Material scanning service

[^Lele^]

I honestly think, but that's a personal idea, NOT backed up by facts, that the pricing model is as it is to be as non-committal FOR people as possible.
It's not meant to milk the user, it's mean to leave him/her free to opt in or out at will.
I suppose the quality and amount of interest this tech will generate will also help better determine the available options (me, i'd have sold it for millions. no, billions! Ok, i kid. i'd only have settled for trillions... ^^).

Further to this, but this is again strictly my personal opinion, we're talking of 300 Euros per year.
That gives you 56 scanned shaders right there, with more to come over time, at a meagre 5.3 euros a piece.

An artist would cost you at the very least 10 times that amount: a good ten days of work, to craft an average of 5.6 shaders per day, with anything remotely close to the quality, both for shading and detail, of the vrscans.
And *I* wouldn't open max for 5 and a bit euros, personally, much less so work a load of that size, at those prices/timeframe.

In two year's time, you open the hand crafted shot, and very likely will have to call in the artist at least half a day to make sure HIS shaders work still as intended, maps are all linked as they should.
Don't call the artist, do it yourself, it's going to cost you a day, as it's not a shot you prepared, or if you did two years is a long time to remember it all.
That's your 160 euros for the one month of access, after the year expired, in which your old job (actually, any of the old ones you wish) will render without watermarks.

[WilleViz]

Further to this, but this is again strictly my personal opinion, we're talking of 300 Euros per year.
That gives you 56 scanned shaders right there, with more to come over time, at a meagre 5.3 euros a piece.

An artist would cost you at the very least 10 times that amount: a good ten days of work, to craft an average of 5.6 shaders per day, with anything remotely close to the quality, both for shading and detail, of the vrscans.
And *I* wouldn't open max for 5 and a bit euros, personally, much less so work a load of that size, at those prices/timeframe.

Point well taken, Lele...

People obviously need a trial version to test things out first hand. It is also a question about the shaders, because if the ones in the library are the ones that are particularly difficult in get "right" , it makes a ton of sense.

In other words, it would be really great if Chaos Group will focus on getting the most tricky materials done for VRscans first, but I assume that goes without saying.

[^Lele^]

Indeed, Nils.
Speaking of which, i MAY have gotten it wrong: access without a trial license MAY be limited to the sample files, rather than the whole shader library.
I'll make sure to find out.

I did indeed get it wrong.
A free evaluation license is still required to access the shader library.

[^Lele^]

Corrected, thanks again.

[WilleViz]

Indeed, Nils.
Speaking of which, i MAY have gotten it wrong: access without a trial license MAY be limited to the sample files, rather than the whole shader library.
I'll make sure to find out.

I did indeed get it wrong.
A free evaluation license is still required to access the shader library.

Thanks for the update, Emanuele. Those shaders sure do look fantastic to my eye!

[eyepiz]

Permanent licenses do exist, of course.
That's a general FaQ page, the site has a contact form too: feel free to use it, there are real (and quite bright) humans behind it, and they'll surely try to help you out.

FYI...Permanent licenses are not available, only rental licences (GUI+RN).

[vlado]

Eyepiz is right, we only have rental licenses for this. On the one hand, we don't expect many people to use this all the time; on the other hand, if we had only permanent licenses, the cost would have been too high. So in that situation, rentals made more sense.

Best regards,
Vlado

[^Lele^]

Oh dear.
Talk about making a mess of things.
Sorry, everyone. Next time i'll wait for the office to be open and check my facts.

[Neilg]

420$ USD per scan, ouch! I guess this is not for the average user.

I could see a few jobs we've done where our client would be happy to pay that for a few. We've had clients spend 10x that doing changes over and over because they cant decide how their very particular material that runs through the project should look.
Before starting a big account job that we know will run a couple of years this should be a pretty easy sell. Hopefully we'll get something in that can take advantage of it soon.

[bardo]

First of all I think it's a great opportunity for everyone needs an high precision result (I think that product visualization is surely the main target for this).
So my compliments for the research behind this and all the best for the results.

Beside this, I have a consideration.

All dudes here know that in our Cg environment we have (speaking about materials) at least 2 main variables that define the material replication: light and material properties.

In a real life environment we have less variables because we can't change materials (if I have a black smooth leather...I have a black smooth leather) and about lights, except the sun light (that it hasn't options... ), we have "few" options to choose from.
From a certain point of view, we use the material as calibrator of our scene and using lights and photography we try to adjust the result according to our needs.

Could we consider your scans as our scene calibrator? Our basement to build up the scene (lights intensity&colors and camera exposure settings)??
Or as the "white balance" in photography, we have to know how the photo was taken to have the "real" colors?

Sorry for the "stupid" questions but I'm quite uninformed about material scanning.

[joconnell]

I'm thinking the exact same thing bardo - a collection of materials that covers a wide range of generic stuff - you can put them into any vray lighting setup you want and they'll be correct for that lighting - this gives you a target to recreate a normal vray material that has the same appearance and you'd end up with a very realistic normal vray material but it'll give you all of your elements and tweakability too.

[Mokiki]

I can only second this having access to range of generic scanned materials would take out a lot of guess work and would leave us with a solid base line for material creation.

[Morne]

Which is why I have been asking for a ChaosGroup material library OR material presets for YEARS!

[^Lele^]

First of all I think it's a great opportunity for everyone needs an high precision result (I think that product visualization is surely the main target for this).
So my compliments for the research behind this and all the best for the results.

Beside this, I have a consideration.

All dudes here know that in our Cg environment we have (speaking about materials) at least 2 main variables that define the material replication: light and material properties.

In a real life environment we have less variables because we can't change materials (if I have a black smooth leather...I have a black smooth leather) and about lights, except the sun light (that it hasn't options... ), we have "few" options to choose from.
From a certain point of view, we use the material as calibrator of our scene and using lights and photography we try to adjust the result according to our needs.

Could we consider your scans as our scene calibrator? Our basement to build up the scene (lights intensity&colors and camera exposure settings)??
Or as the "white balance" in photography, we have to know how the photo was taken to have the "real" colors?

Sorry for the "stupid" questions but I'm quite uninformed about material scanning.

I entirely missed these posts.
I AGREE, and yes, it's the whole point!
Lights, one has been able to imitate with great accuracy since the advent of IeS profiles (which could be made better, sure, but still are not point lights.).
Cameras, same thing since the V-Ray physical camera.
Shaders, however...
And so yes, in my view it IS this monumental a change.
And it is so because it comes for V-Ray, and it's as affordable -at least in the non user-directed library- as V-Ray is, and can -and does- play nice with every other V-Ray tech.

[^Lele^]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/look-...ccuracy-lecchi

You'd have already seen the renders, but now there are links to the sample scenes for max and maya, and a direct link to the library.
There is no need to possess a license to be able to open and render the samples, or any of the materials in the library (albeit those shaders will have a watermark on them).

Have a play!