OFFTOPIC: VRay standalone

[artevis]

I was thinking to send this as PM to Vlado, but his forum mailbox is full - so I'm posting it here.

I have question about VRay standalone version. I have seen this i.e. in Evermotion or CGArchitect's store. How it works? Can it import some 3D format files (i.e. OBJ, collada, ...)? Or it requires file in some special (vray?) format?
We are using modo on MAC and PC platform - it's small but very powerful (esp. modelling / texturing) app, but it's renderer is ... ok, it's just NOT VRay Is it possible to create exporter for VRay standalone?

Best regards,
Jarek

[vlado]

The standalone is just a command-line renderer. It does not have a GUI of any sort expect for the V-Ray VFB. As such, you can't really import anything into it. The only thing that it understands is the .vrscene file format. You can export .vrscene files from 3ds Max or from Maya.

Best regards,
Vlado

[artevis]

Is there any possibility to get any info about .vrscene format? As I understand, it stores information about geometry, materials, lights, etc. - and VRay renderer settings.

[vlado]

It is a text file format; it is probably best to look at a .vrscene exported from 3ds Max (right-click in a viewport > .vrscene export). There are some more details in the V-Ray SDK documentation (typically installed in [program files]\Chaos Group\V-Ray\3ds Max NNNN\docs\vrscene_format.html)

Best regards,
Vlado

[artevis]

Thanks : ) I hope we get something out of it and create some sort of simple export script from modo.

PS: Oh! Is there any way to import .vrscene file back into MAX? I think answer is no? Do you have any sort of demo version of VRay standalone - that I could test our script later without buying full version?

[vlado]

You can also look at the .vrscene exporter MaxScript itself, which is located in [Program Files]\Autodesk\3ds Max NNNN\Scripts\Startup\vrsceneexport.ms

Best regards,
Vlado

[artevis]

And about that demo version of standalone?

I've looked at vrsceneexport.ms and .vrscene itself, exported from MAX - it doesn't look that bad, even for me : ) Tomorrow I'll show this to my scripter/programmer.

Best regards,
Jarek

[vlado]

You can get a demo version of the standalone as part of the V-Ray for Maya demo version.

Best regards,
Vlado

[artevis]

Great! : ) I didn't know that. One more (and LAST) question: is there VRay standalone for MAC platform? Lately VRay for SketchUp was developed, also for MAC - is it based on standalone?

[vlado]

Yes, there is an OS X version; it is marked as "darwin" in the donwload section on the site.

Best regards,
Vlado

[GatesB]

You can also look at the .vrscene exporter MaxScript itself, which is located in [Program Files]\Autodesk\3ds Max NNNN\Scripts\Startup\vrsceneexport.ms

Is there any way to see the Maya .vrscene exporter code?

[vlado]

Nope; it's written in C++ and is quite a complicated piece of code (perhaps as complicated as V-Ray itself). Even if we could get it to you, it would hardly be a good example - Maya has many quirks that require all sorts of work-arounds.

Best regards,
Vlado

[artevis]

Hi again
I've found a way to export all necessary data from modo. Also analyzed vraysceneexport.ms script - it looks pretty easy to do something similar for modo.

I have only problems with understanding stucture of HEX data (of vertices, edges, UVs, and so on) - based on file exported from MAX.
For example vertices=ListVectorHex(...) - as I understand, it should contain vertex position values. But when I export 100cm cube (8 vertices), which is positioned at (0,0,0), there are some strange values...
In ListVectorHex(...), there are eight "segments" (for 8 vertices), each with three values (vert positions, I think), eight hex digits long for every coordinate - HEX string is 8 (8 vertices) * 3 (x,y,z coords) * 8 (each 4 bytes long). So there should be some values like ...000a0 HEX (100 decimal) in there, as some verts have that position - but all I have exported are values (repeating) of 0CC2, F0C1, ... ?

Do you have any documentation for exporting such data, which could help understand that? Also about other Hex Lists (faces, normals, etc.)?
Or is it possible (for now) to export vertices, faces, etc. in some more human-readable format - as Vector(...) values, as Transform matrices are?

Best regards,
Jarek

[vlado]

Yes, as a start you can use ListVector(Vector(x0,y0,z0), Vector(x1, y1, z1), ...), ListInt(1,2,3,4,5, ....) etc.

Best regards,
Vlado

[artevis]

Ok, so vertices=ListVectorHex(000048C2...) can be replaced with vertices=ListInt(x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2, ...)? Or there is another structure of x,y,z values for verts? (i.e. x1,x2,x3,x4,y1,y2, ...)

Also, what is structure of faceNormals=..., normals=..., ... ?

Under SettingsUnitsInfo there is meters_scale=0.01; - it tells, that every coordinate should be in centimeters?


Sorry for that amount of questions, but I'm really desperate in developing that export script - VRay for MAX is the only thing that hold us on Windows platform. And modo is great app for modeling, used by us.