VrayPhysicalCamera vs PhysicalCamera

[GeraldW]

Hey,

any recommendation which camera we should use with Vray 5?
Are there any advantages using one over the other?

Thanks!

[gandhics]

Physical camera is actually based on VrayPhysicalCamera.
I don't understand why people are still asking VrayPhysicalCamera.
But, there is some EV calculation difference.
You just need to multiply some number to match both.
Other than that, two are pretty much same thing.

[vlado]

There were some issues with the Physical Camera which Autodesk did not fix for a long time (they may be fixed now, I'm not sure). We had to bring back the VRayPhysicalCamera as we can fix stuff there quickly. Also, I intensely dislike the Exposure Control workflow with the Physical Camera; I much prefer the simple approach of the VRayPhysicalCamera.

Best regards,
Vlado

[kosso_olli]

There were some issues with the Physical Camera which Autodesk did not fix for a long time (they may be fixed now, I'm not sure). We had to bring back the VRayPhysicalCamera as we can fix stuff there quickly. Also, I intensely dislike the Exposure Control workflow with the Physical Camera; I much prefer the simple approach of the VRayPhysicalCamera.

Best regards,
Vlado

Can you please explain what the issues were? We are still using the Physical Camera over the VrayPhysCam, because the exposure can be controlled better using the EV values. Strange that you see it the other way round.

[vlado]

There is EV control for the VRayPhysicalCamera in V-Ray 5 (see attachment). The issues with the Max Physical Camera appeared in network rendering when the camera will suddenly move to a random place for some frames, opening a scene will cause the camera to look in a different direction etc. I hate the "Exposure Control" workflow where you need to have an "Exposure Control" set up in the Environment settings for the exposure of the Max Physical Camera to work at all, and that those settings may override the ones in the camera and generally it is very confusing to figure out where the exposure is coming from.

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

I was just going to ask about this. I always used the VRAY Camera, however, I am trying a plugin that uses the physical camera and I wanted to know the pros and cons. AutoExposure works with both, correct?

[gandhics]

I guess "The issues with the Max Physical Camera appeared in network rendering when the camera will suddenly move to a random place for some frames, opening a scene will cause the camera to look in a different direction etc." would have been solved by now. If not, I should have seen a lot of complain about this. Let me dig if I can find when this is fixed or not.

It is fixed in 2020.3
Physical cameras will no longer show NaN in the viewport under certain conditions. MAXX-53022

[^Lele^]

It also had a penchant to open max files with the camera pointing to *some* place other than what was saved.
That persisted long enough for me to not want to touch the physical camera *ever* again.

[kosso_olli]

Is there a way to easily create a VrayPhyscam from view, like with the standard max cameras?

[glorybound]

There is an icon on the VRay toolbar, but I think it is from a perspective view.

[^Lele^]

As Bobby said!
From any non-camera view, click the toolbar icon for the physcam, it'll be aligned to view (like ctrl+c does for the max cameras).