V-Ray development poll

[vlado]

Hello,

Since a lot of you guys have used V-Ray heavily in many projects, you have no doubt come against problems that you had to solve somehow and wished for an easier way around it, or wished for a major feature that was not there. If you would like to see one area of V-Ray improved or a feature added, which one will it be? I've added a few options in a poll, but feel free to post anything else below.

Best regards,
Vlado

[stefan]

Rendertime SubD's that take creases and weight definitions into account like Max' subdivision modifiers do.

A "metaball" material to render large amounts of fluids (in RMan it's called RiBlob I think). Afterburn has something like this as well, but it didn't work very well with Vray's GI and reflections/refractions last time I tried.

But the biggest problems I had in production came from Max itself -> An XSI port would come in handy

[percydaman]

I voted materials, but want to be more specific since the poll is too general for what I'd like to see. Specifically more options in the materials, like individual GI sampling options. fRender has had it forever, and Vray is superior to fRender. Also the option to turn individual materials or objects off to raytracing, like the standard max raytracer has had forever, and we all know VRAY is superior to that as well.

[ene.xis]

and a new material editor - a vraymateditor - with every single tuning settings for LWF and colormapping, and all the vray material definitions, maybe in a schematic ui...eg. 2 materials had different diffuse value/maps, but shared the reflections parameters, so u could make changes in a more effecient way...

[Neilg]

I'm glad to see nobody wants it simplifying or becoming unbiased.

Materials, workflow tools, lights & flickerless GI are all in high demand with me, it was hard to pick which one to go for.

If you could somehow make a vray specific node based material editor however, shove that on the top of my list (With colour mapping preview, not just LWF)

oh vlado you are the best! etc.

[cpnichols]

Some more BRDF and shader work needs to be done IMHO. That is where things like MR are still very powerful. Right now, no one can beat MR fastSSS, and the Vray method is just not cutting it yet. I woudl 100% stand behind (and could help suggest ) a standalone nodal material library.

What should probably be the biggest development that is needed STANDALONE vray. We need Vray to be a universal rendering engine that can plug into Max/Maya/XSI, whatever. Having a universal method of doing that, and having a robust independent Shader Editor is key to the success of Vray in the High End market. Using a method similar to mtor and slim would be a good start.

[jonnybefree]

also voted for materials, but also voted for the light types in my head.
like a vray spot, vray lightmtl for direct light ect....

[ene.xis]

ditto!
wise words chris!

[jujubee]

I'd like to see flickerless GI for animations and all animators spend an awful amount of time troubleshooting these on projects - however most people aren't creating animations - so this will probably never rank up at the top of a popular poll. But for whomever has rendered out an animation, this is a very frustrating experience.

New light types would take my #2 - mostly for architectural visulalization (ceiling cans would accomodate discs then.) You wouldn't have to sit there and scale each one to fit from then on and wouldn't have to worry about intersections and strange light leaks.

As for #3, new materials are always good to see, but for now I (personally-speaking) can massage most of the mats. My one material request at the moment would be a simple water mat possibly even capable of producing foam. A simple height, roughness, clarity, color with automated transparency/depth (the fog parameter is confusing atm), and possibly a smart caustics parameter would be useful.

Can this poll be formed from least importance to most importance?

[Morbid Angel]

shaders shaders shaders...........thousands of shaders............billions, trillions........................sextahexelions
did I mention, lots of new cool maps, like multilayered texture with blending modes as in photoshop will be useful. VrayNoise texture could be useful too. And similars.

[instinct]

shaders shaders shaders...........thousands of shaders............billions, trillions........................sextahexelions
did I mention, lots of new cool maps, like multilayered texture with blending modes as in photoshop will be useful. VrayNoise texture could be useful too. And similars.

make that a proper Worley implementation using a schematic editor like helium to combine them in a nodeview :P

[jujubee]

Ugh. Why do people like node views so much?

[travistlo]

lots of new cool maps, like multilayered texture with blending modes as in photoshop will be useful.

Have you seen the material layering system in Modo. Its wonderful. It would be great to have that somehow in max/vray.

[Morbid Angel]

if you never tried it, you dont know.... I would take node based system over linear anyday.

travistlo, no I have not, but I have worked with lightwaves layer system in surface editor...and well its uncomparable.

[studioDIM]

make that a proper Worley implementation using a schematic editor like helium to combine them in a nodeview :P

Speaking of which: where's helium gone?

I voted for shaders as well, and second entirely Chris' view.

Lele