I can't possibly recall seeing a better dev and support team, thanks !

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Oh, wait - first check if your PC doesn't catch fire with the latest nightly :P

[labulle]

Hey ! Back to testing and still no luck. Latest nightlies (both vray 3.6 and Phoenix) from today, 3ds Max 2016.

The warning message is gone, as is the plane on which the VrayDisplacementMod with PhoenixFDOceanTex is applied. When I change the texture, back to, say, Smoke or whatever, the plane is there and displacement works, so it's definitely the OceanTex that isn't working.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, sorry - for now the Ocean tex can only be used with Phoenix's own ocean mesh mode - if you try to place it on a custom surface, it won't work as it is not implemented yet for GPU, and neither are the other 3 Phoenix textures. These will be coming once we are ready implementing the volumetric rendering for GPU, but I'm afraid using the ocean tex with the Phoenix ocean is all that's possible with V-Ray 3 right now.

[labulle]

Thanks, that makes sense, I thought it would be a very simple setup for testing, haven't anticipated that

So, it... kinda works. At least the ocean is on stage now ! But there is someting very weird as the mesh changes scale, proportions, level and there are weird artifacts !

I took some screenshots to illustrate. My setup is simple : a PhoenixFDLiquid simulation in Ocean Mesh mode, a few frames simulated, no interactions, a teapot for position and scale comparison, the camera and teapot do not move, of course, only the renderer is switched.
For CPU rendering : default vray settings.
For GPU : CUDA, texture format : float (but with default 8bit, nothing changes).

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Alright, got it! The scale was wrong only when Control by Wind Speed was enabled. The fix will be in tomorrow's V-Ray 3 stable nightly

Thanks very much for reporting this!

[labulle]

Success !!!

Again, our whole team is absolutely thrilled by this and we all want to thank you very much !