Vray 3 aling side 2.4 on the same max vesion?

[3LP]

Hey guys,

Is it possible to run Vray 3.x along side Vray 2.x on the same max version?
I don't want to kill all our production, but I still want to be able to run Vray Beta and look at it with the help of the farm and so on...

I could do it on another version of max, but this means finding all the plugins and so one, would be great to be able to just chose a different version straight in max like Production, RT or scanline etc

Thanks

Stan

[DPS]

No it's not.

[vlado]

I could do it on another version of max, but this means finding all the plugins and so one, would be great to be able to just chose a different version straight in max like Production, RT or scanline etc

We've thought about this and while we could have probably done that for the renderer itself, I don't see how we can handle the materials - you'd need to have VRayMtl for V-Ray 2.x and then VRayMtl for V-Ray 3.x etc - it would become a mess.

Best regards,
Vlado

[3LP]

Sure, make sense, I will go for another version of max then

Thanks

Stan

[Joelaff]

Hmm..

Really? Wow. I really wish you could install both and just choose VRay 2 or VRay 3 like you could choose VRay vs. MentalRay.

This makes it very hard to install the beta.

How is VRay 2 going to be handled come release time? Studios have a lot of VRay 2 scenes that will need to be opened up and rendered, and must match VRay 2 perfectly. Will this be possible?

Man, I hate to come across as a naysayer, and I know I have been ranting on the per node cost in the other thread, but this is a pretty big oversight (or pretty bad decision). This is not very production friendly. What was the reasoning behind this?

Always make upgrades, *especially* betas, work along side new versions and you will get much higher and much faster adoption rates.

[vlado]

Really? Wow. I really wish you could install both and just choose VRay 2 or VRay 3 like you could choose VRay vs. MentalRay.

Even if we did do that, what about materials, lights? We would need to have VRayLight for V-Ray 2.x and a VRayLight for V-Ray 3.x... same for textures, materials, cameras. You can see where it could be a mess.

How is VRay 2 going to be handled come release time? Studios have a lot of VRay 2 scenes that will need to be opened up and rendered, and must match VRay 2 perfectly. Will this be possible?

I perfect match will probably not be possible (if only because we've fixed a couple of bugs that might affect lighting slightly). This is why we will provide a version of V-Ray 2.x that works with the new licensing.

Always make upgrades, *especially* betas, work along side new versions and you will get much higher and much faster adoption rates.

I know that, of course. But I wish someone could explain to me how to do it technically. On the other hand, 3ds Max can be set up to load different V-Ray versions with different shortcuts, and especially studios usually have already an established system that allows them to switch between different versions of plugins.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Joelaff]

We are pretty new to Max. 3d for over twenty years, max for a few months. What is this system people use to switch between versions of plugins? Does it work with the render farm as well?

You could use the same plugin with a compatibility mode. A Check box or drop down to choose if the material or light or camera should behave like VRay 2 or like VRay 3. Legacy scenes load with the mode set to 2, new instances start at 3. This is how LightWave handled their change in surfacing, and it was pretty much transparent to the user. Old scenes worked right, and new scenes took advantage of new changes.

But please tell me more about the preferred method for changing plugin versions. Is this all custom scripts? Will VRay install and work correctly into a folder outside the Max directory? Can we just use external directories and simply change the plugin.ini? This is how Thinkbox's stuff is setup. They always install totally in their own directory and then just set the path in the plugin.ini file.

I see the difficulty involved. Just want to make sure we can easily get back to 2.0 both interactively and for rendering on the farm. Like I said, Max is still a new thing here. So please forgive the naive questions.