V-Ray development poll

[gilpo]

Material-wise, I'd like to see some more options for the vraysky material-like the mental ray sky. There are options for things like mapping the haze, etc.

Also, the new rounded edges option in the MR materials is really cool and would come in really handy for archviz work as an alternative to chamfering every edge in a scene.

Vlado, I'm sure you now realize what a can of worms you have opened, but I really appreciate you taking an interest in our needs.

[stilgarna]

Reflection - A separate reflection shader which will contain additional reflection paramiters like directional reflectance blur (UV spread) separate reflection paramiters for environment to support fake environment reflecitons which are not occluded by the objects in the scene. Reflectance weight (intesity) with controlable fresnel, like facing weight and edge weight. Samples. Reflectance dispersion. Anistrophy. IOR

Refraction - not a glass shader, but simply a refraction shader which would have additional paramiters to the refraction: glossy uv spread, environment refraction mapping which is not occluded by the objects. 3 layers for color such as front depth color, back depth color and middle depth color which can also be shader models. Refraction facing weights. Samples. Dispersion. Absobrtion. IOR.

Specular - a specular layer with additional controls: Overall specular weight, overall specular color. Specular spread, specular mode (blinn, phong etc).

Diffuse shaders - lambert, cooktorrance, oren nayar etc.

More powerful fast sss shader - shader which will contain multi layered options and would be dependant on the lightmap or similar method.

Bump shader - similar to mr vector bump, so that all of the above written layers can pass through the bump.

Physical sss - shader which can contain only sss layer.

Glass shader - shader model which can contain glass paramiters similar to maxwell. And perhaps various glass types.

Metal shader - shader model similar to maxwell metals.

Carpaint - carpaint shader with controls for flakes, diffusion, reflectance.

I agree....

[robdeja]

I'd like to see a true volumetric shader which can be used to create clouds and smoke.
It would be great to be able to define your cloud shape with a basic mesh and then apply a volumetric shader to it (using procedural noise to define the volume) so that you can create photorealistic clouds which can be animated.

This would go hand in hand with the vray physical sky.

[Neilg]

To add to mine from some good shouts, volumetric shaders and a decent auto-fillet would be excellent.

[Jacob Hutson]

+1 on the rounded edges shader

thats a killer shader in mr
it makes you arch viz stuff was faster as every surface isnt bevelled in geometry.

[vlado]

Re: +1 on the rounded edges shader

thats a killer shader in mr
it makes you arch viz stuff was faster as every surface isnt bevelled in geometry.

That particular effect you can get if you use the already available f-Edge plugin.

Best regards,
Vlado

[plastic_]

i also want f-edge built into the vray material, like with mental ray.
and volumetric lights/fog.
and to be able to assign shaders to lights, like with mental ray. (for material-independent ambient occlusion).
and better UI design. it's getting cluttered with all the cryptic special-situation checkboxes.
i can only imagine that vray in it's current state would be quite overwhelming for a new user.

[RErender]

I like the UI the way it is, it's good that it still takes a little expertise to do our job.

[DaForce]

When it gets too simple it attracts people like the maxwell users

jokes aside, I quite like the UI as it is. I imagine changing it drastically would do more harm than good.

[Morbid Angel]

i see no point in changing the ui; its imo a waste of time. If vray is to claim a place of professional production ready tool, the power will come from advanced settings, powerful shaders and etc. I could see down the road something like special presets, like what mr in maya has.

[stilgarna]

Re: +1 on the rounded edges shader

That particular effect you can get if you use the already available f-Edge plugin.

Should Be interestingf to see this feature directly into Vray shader. Even if it's exist with f-edge...

Best Regards.

[jonnybefree]

More powerful fast sss shader
Physical sss

i've play'd a bit with finalrender, and saw the power of sss such damn fast.

wish vray has also
ah and i forget the volumeshader wich i dind't allude allready i think.

[trixian]

I thought I would point out that UI is not limited to what you guys are talking about. Graphical user interface is what most of you are commenting on. There are however probably other work flow related user interface issues to be improved on. I must confess though, reading some of those shader requests from morbid, makes me think maybe Renderman would be a better tool for jobs that require very specialized shaders, or even Mental Ray, though writing shaders there is slightly more complicated.
Then again, why not have a renderman compliant shading language and external editor for the standalone package.

[Robert]

I can only agree to what most people wrote here. More shaders are defently a big need for Vray. I vote for flicker free GI, as I find it more important, but I think that most people can control it.

Comparing mentalray and vray in 3dsmax9 I found that, while vray is the still the better one, MR has many shaders that make it interest to use. So, there is a pretty good skin shader, a less good car shader, ocean and other shaders. The round edge shaders is also nice, but not really new. More then this you have environment and light shaders, for glow effects or other.

Ok, you can get it all from Vray with some efforts and tricks. I love the Vray material and the max material manager. A note editor is a nice extension, but not really needed. Hopefully autodesk will react to the wishes soon. Also, they should take care of more basic shaders, looking into C4D i almost feel ashamed by the lack of shaders in 3dsmax. Anyhow plugins (darktree, etc.) can solve a lot, there is still a few things missing in Vray.

So, I conclude by adding some of my own wishes:

- cleaner dirt shader (support of smooth faces)
- occlution or dirt as map channel (with ignor to transparent materials)
- better bumpmap with GI light
- glas shader (some real glass please... finalrender example)
- skin shader (MR as reference)
- final gathering (Ok, I know that hurts, but it's pretty nice to use in MR 3.5 when doing animation)
- support of tesselated surfaces like Nurbs or Nurms.

[Neilg]

- final gathering (Ok, I know that hurts, but it's pretty nice to use in MR 3.5 when doing animation)

What does this do that vray cant?