Grant Warwick- Mastering Vray: Material Ideas Needed.

[grantwarwick]

Grant, could you maybe on the front page of this thread list all the downloads available so far to subscribers please?
(Not actual links obviously, just in list format)
That way I can keep track of all the mails I'm suppose to have from you much easier and which scene is suppose to be the latest update etc.

Also I think the list will make more people excited to subscribe once subscriptions are open again

I will do this ASAP, it's really needed at this point. Thanks for the suggestion

[AlexP]

There are a few standard materials applied to bits of Iron Man, is this intentional?

[ior=0]

--This might have been mentioned before, but I noticed it whilst playing with the chrome shaders--

The Shader Ball Scale seems a bit off, it would make more sense for the floor_diffuse to read 50mm, not 50cm and set the scene scale to match.
The scene is also set to a 50cm scale to match the floor_diffuse, but detailing of the shaders seem more suited to a 50mm ball IMHO, otherwise they are MASSIVE thumb prints!!
Would it change much to re-scale it? Is there specific reason for this scale factor?
Thanks...enjoying and learning loads so far

[Slazzo]

Just found some time to explore the bonus scene, opened, fixed the resources paths and hit render.

1 hour 22 minutes on my 4 years old laptop (i7 1.6ghz, 6GB DDR3) using 3dsMax 2014 and Vray 2.40.04



Then I decided to tweak a bit the render settings in old fashion way, and WTF?! 15 minutes for the same resolution.



Mind the difference in specular pass, also there is brightness difference in beauty pass, I used a different LC settings and hit the reflective GI caustics on.

[fraggle]

Mind the difference in specular pass, also there is brightness difference in beauty pass, I used a different LC settings and hit the reflective GI caustics on.

thanks for the test,
The only realy noticeable difference on the beauty is the grey metal part, the first one is uneven grey while the second is plain grey.
But looking at the Sample Rate vs the first Grant video, I'm now confused again, because it is clearly faster with lot of red part!!!

Grant imput is welcome on this mater, thanks.

[tricky]

What is the best way to deal with 'stairstepping' bright edges (against the alpha for instance) with this method? I'm talking about the areas around the edge of window frames for example.

[Morne]

What is the best way to deal with 'stairstepping' bright edges (against the alpha for instance) with this method? I'm talking about the areas around the edge of window frames for example.

Set your dome light to invisible and set environemnt background to black. In reflection override set the same hdri that you have in your dome light.
Or you already did that and still getting the "stairs"?

[Morne]

Just found some time to explore the bonus scene, opened, fixed the resources paths and hit render.

1 hour 22 minutes on my 4 years old laptop (i7 1.6ghz, 6GB DDR3) using 3dsMax 2014 and Vray 2.40.04



Then I decided to tweak a bit the render settings in old fashion way, and WTF?! 15 minutes for the same resolution.



Mind the difference in specular pass, also there is brightness difference in beauty pass, I used a different LC settings and hit the reflective GI caustics on.

Yes 15 minutes sounds a LOT better than more than 1 hour for this type of scene. I do like this method as its easy to disect a scene, but the render times is still unacceptable to me.
Like somebody else mentioned not long ago, anything longer than 30 minutes a frame per pc for animation and I start getting nervous.

Not to even mention now that 4K tv is starting to be the norm. My head hurts just thinking about doing an animation at 4K with this technique

So far to me anyways, this seems great for vfx and product shots where there's not much going on in the scene. Maybe a character that will be comped into a live shot or whatever. But for full CG scenes like a mall interior for example, I still need V-Ray to be a LOT quicker. 4 hours for 1 image at 2600px with 7 X i7 is just a bit much in my opinion. That being said, even though the renders are taking so much longer, my stuff looks a ton better than they did without this method.

I do like the final result however.
Will see how things go with Vray 3. So far I'm liking the beta very much!

[Slazzo]

Yes 15 minutes sounds a LOT better than more than 1 hour for this type of scene.

Please note that I'm using a 'very old' workstation, usually I'm fine with 8hour render per still which will render in ~2h on a up-to-date machine, but if it's animation of course we can forget about BForce in some cases and high AA, just do the magic when comping altogether same thing with 4k, rendering the scene in as many separate passes we can, and comping it, can be xTimes faster than everything in one go.

I do like this method as its easy to disect a scene, but the render times is still unacceptable to me.

I like the new method and use it for most of my work, but I think that we should be more careful as it can increase the noise in passes or even render times while pumping up the AA unnecessarily.
For few years I didn't use AA lower than 1 24 (which was my default even by now), but in some cases i prefer using the fixed sampler, especially when there is lots of DOF, Motion Blur and other blurry effects so If setting up the scene with lots of subdivs and jumping from AdaptiveDMC to Fixed the render times become irrational long, so I tend to do it reversal, set the scene with the Fixed AA and then switch to AdaptiveDMC using the fixed value as maximum, and that worked for me really good in some cases + I always could change the sampler when needed without significant quality loss.

[glorybound]

I have noticed that it's difficult to balance between light and shadows. Most of my stuff is 1/3 in shadow, and you have to bump up things to get a clean render in the shadows, which is overkill in the light. So, my light will be blue, and my shadow will be red.

[grantwarwick]

Just a heads up guys that there won't be a section in the forum for Mastering Vray so I'll get something else up ASAP for discussion.

Also a heads up that Chaos Group themselves are interested which is pretty cool haha!

[Morne]

Hi Grant
I really need that list of downloads. Half of your links already expired while I was on holiday.

[tricky]

Set your dome light to invisible and set environemnt background to black. In reflection override set the same hdri that you have in your dome light.
Or you already did that and still getting the "stairs"?

I think perhaps the way to resolve this is by sticking an antialiasing filter on. Something like 'Video' which looks nasty for stills but could be OK for 720P animation.

[Morne]

I think perhaps the way to resolve this is by sticking an antialiasing filter on. Something like 'Video' which looks nasty for stills but could be OK for 720P animation.

maybe try quadratic instead of video...

[tricky]

Yep. Done that. Suprised in difference in render time, but at least it clears up jaggies.