Material scanning service

[AlexP]

There is a library of about 56 materials (different types of cloth, leather, some metals). You can probably evaluate them if you are interested.

Best regrds,
Vlado

How much does it cost to get this library?

[Moriah]

How much does it cost to get this library?

+1 I'm really interested in having a look at it.

[vlado]

The library itself is free once you get an (evaluation) license for the rendering plugin.

I really hope there's an FAQ section on the site coming soon

Best regards,
Vlado

[WilleViz]

The library itself is free once you get an (evaluation) license for the rendering plugin.

Best regards,
Vlado

Cool! It would be awesome to test!

[AlexP]

I really hope there's an FAQ section on the site coming soon

Yes..any price info on the plugin then? Assuming its a separate plugin to Vray?

[tvc15]

Would the scanner work on an opaque plastic with dichroic film?

Also, Xrite is selling something similar that uses Appearance eXchange Format which I saw at AU. Any chance this may be compatible/convertable with your format?
http://au.autodesk.com/au-online/cla...1195#chapter=0

[^Lele^]

I'd personally hope for the opposite to happen, but there you go... ^^
(I mean, that they'd have to get compatible with us. it'd mean a host of good things. :P)

[vlado]

For anyone interested in evaluation and pricing, you can fill in the form on the site or email Dinko at dinko.dimitrov@chaosgroup.com (although, the poor guy is a bit overwhelmed right now). I don't want to post pricing details here, as further down the road the info might be outdated and people reading the thread on the forum could be mislead.

As for X-Rite and their AxF format, I don't know if conversion is possible; we haven't looked into it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[^Lele^]

Work's being done to get more details, including pricing, up on the vrscans website.
Please hold tight, i think it's safe to say Dinko, and us all, have been taken a BIT by surprise by the scale and scope of the reaction: I think there was hope to raise "some interest", not a tsunami of "How much for the scanner?" and "I have a catalog of half a million tiles to scan. When can we get it done for, then?". ^^
I doubt he got any shut-eye for the past 48 hours (he was always up when i was, and i had precious little too.), while the email count he's facing will probably get his fingers bleeding by the time he's done replying to them all...
The FaQs will hopefully be up very very soon.

[Morne]

Work's being done to get more details, including pricing, up on the vrscans website.
Please hold tight, i think it's safe to say Dinko, and us all, have been taken a BIT by surprise by the scale and scope of the reaction: I think there was hope to raise "some interest", not a tsunami of "How much for the scanner?" and "I have a catalog of half a million tiles to scan. When can we get it done for, then?". ^^
I doubt he got any shut-eye for the past 48 hours (he was always up when i was, and i had precious little too.), while the email count he's facing will probably get his fingers bleeding by the time he's done replying to them all...
The FaQs will hopefully be up very very soon.

Cool thanks for the update Lele. Sounds like the team has been extra busy the last few days

[cheerioboy]

I think from my initial email with Dinko, I'm still curious in a cost comparison between buying a scanner and sending out the materials to be scanned. It seems hard to justify a license + render node license for VRscans and not really start to use it in every project and with every material I possibly could.

It also seems like these VRscans are massive in filesize. I wanted to play with the demo scenes but it was taking me ages to download them. Would need to see what kind adjustments can be made on top of the original scan. And also if the scanned material shows up in all the render elements? For post tweaking.

[vlado]

I think from my initial email with Dinko, I'm still curious in a cost comparison between buying a scanner and sending out the materials to be scanned.

We are not able to sell the scanner currently; it is on the roadmap, but getting actual hardware to be manufactured is hard Further to that, the actual scanning process is very specific and processing the raw data from the scanner requires some manual work to get the tiling right. I'm sure all of that will be optimized with time, but believe me, right now these are things that you don't want to deal with

It also seems like these VRscans are massive in filesize.

The materials are typically between 70 MB and 300 MB in size (and in RAM), depending on the specific material and the data compression ratio. It's quite a lot of data that needs to be packed.

I wanted to play with the demo scenes but it was taking me ages to download them.

The spot3d server seems quite slow for some reason... we probably need to look into that.

Would need to see what kind adjustments can be made on top of the original scan.

You can control its overall tint, and you can blend it with other materials. That's pretty much it.

And also if the scanned material shows up in all the render elements?

That would be a "no"; the material has no notion of diffuse/specular/normals components. It just describes the way the material reacts to light as a whole.

I'm sure the question of approximating the scanned materials with a regular VRayMtl material will come up at some point... the results will not be as accurate, but many users can probably live with that. We haven't gotten round to that part though.

To get the expectations right, it's a specific solution that not everyone will find useful - which is also reflected in the pricing model. Still, our hope is that enough people will find it useful to justify the R&D expenses

Best regards,
Vlado

[andybot_cg]

does this vrscan format plug into a shader setup similar to how vrmat is referenced into a shader? I'm assuming it's already in the vray core (f.e. I can use it in the standalone version)?

[vlado]

does this vrscan format plug into a shader setup similar to how vrmat is referenced into a shader? I'm assuming it's already in the vray core (f.e. I can use it in the standalone version)?

Yes, you can use the shader in the standalone (f.e. if you export a .vrscene file from 3ds Max or Maya).

Best regards,
Vlado

[Wilyman]

That would be a "no"; the material has no notion of diffuse/specular/normals components. It just describes the way the material reacts to light as a whole.

So out of interest, how would it behave if say, you turned off reflections in the global settings, or if you used a light with diffuse turned off?
Would it behave as you'd expect a VRayMtl to?

Cheers,

John