Chaos Group and VRay 1.5 at SIGGRAPH - booth #2101

[Long John]

ok back to topic if you don´t mind.

when can we expect some exciting news?

[percydaman]

actually I never check store with irradiance map in the light settings. Unless I already need extremely high irradiance map settings.

[jujubee]

Here's another Siggraph 2004 Blog link also posted to the Off-Topic section:

http://siggraph.blogspot.com/

[cocolas]

Peter;

Being that there is a limited batch can registered users who are attending Siggraph have the opportunity to reserve a T-Shirt?

All;

I was told to go up to the top floor of the Bonaventure, have a drink, and reminisce about your favorite childhood sitcom which was supposedly set in that lounge. We all may be a bit too young to rememeber this show but you can do your research.

http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet.../Its_a_Living/

Cocolas,

I liked Sciarc a lot. Expensive to say the least but I guess the environment is refreshing. It's full of talented people each with thier own challanges and innovations.

hehehe...my room was on the 23rd floor of that hotel while in LA for siggraph.....it's a really expensive place though (good thing my company paid for it )

as for Sciarc....that's really cool. I've heard (don't know if true) that many arch grads from there don't end up in architecture, but in the movie/film bussiness.....kinda funny, but becuase of the location, it makes sense to a degree...

paul.

[cpnichols]

when can we expect some exciting news?

The exciting news is that they took all the gamers, 3d artists that have been complaing about Half Life 2 not being out yet, and all those that have been complaining about Windows XP sp2 and XP64 not being out yet, locked them in a room, and shot them. That way, when people would go to all the fun Siggraph parties, people would actually have a good time.

[percydaman]

haha sweeet...

[J_Bug]

[vlado]

Finally back from the US, for those of you that couldn't make it, here is a brief description of what we showed there:

* The latest version of V-Ray for 3dsmax - lightmaps, vfb and render elements, vrayfur, vraytoon.
* V-Ray standalone - the standalone version of VRay, capable of reading a text file with a scene description and rendering an image with full GI, plus distributed rendering, using the exact same core and algorithms as used in 3dsmax. This version of V-Ray, together with the V-Ray shading language, will be available for beta-testing soon.
* V-Ray inside Maya - this is a very early stage of integrating the V-Ray core inside Maya; no UI or shader support yet, although this is coming.
* Aura for 3dsmax - our fluid dynamics simulation engine for effects like fire and smoke.

Our goal for the show was to demonstrate the V-Ray core working completely outside and independently of 3dsmax. In the end, you would be able to take your scene, export it from 3dsmax into a V-Ray scene file format, and use the standalone version to render it. You can even tweak rendering parameters by directly modifying the scene file, without the need to use 3dsmax at all.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Robert]

Sounds interesting, but what are the main benefits from the news?

At the moment we are testing 1.45 and are quit unhappy.

1.) The new channels are great but how can we use it on animation? There is no loader for the vray image format.
2.) Still Vray seams to crash on big scenes.
3.) Vray Fur is extremly slow.
4.) Particles are still a problem (PFlow)
5.) Plugins like RPC, Speedtree, etc are not good supported

What we need is:

1.) Channels that we can use.
2.) More stabil Vray, especialy when it comes to particles, millions of polygones, fur.
3.) fast Skin Shader, or other cool shader like everyone else has.
4.) IES-Light support at a normal speed.

Thinks we will see more in 1.5 and it's to early to judge, but hey we are waiting for improvements since 2 years now.

regards,

robert

[egz]

1.) The new channels are great but how can we use it on animation? There is no loader for the vray image format.
What we need is:
1.) Channels that we can use.

Why don't you save them as TGA files (enable saving in the VRayVFB rollout)? I use them in animation all the time now.

As for fur, since this is all geometry hair it will render a lot slower than the atmospheric effects of HairFX and Ornatrix. But it will give you GI support and raytraced shadows for the fur if you need it. Try using adaptive QMC anti aliasing to speed up the rendering some.

[vlado]

1.) The new channels are great but how can we use it on animation? There is no loader for the vray image format.

As egz pointed out, you can save the channels as sequences of image files (use the Split G-Buffer channels option);

2.) Still Vray seams to crash on big scenes.

This is what VRayProxies are for.

3.) Vray Fur is extremly slow.

Nothing much to do about that; try using the QMC aa sampler or add some more geometry to your scene (don't apply the fur to objects with large faces).

4.) Particles are still a problem (PFlow)
5.) Plugins like RPC, Speedtree, etc are not good supported

As far as RPCs go, we'll try to make things better.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Long John]

[quote]

2.) Still Vray seams to crash on big scenes.

This is what VRayProxies are for.
[quote]

wouldn´t it be better when vray can render the same amount of polys without a crash that brazil and fR can render?

thre is nothing more annoying then a crashing program, im sure you will agree.

[vlado]

It is certainly possible to squeeze the geometry into less RAM, at the expense of rendering speed. It's all a matter of programming... Having said that, we will not have the time to change the geometry handling for VRay 1.5.

As far as large polygon counts are concerned, VRay doesn't crash because of a programming error, but because of lack of available RAM - and there is always a limit to that. The VRay proxies give you a way to render more geometry than either Brazil or finalRender can handle.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Long John]

ok, but is there no way to let vray give a error message instead of a "back-to-desktop" crash?

as max user we all know to save often but anyway, losing 10 minutes work are 10 minutes to much.

[suurland]

And 9 out of 10 times you can't use the proxy, as it's only good for 1 object with 1 material which is never really used, atleast not by me.