Grant Warwick- Mastering Vray: Material Ideas Needed.

[3LP]

That being said, animation course can be attended by someone else like he mentioned he would have someone helping out for the retouching phase

Stan

[JezUK]

Well your message explains it all. First of all looks like either you are not subscribed to the course or you did not get the idea behind the course at all (second one is more obvious i think) if you are waiting for a library to use.
Second is that you did not get anything about rendering settings and material settings from this course (that leads me to idea that you are not even subscribed).
So please , instead of being a troll (or starting to be one) - check free lessons and try to learn something from them.

This course gave me so much information - i haven't collect for my 7 year of archviz careeer , it made me a kick-ass to start actually see things around and boost quality , and i really hope that after Grant will finish modelling and lighting courses there will be an mastering animation workflow course , though that hope is really thin because as i know Grant gained his experience more from the print - ad industry...

I know your comments weren't aimed at me, but I did sign up for the course at the pre-launch stage and at that time (I think well over a year ago, I think 1.5 years ago, I was using a 4930K i7 and straight off the bat, I couldn't use any materials from Grant's 'pack' (in the Intro 'Lesson'). In fact, I could barely render a shader ball, using Grant's Gold material, without waiting a long time (at a 450x600 image resolution).

So I literally gave up on the material front because of that (i.e. too much time, too unworkable).

So, following on from your wise words of yesterday, I thought I'd revisit the course in question once more, starting from scratch, Intro Lesson, and tried rendering Grant's sample shader ball, again in Grant's Gold material at the settings given.

On a fast i5960x PC (OC'd to 4200mhz), my machine took 14mins (450x600px).......

So I'm getting that same sinking feeling as I had before....

So please, tell me how you got around this ?

Thanks.

PS - I totally appreciate and am grateful for the great work Grant has done to get his teachings out to us so far, and personally, I am finding his Mastering Lighting course to be mega-awesome (and I will be subscribing to his HS Modelling course once I'm done on his Lighting one). It's just I am in agreement with "fraggle" regarding what was originally expected when word of this course first got out (have you read all 100+ pages?), what was finally provided (yes I know things do change midday), and how useful that way of working with materials have proved to be for me (and I guess a lot of people) out here in the real world (i.e. those of us who don't have render farms tucked under our desks).

[JezUK]

New materials incorporating GGX and better optimization are on my to-do list, in the meantime, I feel I've very thoroughly explained material creation to the point where in most situations, you'll only need to slightly vary what I've taught.
I definitely want an updated library though.

Thanks Grant - I'm going to give the Mastering VRay course I subscribed to another shot, as mentioned above, I did struggle with the render times for your materials and quite honestly that did put me off, but I know the lessons towards the end of the course were great and I'm revisiting those as some of the concepts were a little beyond me at the time to be honest

Mastering Lighting is brilliant by the way and I'm loving every minute of it

Cheers

[Oleg_Budeanu]

I know your comments weren't aimed at me, but I did sign up for the course at the pre-launch stage and at that time (I think well over a year ago, I think 1.5 years ago, I was using a 4930K i7 and straight off the bat, I couldn't use any materials from Grant's 'pack' (in the Intro 'Lesson'). In fact, I could barely render a shader ball, using Grant's Gold material, without waiting a long time (at a 450x600 image resolution).

So I literally gave up on the material front because of that (i.e. too much time, too unworkable).

So, following on from your wise words of yesterday, I thought I'd revisit the course in question once more, starting from scratch, Intro Lesson, and tried rendering Grant's sample shader ball, again in Grant's Gold material at the settings given.

On a fast i5960x PC (OC'd to 4200mhz), my machine took 14mins (450x600px).......

So I'm getting that same sinking feeling as I had before....

So please, tell me how you got around this ?

Thanks.

PS - I totally appreciate and am grateful for the great work Grant has done to get his teachings out to us so far, and personally, I am finding his Mastering Lighting course to be mega-awesome (and I will be subscribing to his HS Modelling course once I'm done on his Lighting one). It's just I am in agreement with "fraggle" regarding what was originally expected when word of this course first got out (have you read all 100+ pages?), what was finally provided (yes I know things do change midday), and how useful that way of working with materials have proved to be for me (and I guess a lot of people) out here in the real world (i.e. those of us who don't have render farms tucked under our desks).

That's exactly what i am talking about, mate. You need to understand the settings behind the materials. You will wait for an hour if you render them with standard VRay settings , but if you will check optimization lessons and the ones where Grant explains the stuff under the hood , than you will understand why they render a lot of time and how to cut those times. This is not the lesson where you should download stuff and render straight away. This is lessons of Grant giving you information - and you are starting to see things you haven't seen and understand. Just like a guidance. I really think this is the best way of teaching. Of course some things can be polished in explanations. I would call these - masterclass , not just lessons.
I will not dive in and explain you why renders are slow. Get some time , watch them over again , think about that , compare , and after that you will understand why.
For example rethinking my way of work with Grant's information promoted to me to Technical Supervisor job. With that knowledge i can solve render problems very fast , i understand why there are white dots , fireflies , how Antialiasing vs Shading rays work , how to force VRay doing things exactly how i want them to be and how to find that thin line of balance between quality and rendertime. And BTW , i was working on Lenovo Y50-70 notebook with 16GB ram when i started with that course. And first thing i've done from introduction lessons - i've changed all the settings to very low quality , adjusting those higher till i got more or less good rendertimes for that.

[AlexP]

I was interested in getting those nice procedural materials Grant had created for things like marble, concrete, white paint etc. cant remember exactly
Grant, any chance of releasing those?

[JezUK]

That's exactly what i am talking about, mate. You need to understand the settings behind the materials. You will wait for an hour if you render them with standard VRay settings , but if you will check optimization lessons and the ones where Grant explains the stuff under the hood , than you will understand why they render a lot of time and how to cut those times. This is not the lesson where you should download stuff and render straight away. This is lessons of Grant giving you information - and you are starting to see things you haven't seen and understand. Just like a guidance. I really think this is the best way of teaching. Of course some things can be polished in explanations. I would call these - masterclass , not just lessons.
I will not dive in and explain you why renders are slow. Get some time , watch them over again , think about that , compare , and after that you will understand why.
For example rethinking my way of work with Grant's information promoted to me to Technical Supervisor job. With that knowledge i can solve render problems very fast , i understand why there are white dots , fireflies , how Antialiasing vs Shading rays work , how to force VRay doing things exactly how i want them to be and how to find that thin line of balance between quality and rendertime. And BTW , i was working on Lenovo Y50-70 notebook with 16GB ram when i started with that course. And first thing i've done from introduction lessons - i've changed all the settings to very low quality , adjusting those higher till i got more or less good rendertimes for that.

Thanks mate, I really appreciate your words - they're coming from a place of encouragement and I really appreciate that.

I watched the Lesson 1 video again today, and it did cement some of the questions I had around AA and Sample Rates, Color Thresholds, so I'm really looking forward to re-viewing the entire set of Lessons again, I'm sure they'll make a lot more sense 2nd time around and with your encouraging guidance I'm sure I'll glean more. It is a good course and worth the money - Grant did an amazing job.

I also think it's a good idea what you suggest, i.e. to revisit the materials once I've done the course and see how to improve those render times - and yes, I did assume that the intro max file they were held in was already optimised.

Congratulations on the job promotion !

[Oleg_Budeanu]

Cheers and good luck on that !
If you have any problems or questions - you have Mastering CGI forums as well as ChaosGroup.

[WilleViz]

New materials incorporating GGX and better optimization are on my to-do list, in the meantime, I feel I've very thoroughly explained material creation to the point where in most situations, you'll only need to slightly vary what I've taught.
I definitely want an updated library though.

An (updated) GGX library would be sooo awesome, Grant. Yep, I'm going through Mastering V-Ray right now, and I am just damn happy I don't have to learn the layered approach to get realistic highlights/reflection with the GGX shader. Things are complicated enough without it - for me at least!

[kosso_olli]

There is quite a discussion going on over at Grant's forum. And honestly, I agree. This has become a total rip-off.

http://masteringcgi.com.au/groups/ma...y-quiet-place/

[DJH]

I think we can all identify with starting something with the best will in the world but losing the motivation to finish it... but when those sums of money are involved it is not acceptable.

Mastering Procrastination next course up?

[Moriah]

As someone who bought the mastering vray and the lighting course, i feel a bit ripped off right now specifically with the last one... No response from grant for over a month too... His delays and excuses are completely unnaceptable specially with such a huge amount of subscribers and money involved...

[devin]

I thought his first class Mastering Vray was quite good bit this latest Lightning class hasn't been very useful as someone who does Arch Viz.

[WilleViz]

I can't enter the forums on the Mastering V-ray. Sure, I get to the list view over the sub forums, but whenever I try to enter one, I just get a "Oh bother! No topics were found here!" - all while there is clearly several Topics and Posts going on. But for some reason, I'm locked out. *facepalm*

Having said that, I think the course is fine and the value is good.

[kosso_olli]

The discussion is about his lighting course. The mastering vray one was fine, I agree.

[RobH22]

There is quite a discussion going on over at Grant's forum. And honestly, I agree. This has become a total rip-off.

I'm going to have to vigorously disagree with you guys. This is in no way a ripoff. I've been doing 3D for over 20-years and until Grant came along we truly had little under-the-hood V-Ray instruction that was useful. There were a lot of tutorials that you could blindly follow but had no idea why one setting was used as opposed to another. There were other technical documents that are written for programmers and so poorly written that no normal human could make sense of the vernacular and information. Grant is a guy like many of us. We works and learns and is passionate. He'd had an interesting career and been through some quality animation houses and as such realized he had something to say. So, he took on the task with his wife and brother (I believe) and created some of the best tutorials in the world on V-Ray. And, he's done all of this from his house. As far as I know, he has no staff like you'd find and Lynda or Digital Tutors.

The prices he charges are very inexpensive for what he's supplying. I have no idea what you are talking about when you say "the sums of money involved." If he had charged $1 and 1 million people signed up, well that's 1 million dollars. But he has no control over how my people sign up. He charges a very, very fair price for the quality of information that he disseminates to us. I don't care if he never wrote back or checked in. I got 12 Lessons on V-Ray in a year, what he said he'd do, and I've taken that knowledge and made many more times than what I paid for the course.

And aside from all of that, he's training to be a boxer in the Olympics if I'm not mistaken. So you guys need to step back, take a breath and realize what a resource these lessons are. They are inexpensive, incredibly detailed and some of the best you can get for V-Ray. Can the sarcasm and go study. You'll make more money and the few hundred dollars you spent here will soon become a blurry spot in the rear-view mirror.