Basics of Rendering in Vray

[Morne]

my 2 cents:
My problem with Chaos Group and VRay (read my whole message before you want to smack me) is that on the surface they seem like a bunch of amateurs. I mean just look at the front page of their website compared to maxwell, fryrender etc. Its looked the same since the 1st time I heard about VRay (about 2 years ago) and the gallery is the same crap. (1st time it looks nice but after 2 years its just another crap gallery). Phone Chaos Group office and its always 1 of 2 girls answering the phone (in the 5 or 6 times I phoned). I'm kinda new to this forum, but it seems there are Vlado and Candelero (sorry about spelling) that helps people here (from Chaos). I have heard about Peter which seems to me to be the main guy. So in a nutshell it seems Chaos is a bunch of amateurs working out of their garage.

Now if Vlado also programs Vray, where does he find the time to mess around testing everbody's problems, does his own tests, and still program the thing? Vlado you must be well paid, if not, you should be.

Anycase so once you have VRay, comes the task of learning the thing. So about materials. You will think that VRay comes with some materials, even just a 10 basic ones, glass, metal, plastic, timber, stone, fabric. But NO, you have to smell what setting does what. Try and learn anything from Evermotion, well then just cut your heart out with a spoon. Seems most people here agree stuff from evermotion - materials and models are way too heavy and renders slow. So then why would I try and use their stuff? OK so there is this supposedly "help" site at www.spot3d.com. Well most of it is pretty useless to me since I need detailed tutorials to explain what is what. Why do I have to buy millions of materials from other companies when somewhere there can be some kind of presets, where I can at least get an idea from how each thing works, and tweak it a bit for my needs. I believe this way will learn faster than just use my own settings because it seems to work, but it slows me down because some setting might be too high and I dont even know it.

OK so there is a lot more to complain about, but I'm tired typing now.

After all that I would like to say that I am proud that I bought Vray, after looking at Maxwell, Fryrender, Mental Ray and FinalRender. I got VRay now and I'm sticking with it. So even though I don't know much about Chaos Group, its workers, or the advanced features of Vray (and even some of the basic stuff) I chose Vray and I'm sticking with it as I believe it is the best tool for my needs. So thank you for a great rendering program, but please give us newbies some more help and kickstart in the form of updated and detailed tutorials.

Also thank you for this Forum and for all you great guys always helping us newbies out.

[jujubee]

Amateurs - no. Working out of their garage? no. It seems however that everybody wants a simple button 'Make Pretty Render.'

1) Clean looking website design would help initial impressions. That's only cosmetic however.

2) Preset materials - I agree with you. Would be nice for beginners to have a preset drop-down in the their materials with a long list of basic materials. This has been requested many times. Others have implemented something similar before - EGZ (Torgeir) with his materials. But I agree, that this should be part of their default package.

3) Vray Still Render Presets. This too has been requested many times:
a) Low Preview.
b) Medium Preview.
c) High Preview.
d) Low Quality Render.
e) Medium Quality Render.
f) High Quality Render.

[Morne]

Amateurs - no. Working out of their garage? no. It seems however that everybody wants a simple button 'Make Pretty Render.'

.

That button sure sounds nice, but I'll settle for the way things are if only I can get some good simple to understand information without seeking "that button"

[Morbid Angel]

Well this is getting to a point where, you are involved with "a renderer". A professional rendering system is a complex piece of software. And if you want to work with it, you have no choice but to learn it.
You think vray is complicated? I worked with vray, mental ray, maxwell, fryrender, brazil, final render....by complexity none of them compare to render man. Now thats a complex renderer. So complex, you cant render anything from "out of the box". You need a team of writers to develop stuff for it and etc.

Imo, vray is on par by complexity with mr and brazil. Their shader systems, though visually different are actually based on the same thing. Same algorythms, same methods. Once you understand those methods, you understand the system, then you know how to work with it.

About chaos, its rude to say that they seem amateur. You have to factor in what they are competing against:
Mental Images, a powerful company well solidified its position over many years.
Splutter fish, a very well solidified company in high-end vfx industry.
These companies have serious funds available to develop/sponser their sortware.
Chaos group is on its way there. And you should give them some credit for that.
If you pay attention you will see that vray is most widely used product in the world. Just look at the google charts. That has to speak for it self.
I say that, once chaos group is around for more then 10 years, you will see the professionalism and serious development like MI.

And last...Be glad you are able to call to chaos group and talk to some one there.
Try that with mental images, or splutter fish. See how far you get?
Honestly chaos group actually the only company that listens to their users, and what they are asking for. None of the others do that as much.
MI and Auto are just focused on profits and what users want, is the last thing on their mind.

[glorybound]

Presets

Go over to the maxscript page and you'll find a lot of stuff... Do a v-ray search.

http://www.scriptspot.com/

[joconnell]

my 2 cents:
My problem with Chaos Group and VRay (read my whole message before you want to smack me) i... working out of their garage.

Yep Definitely want to smack you - It's similar to syntheyes written by russ anderson, it's a far less slick website than pf track or boujou - the guy is a 3d tracking programmer, not a web developer. I'd rather he spent time making the program better than making a fancy site. Maxwell and the next limit crews site are great but they're the worst company I've ever bought a program from, if you've an issue with perceived professionalism with vray from its website then I'd say you're looking at the wrong things in choosing a renderer. The guys haven't bothered updating the site because it doesn't matter to them - people are buying vray for its sheer force as a rendering engine which is down to the guys concentrating their efforts where it counts.

Now if Vlado also programs Vray, where does he find the time to mess around testing everbody's problems, does his own tests, and still program the thing? Vlado you must be well paid, if not, you should be.

V(lado)ray - I don't think anyone knows how he programs the thing, answers all the questions etc - just to make it even more annoying he's very healthy looking too - god knows how with the pace this thing develops at...

Anycase so once you have VRay, comes the task of learning the thing. So about materials. ...

Renderers are hard. Vray isn't even the hardest one so resign yourself to the fact that if you want to get good at something you're going to have to put the effort in. The material itself is also a really simple one to use - there's so little to it but you don't really need much more else. I do agree though that the documentation is light in terms of getting results and hopefully there should be a few more artistically focussed learning materials coming out. As regards the evermotion stuff, vray has evolved a lot over the years so assets from earlier versions will probably have settings that are overboard for what vray needs now.

OK so there is a lot more to complain about, but I'm tired typing now.

You've gotta put more effort into your complaining too so people will take you seriously

So thank you for a great rendering program, but please give us newbies some more help and kickstart in the form of updated and detailed tutorials. Also thank you for this Forum and for all you great guys always helping us newbies out.

It's by far the best part of the program - there's a tonne of great information on here and some really helpful people - unfortunately there's a lot of different ways to use vray so there might be some conflicting methods until you get a better sense of what workflow is best for yourself.

Cheers!

[jujubee]

By the way, working out of your garage can be pretty efficient.

I actually know a 'friend-of-the-family' billionaire that started off in his.

[Morbid Angel]

Thats where I started from

[dellis]

To be quite honest...i think people should be completely familiar with the products before any complaints rain out. I've seen some really talented people do things that i have considered impossible. I'm sure Vlado and the boys are amazed sometimes at what VRay can do...and they wrote the damn thing. I'm going to just say waht everyone else has said....practice it...know it...and your mindset will switch to what its capable of....rather then what you think it is incapable of...

Having said that...read this:

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/gimethods.htm

...and then read it again and again and again! Then go and buy Chris Nichols video tutorial on Speed vs. Quality and you will be just fine....oh yeah and practice and ask questions around here!

[m_hinks]

To be quite honest...i think people should be completely familiar with the products before any complaints rain out. I've seen some really talented people do things that i have considered impossible. I'm sure Vlado and the boys are amazed sometimes at what VRay can do...and they wrote the damn thing. I'm going to just say waht everyone else has said....practice it...know it...and your mindset will switch to what its capable of....rather then what you think it is incapable of...

Having said that...read this:

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/gimethods.htm

...and then read it again and again and again! Then go and buy Chris Nichols video tutorial on Speed vs. Quality and you will be just fine....oh yeah and practice and ask questions around here!

Yup, I was about to type the same thing!

I'm slightly annoyed that noobs are complaining about Vray not being easy to learn. How much time are you spending learning, reading, practicing? I have been learning Vray little over a year, and I have found it very easy to pick up, much more so than Brazil and some others. Yeah having some presets would be nice, but its not difficult to read the help file, look on here, and then you can make your own materials, and save them as presets. Chaos are not here to write the software, and provide lazy noobs with a "pretty render" Btn.

You should not complain about the difficulty in learning the software if you are not prepared to commit the time to understand it. Its not brain surgery, its you being bone ideal. All the information to learn to an advanced level is found on here, and the DVD's mentioned, and the help files.

Asking stupid questions like "Tell me how to make a good render with Vray, while I sit on my arse and ****?" is not going to win you any friends on here. People spend the work lives learning things about the software, they are not going to spill there knowledge to you for nothing if you have not made the effort first!

Anyway, back to my quite, none work related Sunday morning!

[Morne]

Hi all

I wasnt trying to get you all worked up, I was merely trying to say that I'm frustrated that my stuff is not as good as yours. As far as putting the effort in, well you have no idea how much effort I've put in to VRay and how much I've fought with one of my clients for more than a year to stick with VRay and not use MR. My family already complaing I'm in front of the computer too much. I work out of the "garage" as well by the way, and since my stuff is not in my opinion as good as yours, yes I consider myself pretty good, for an amateur. But I feel I can not call myself a true professional if my stuff can not get to your high standards.

So I was complaining because I'm frustrated (please excuse me). I'm completely self-taught and been doing ArchViz on and of for 11 years, last 4 or 5 years full time and as I say completely self-taught. I never had a mentor untill now that I'm on this forum and speaking to you great guys. I've been struggling with VRay for 2 years now. Spending my time to try and get as good as you guys. I do appreciate any and all help and comments I can get, including the bad ones. Seems I'm a slow learning concerning VRay.

Again sorry to have offended any1 here, including Chaos.

Kind Regards,
Your most FRUSTRATED newbie
Morne

[Morne]

Go over to the maxscript page and you'll find a lot of stuff... Do a v-ray search.

http://www.scriptspot.com/

Thanks Bobby
This stuff seems very usefull
Now if only I can find tutorials and proffesional help from these people that wrote it! I'm kidding! Thanks for the reply, thanks to all the clever people that write these great scritps

[rivoli]

VRay is supposed to be physically accurate? Then why are vray lights set to show in reflections by default with their specular box turned on. All they do is show up as a solid white box object with a bright intensity. It behaves like an ordinary white card. Real lights don't look like whitecards. They look like lights. The more physically precise way to simulate lights is to create a texture that looks like a light with its bloom and flare and then map it to a plane and place it inthe scene where your light is.

after been away a couple of days, I was just trying to catch up with the thread and stumbled across this one. kind of hard to be taken seriously, especially if the argument about vray being physically sound is based on these statements. I mean, are you having a laugh?
of course in the real world there's diffraction, and bloom and flares and all that, but no renderer out there simulates those effects while rendering, this doesn't mean it's less physically accurate then others. renderers such as maxwell does simulate diffraction of light based on aperture and obstacle maps, but as a post effect applied to full float outputs. otherwise what you get are very bright solid objects which look like whitecards.

[fuzzpopfx]

I mean, are you having a laugh?

Yeah actually, I am. All of these renderers with their "physical accuracy" are a joke. My whole point was vray's over-complexity of stuff by trying to follow physically accurate models. Give me a renderer that just makes features available in a straight-forward manner without requiring you to work within some kind of hindering bounds.

[jujubee]

Simply put - you're not going to get that currently in a Production (work) environment. No fast render can provide that to you. Settings would be WAY too high.

If you want that, you can try Fryrender - but then again you'll be waiting a couple days before your rendering is produced at a resolution acceptable for some companies.

Or you can try and learn Vray like the rest of us had to - and get pretty good results once you understand how to operate it.

Instructions (make pretty render) are not easy I'll admit, but you really have to take the time, read, and experiment.