Interesting stuff...

[Long John]

and i wonder how someone can say that MR´s raytracing is slow.

[stefan]

Way cool stuff Vlado and Peter. The only thing I don´t understand is what is the point in the diplacement renders not having interpolated normals? Is this a limitation or a benefit? I fail to realize its implications. Will version 1.1 rely on the pre 1.1 displacement code or do we get "real" adaptive displacement?

You probably can´t really comment on any of the following at this time, so please bear with me, I have to reliefe myself:

From what I´ve seen Vray now supports render primitives (which it kind of already did with it´s instanced rendering option, if I´m not mistaken). Are the spheres on the character real parametric objects or instanced geometry?

You mentioned subdivision surfaces. Will this feature make it into version 1.1?

Stefan

[losbellos]

normals are not interpolated means to me it doesnt use the original surface (interpolated) normals,
the displaced surface has its own.
The andvantage hmm, texturing, other displacemap on displacemap is possible, well everything!
but maybe I am wrong. Vlado can enlight us.

[vlado]

The only thing I don´t understand is what is the point in the diplacement renders not having interpolated normals? Is this a limitation or a benefit?

Of course it can be rendered with smooth normals, but the geometric normals show the true surface detail. Smoothing the normals gives good results even with low geometry and the point was to show the actual surface.

From what I´ve seen Vray now supports render primitives (which it kind of already did with it´s instanced rendering option, if I´m not mistaken). Are the spheres on the character real parametric objects or instanced geometry?

The spheres are parametric objects (perfect spheres), not instances.

You mentioned subdivision surfaces. Will this feature make it into version 1.1?

Depends on how hard it is to implement

Best regards,
Vlado

[YoyoBoy]

Doesn't this also mean that you can, for example, throw a displacement map on a box and it won't split at the seams?

[vlado]

Doesn't this also mean that you can, for example, throw a displacement map on a box and it won't split at the seams?

You can do this even now, if you use 3d displacement and check the "Keep continuity" option...

Best regards,
Vlado

[cpnichols]

very nice - the only bad news for us - that it is still with max - no news about a stand alone and maya version

anyway - next week gona take a renderman course - till vray goes beyond max have to look for something else than the slow mental ray renderer

If you think MR is slow... wait 'til you try renderman... it makes MR look REALLY fast, especially with it nearly unusable raytracing.

[Mudvin]

MR is quite fast with raytracing, but it becomes slow as an elephant when also using DOF/MB. Some guy from ILM tells that rendering speed drops more then 5 times if you are just turn on these features.

How often you're using raytracing in your projects? As for me, i'd like to have fast DOF and MB, painless network rendering and much more features like programmable shading/rib archives/and such and such, then just "fast raytracer".

And anyway, MR's GI compared to Vray's one is sucks. It's looks not professional to say sentenses like this, but this is so

The only thing i'd like to say to Vlado, if he reading this thread - i think it's better to implement some programmable shading features, like renderman one, and like Brazil will do. Why don't make Vray multiplatform and renderman compatible? It is good standard, supported by many packages(MaxMan, MayaMan, RAT). This is just my imho

[3dform]

Mudvin you brought a good point!

More shaders would be nice in vray. But more then this a real glas shader are some stuff like th MR lume tools would be cool.
MR downside is not only speed (You loose a lot if you are doing animations.. AA mostly) it's the setup time. If you just try to do a simple GI scene in MR you will notice that need 5 times more testrenderings. And every scene is different (world space etc...). Vray is as easy as it should, thats great!

Wish Vray would be the default render of Max (well it is for me!) and development would go faster.
We really need better displacement (LOD, memory management, direction and Hair (MR has this all at a good speed)), and we need NURMS support, more effect layers, etc...

Would can we do to push Vray in advance? Money ?
I would pay for an update. Vray is cheap enough to do this.

regards,

robert

[Long John]

How often you're using raytracing in your projects? As for me, i'd like to have fast DOF and MB, painless network rendering and much more features like programmable shading/rib archives/and such and such, then just "fast raytracer".

all the time!!

but i really don´t need DOF.

and when i need dof i will surely not render it.

you can do it much faster in post (no matter if animated or for stills).

[Long John]

and only to make it clear, if you talk about MR as "only a fast raytracer" then you have not worked with mental ray.

but hey, i sure will see the people much more educated when MAX 6 is out for a while.

[s7en]

I've only just seen the raycaster page.

Excellent work guys.

Colour me excited!

And i love the possibilities of:

A second goal was to use that to render... displacement (for example, RGB displacement)

[baumgore]

I worked with MR under Softimage and XSI, and the speed sucks. I would give everything to have the same interactive rendering capabilities of MR and XSI with MAX and Vray, this would boost productivity by about 400%. And to be honest, when it comes down to rendering-quality, MR and Vray are the same, only Vray brings you 4-8 times faster to your goal. Volumetric shaders under Vray would be cool, and also a much better exposure control (something like the Photoshop histograms, beeing able to choose the black, white point and gamma simply by draging sliders and in real time seeing a changing HDR).

[Psy]

looking good vlado. guess that means that i'll have to learn even more in order to help friendly folks.

@baumgore:
I absolutely enjoyed your sig.

[andrius]

Nope. But the dynamic raycaster (like most things in VRay) was developed outside of Max; this will make it easier to add it to the standalone version too.

So you are confirming that there WILL BE a stand alone version?????