We need to talk about the .vrscene exporter for 3ds Max...

[Fridayvfx]

Hello!
I've been using the .vrscene / Vray Standalone workflow for over 2 years now and overall I'm quite happy with it.
Thanks to you guys I've saved quite a lot of money on windows licensing (and stress) because I can run the entire
renderfarm using Linux/ Vray Standalone and maintaining this compared to a windows renderfarm with max/maya and all
the plugins that come with it is just a breeze! So cheers to you guys!

I still have a few suggestions though for things I've come across that kinda still bother me aside from map/plugin incompatibilities
(I know you guys are working on that).

1.) Tracking of animation-tracks and properties.
Sometimes even pretty simple things are not properly tracked using the .vrscene exporter GUI or the vrayExportRTScene() maxscript function.
When I create a vray light for example and I animate that intensity slider from 0-1 over a time of for example 50 frames, this animation will not
be tracked by the vrscene exporter. Yet if I put a vrayColor map into the texture slot of the light and I animate it's output value, it will be tracked by the exporter.
Composite-map and noise map animations are usually not tracked and even vray native nodes like the vraySoftBox map are not tracked at all.

A good workaround for this is to export every frame as a single vrscene file using vrayExportRTScene(). But that comes with other Problems which I describe further down.


2.) No proper velocities/motion blur when exporting a single frame or multiple vrscene files per frame.
Whenever I want to render just a stillframe or multiple vrscene files as a "per frame" option,
I need to write at least two full frames into a vrscene file in order to get the desired motion blur.
I understand that Vray needs 2 full frames to be able to sample in-between in order to get motion blur to work.
So, it would be a "nice to have" I guess, but how about beeing able to export a single frame WITH the desired velocity Infos?

Why? Now when when I want to export vrscene files "per frame" I always need to write 2 frames into one vrscene file in order to get motion blur.
which results in larger file sizes. In some cases it's just a more convinient workflow to export multiple vrscene files "per frame"
using the provided "vrayExportRTScene()" rather than exporting one (possibly huge) file. Now I know that the files would
get significantly smaller when you export everything to a vray proxy and then only the path to that proxy would get written to the vrscene file but exporting all
geometry (possibly with mesh animation as well) always comes with an extra step, and when you have to redo this step with every
render-iteration, it can get annoying.


3.) Collecting assets while exporting (to generate auxiliary file lists)

When using NON windows based render nodes you will need to re-path vrscene files that are exported using max/windows because of forward
slashes and possibly a different directory structure. I know that deadline does a pretty good job at search and replace tasks for vray standalone renderings,
but it usually takes (especially on larger scene files) quite a while to do, thats unnecessary time that does NOT go into rendering.

What I want to be able to do:
I would like to have the option to collect asset names including directory names into a text file WHILE exporting the vrscene file.
It does not even have to be a GUI option for all I care, just equip the vrayExportRTScene() function with one more parameter that
gives me the possibility to write the dir and name of every single asset that is written to the vrscene file into a text file as well.

This way I could always use the "strip paths" option (for the vrscene file) and copy all neccessary assets to the same dir that
contains the vrscene file using that list of assets from the text file.

OR even better:

You would be able to have auxilliary file list to copy all assets with your deadline job to the
rendernode locally so the rendernodes do NOT constantly re-pull files from the network.


It would be great if you would consider some of these things.

Thank you and keep up the great work. I'm stoked about vray 4 btw!
-Robert

[racoonart]

+1
Especially 1) is holding me back from doing more with vray standalone.

[yavor.rubenov]

Hello,

Thanks for those notes - in short I agree with all of them

1) Tracking of animated properties.
You are right - for now we track animation only on specific items. This is due to some internal workings of the exporter and to specifics of the 3ds Max SDK - some additional work is needed to export animated keyframes compared to non animated values for the current frame. So if there are more important items that you need - mention them here or in a message and we'll get to them sooner.
As a general solution - per frame export seems like a good one.

2) We've got an issue in our system to export keyframes when motion blur is enabled no matter the number of frames you export - will this be enough ?

3) There was an idea for a tool that given a vrscene file with paths to various assets will create a separate folder with a new vrscene file with stripped paths and all the assets copied there too. Would this be helpful ?

Best regards,
Yavor

[Fridayvfx]

Hey, thank you for your reply.

regarding 1)
Sure, I would not consider it as an urgent thing for now, from a developer site, I would keep in mind though that it could be a "trap" for people who want to use
the .vrscene/standalone workflow for the first time, then they figure "well that doesnt work" and they discard it as "not working" with a bad experience. Perhaps for now
making the "per frame" workflow a default option in the exporter would help conquer that in the meantime.

regarding 2)
Whenever you get to it. Overall I'd prefer to have one file rather than multiple but whatever works best in your system is fine.

regarding 3)
While a tool like this would certainly be quite helpful in general, especially when using different DDC applications like max/maya,c4d and possibly Houdini in the future ( hoping for it ).
I feel that the "right" moment to collect the assets would be while exporting the vrscene files because in the case of having an additional tool, I would have an extra step and I'd need to walk through (possibly HUGE) files again
and and again, which is an even bigger hassle with the "per frame" workflow. This extra step would take extra time, extra care and extra redundancy because why not collect those path's while exporting?

Thank you!
-Robert

[yavor.rubenov]

regarding 3)
I agree that having this as part of the export from DCC step would be better from user point of view. Another question - do you really need a separate file with a list of external assets or the exporter should just create a vrscene file with stripped paths and also copy all the assets next to the scene ?

[Fridayvfx]

regarding 3)
I agree that having this as part of the export from DCC step would be better from user point of view. Another question - do you really need a separate file with a list of external assets or the exporter should just create a vrscene file with stripped paths and also copy all the assets next to the scene ?

Thank you for your reply.

Well as always, having the option would be nice.
A list would be nice because this way I could use this information to generate auxiliary file lists for deadline, meaning that deadline will copy these files to the local render nodes.
But just integrating the "strip and copy" function to the exporter would be great as well. I guess whatever is easier on your site to maintain for future releases would be the way to go.

Thanks a lot!
-Robert