Ideas on making V-Ray's sampling UI more intuitive.

[grantwarwick]

You have access to the nightly builds, play with it and see how it goes. I still don't think this approach makes things any simpler or easier, but I'd love to be proven wrong

Best regards,
Vlado

It only makes things easier for those who don't know about the connection. (Which based on user feedback from my first lesson is the number one thing people misunderstood!!!)
I personally get why it was implemented but once you know what you are doing, it's definitely annoying.

[LudvikKoutny]

Recon442,

I can send to you a link for my mastering vray video that covers the fundamentals of optimising Vray (I even explain why Vray is trying to optimise things for us)
At the end of the day, VRay definitely needed that option to disable the link between Max aa and Global subdivs so thats exciting but really, Vray isn't that hard and you are being a little melodramatic about how difficult it is. (I used to be the exact same)
I'd say it's more a lack of detailed documentation requiring a lot of trial and error so I do feel your pain.

I do not entirely agree. I have spent quite a bit of time with several quite different rendering engines. I also partially influenced design of Corona renderer UI as well as design of some of the features. And people seem to like it so far. I never said Vray was hard, i do not find it hard... just counter-intuitive, because i know and see that there is going on something that i can not affect... something that is out of my control, and something i believe if i had control of, i could make some significant difference. It is not really a matter of not understanding Vray enough... it is more of a design thing.

Vray has so many knobs it sometimes gets in the way rather than being helpful (especially the ridiculous Vray dome light workflow when you need establish something as simple as image based lighting), yet this excessive amount of user input elements in my eyes does not add any benefit of flexibility or workflow simplicity compared to other solutions. To put it more simply, there could be half the buttons and spinners, and it could do exactly the same amount of things, just quicker and easier.

[LudvikKoutny]

Ok, i just finished testing disabled division of shading subdivs and i have to admit that i was wrong. While there was some difference, it was not nearly as significant as i expected. I had just very slightly less noisy output and i saved only about a minute out of 11 minute rendertime. So i guess it is not worth putting into UI.

[vlado]

Ok, thanks for giving it a try! Let's see if someone else has comments on that too.

Best regards,
Vlado

[RockinAkin]

You have access to the nightly builds, play with it and see how it goes. I still don't think this approach makes things any simpler or easier, but I'd love to be proven wrong

Vlado, I only have access to Maya nightlies, if can you add me to the 3ds max nightlies I'll give it a go first chance I get.

It only makes things easier for those who don't know about the connection. (Which based on user feedback from my first lesson is the number one thing people misunderstood!!!)
I personally get why it was implemented but once you know what you are doing, it's definitely annoying.

Exactly as Grant said - it's not a super complex issue, and understand why it's in place and have no problems with it now that I know exactly what it's doing.

But for someone with a fresh perspective to V-Ray, it's the number one thing that trips people up. And in my opinion, if it's not immediately apparent to a new user, then that's just another way of saying that it isn't intuitive. Whenever a user raises any sampler setting, the resulting number samples should logically increase as well. If that's not how V-Ray wants to work, then it needs to make that absolutely clear through some kind of immediate feedback to the user (like the feedback boxes in my mockup). Not to mention that there isn't any official documentation covering the link between the Image Sampler and DMC Sampler.

I like to think I have an eye for good UI design and simplifying complex things down to their essence - and my mock-up is simply an attempt to give people either way of working that they prefer, while reducing the amount of controls to the bare minimum, and making their functionality as immediately clear as possible.

[vlado]

Vlado, I only have access to Maya nightlies, if can you add me to the 3ds max nightlies I'll give it a go first chance I get.

Sure, email me to vlado@chaosgroup.com and we'll sort it out.

Best regards,
Vlado

[lllab]

Recon442, just out of interest - what is ridiculous or complex on the dome light workflow?
more easy i almost cant image?
isn tit just loading the hdri and maybe raising the subdivision a bit and you are done?

[LudvikKoutny]

Recon442, just out of interest - what is ridiculous or complex on the dome light workflow?
more easy i almost cant image?
isn tit just loading the hdri and maybe raising the subdivision a bit and you are done?

How it is:
1, Create bitmap and put it into environment slot
2, Create Vray light
3, Set mode to dome
4, Change multiplier from 30 to 1 so you do not have 30 times brighter environment
5, Check invisible so environment overrides work when needed
6, Check invisible to reflection as you want to avoid this stuff: http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/201...sy-reflections
7, Instance your environment map into the texture slot (and pray that you will not accidentally break the connection between the two, and notice it only when the entire animation is done and highlights do not match with direction of light - that happens to me very often when i try out different environment maps and forget to propagate change to dome light... but i feel that sometimes connection does not even update properly even when instance link remains in place)
8, Chech on full dome so it is not just a hemisphere
9, Set up the sampling

How it should be:
1, Put a map into environment slot
2, Enable IBL (somewhere, possibly in render settings UI)
3, Set up samples

Seriously... In Corona, all you have to do is to put bitmap into enviro slot. In MR, you just put map into environment slot and and add skylight set to use scene environment - That is already excessive step, and is there only for funky legacy reasons.

There are two ways to simplify it in Vray:

1, Creating Dome light and setting it to the sky portal mode would make it work as an IBL. I already proposed that, but it got forgotten i believe.

2, In Global Illumination tab, there would be new rollout with just two things. Checkbox to enable/disable IBL, and value box for IBL samples. That is all. Checking it on would enable IBL from environment map.

There are also other funny things like having to enable reflection environment override when you want to override just refraction environment

[grantwarwick]

How it is:
1, Create bitmap and put it into environment slot
2, Create Vray light
3, Set mode to dome
4, Change multiplier from 30 to 1 so you do not have 30 times brighter environment
5, Check invisible so environment overrides work when needed
6, Check invisible to reflection as you want to avoid this stuff: http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/201...sy-reflections
7, Instance your environment map into the texture slot (and pray that you will not accidentally break the connection between the two, and notice it only when the entire animation is done and highlights do not match with direction of light - that happens to me very often when i try out different environment maps and forget to propagate change to dome light... but i feel that sometimes connection does not even update properly even when instance link remains in place)
8, Chech on full dome so it is not just a hemisphere
9, Set up the sampling

How it should be:
1, Put a map into environment slot
2, Enable IBL (somewhere, possibly in render settings UI)
3, Set up samples

Seriously... In Corona, all you have to do is to put bitmap into enviro slot. In MR, you just put map into environment slot and and add skylight set to use scene environment - That is already excessive step, and is there only for funky legacy reasons.

There are two ways to simplify it in Vray:

1, Creating Dome light and setting it to the sky portal mode would make it work as an IBL. I already proposed that, but it got forgotten i believe.

2, In Global Illumination tab, there would be new rollout with just two things. Checkbox to enable/disable IBL, and value box for IBL samples. That is all. Checking it on would enable IBL from environment map.

There are also other funny things like having to enable reflection environment override when you want to override just refraction environment

I wouldn't drag the reflection slot into the Vray environment tab, it will produce a different reflection!
Also, I always start from a preset scene so it's always set up, simply drag a different HDR in to my dome.

All the options available are great!

[RockinAkin]

Yeah, I agree - I have no problems with the Dome Light setup, other than it defaulting to 30.0 for intensity... and I'm a hardcore minimalist.

[vlado]

1, Creating Dome light and setting it to the sky portal mode would make it work as an IBL. I already proposed that, but it got forgotten i believe.

No, it is not; it is on the to do list, but we didn't have time to look into it so far.

2, In Global Illumination tab, there would be new rollout with just two things. Checkbox to enable/disable IBL, and value box for IBL samples. That is all. Checking it on would enable IBL from environment map.

No, no more rollouts please, we have enough But automatic dome light is on the to do list as well. This will probably remove the need for 1 altogether.

There are also other funny things like having to enable reflection environment override when you want to override just refraction environment

But, on the other hand, if you want to override both the reflection and the refraction at the same time, you are saved some clicks

Best regards,
Vlado

[LudvikKoutny]

Ok, fair point. The another rollout idea was probably not smart, as i would be against my previous posts where i said there is more than enough buttons and stuff.

There are other issues though. For example.

My older workflow was using just dome light without actual environment. Environment from dome light is directly visible, and it works for all the other elements as well. That was, before i found out two major flaws:

1, Dome light is visible to alpha. I really do not think that is mostly wanted

2, The boxy pixelated reflections when having objects with mirror reflection or close-to-mirror glossiness.

If these issues were resolved, it would help as well.

When i had this older workflow, i often had a shot ready, but it was decided backgrounds would be tweaked in post processing. So i had to render on black BG to get the right alpha. Now what i had to do:

1, Disable direct visibility of dome light
2, Instance map from dome light into reflection slot, to unlock refraction
3, Instance map to refraction slot so i do not see environment through refractive objects

Now, with my current workflow as described above, i have to:

1, Clear environment slot
2, Put map from environment into GI override
3, Put the same map into refl/refr override
4, Put the map into refraction override

It is a bit inconvenient. The point is while normally, you would expect to override just directly visible environment and refraction. In Vray, that is upside down... You have to override everything else. And i think preparing scene for black BG compositing is one of the most common cases. It would be a lot more convenient, when you have your scene set up, to just override directly visible enviro and refraction enviro with black.

[Mokiki]

In vray 3 you can disable affect alpha inside the domelight + the resolution isn't capped at 2048 pixel anymore. I think its more like 8k now? And you can fix the pixelated issue by putting: "$.dome_visibleOriginal=2" inside the max script listener.

[vlado]

And you can fix the pixelated issue by putting: "$.dome_visibleOriginal=2" inside the max script listener.

There is no need for that in V-Ray 3.0 either, it's done automatically.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Mokiki]

There is no need for that in V-Ray 3.0 either, it's done automatically.

Best regards,
Vlado

Oh I did not know that. Thanks!