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

[RockinAkin]

phones need intuitive interface, top rendering engine does not

This is what I cannot agree with. A top rendering engine DOES need to be intuitive, otherwise mark my words it will lose it's market share to another render engine that is (and every day there are more and more competitors out there). This is the reason I'm sometimes so critical of V-Ray - because I know that it's a wonderfully powerful rendering engine, and I want to see it on top for many more years to come.

Just because something is complex doesn't mean it can't be intuitive. And something being unintuitive is just another way of saying that it's poorly designed.

There is no excusing unintuitiveness.

[LudvikKoutny]

UI levels need some tweaking to fulfill their purpose. I find it absurd to have switch to advanced mode just to disable default lights when GI is not being used (hey, that's not even technical setting, but artistic one), or having to do same for Light Cache just to disable retracing, which slows down things a lot in scenes where you often don't need it. There are some very basic things even newbies will want to adjust hidden in those advanced UI modes.

[vlado]

UI levels need some tweaking to fulfill their purpose. I find it absurd to have switch to advanced mode just to disable default lights when GI is not being used (hey, that's not even technical setting, but artistic one), or having to do same for Light Cache just to disable retracing, which slows down things a lot in scenes where you often don't need it. There are some very basic things even newbies will want to adjust hidden in those advanced UI modes.

I would love to hear any input on that, but I think that it will be impossible to please everyone here. Everyone wants their favorite settings to be in the default view, but they are different settings for different people and the tendency will be to dump everything in the default view eventually.

Best regards,
Vlado

[LudvikKoutny]

I can't really think of any meaningful way of how to group render settings. No matter what, they are still there, just harder to reach. Either there is an internal mechanism to handle these settings automatically under the hood, or those settings are exposed and require user input. Hiding them for newbies doesn't help much i think, as sooner or later, one has to dig in expert mode to either optimize or troubleshoot something

[vlado]

Hiding them for newbies doesn't help much i think, as sooner or later, one has to dig in expert mode to either optimize or troubleshoot something

This I can't agree with, but I don't feel like arguing about it anymore. Like I said, I really won't be able to please everyone.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Nicinus]

You are totally right.

And if vlado choose option A or B don't matter for me and all other vray's experienced users, I will absolutely stick with vray cause anyway I already did both the trial and error and understanding what's going on under the hood. but we are just trying to suggest how the next users to learn vray could avoid loosing all the time that we lost.

Also chaosgroups has all the numbers that we don't have. They know who is really their mass consumer target (archviz, print, hobbyist, fx artist etc), how many they are etc. So they will take their decisions based on all those numbers. Also there are maybe a few tricks still under the hood that even Akin didn't put in its calculator (that was made only to show the relation between image sampler and DMC sampler) so we never know. For example importance sampling is controlled by the adaptive amount, which the calculator doesn't talk about. How is that importance sampling exactly affecting the samples no one knows except Vlado.

The problem with this argument is that Chaos most likely have the current demographics in their data base as it is right now or has been, but I think we all know the market is about to change. This endless tweaking of subdivision crap etc in order to save 10% rendering time here and there will go the way of dinosaurs, it is just not an effective way to spend your creative time.

I can only speak of the architectural side of things, but the age of dedicated rendering expertize is about to loose it's value when most CAD tools have decent rendering options built in, people are looking more and more at things like Lumion and very well known artists, whose pictures we are amazed by on a daily basis, are starting to use Corona because it is just more productive.

I've always been intimidated on these forums, because although I've used Vray for many years, I've also had to be proficient in tools like Revit and Archicad, and I can't spend endless hours on experimentation and tweaking like some people here. How much you are supposed to know will always be relative. Back in the days of Softimage Creative Environment and Alias Power Animator (yes, I'm getting old) it was seen as almost idiotic to combine modeling and animation in one package as it clearly wasn't done by the same users, and once one accept that more and more future CAD users will do their own rendering it becomes very urgent for companies like Chaos to make it more intuitive and elegant. Historical product break throughs have always been about making power more available.

[vlado]

This endless tweaking of subdivision crap etc in order to save 10% rendering time here and there will go the way of dinosaurs, it is just not an effective way to spend your creative time.

Thanks for that, these are exactly the points I'm trying to make... and I know there are people who will argue, but that's the way things are heading.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jstrob]

Thanks for that, these are exactly the points I'm trying to make... and I know there are people who will argue, but that's the way things are heading.

Best regards,
Vlado

Just so Vlado is right about people arguing. I would just argue that once you know how it works you don't spend hours tweaking those subdivision and they save a lot more than 10% when you do it right. you can spend 15 minutes tweaking settings that will lead to 400% faster render. I just did it this weak. A render that was taking like 7 hours was brought down to 2 hours a frame after I studied the Akin calculator.

For sure we will always be heading somewhere esle in this industry but before going somewhere else (gpu rendering and so on) we have to be where we are and know how to be there the fastest way possible! LOL! Think in the future but act in the present.

[vlado]

Just so Vlado is right about people arguing. I would just argue that once you know how it works you don't spend hours tweaking those subdivision and they save a lot more than 10% when you do it right. you can spend 15 minutes tweaking settings that will lead to 400% faster render. I just did it this weak. A render that was taking like 7 hours was brought down to 2 hours a frame after I studied the Akin calculator.

There is that; but there are also users that don't care at all so long as they get an image out in the end. My problem, and I really don't know how to solve it yet, is that we are trying to please both types of users. V-Ray can work very well in both scenarios, but I don't know how to make it convenient for use in both at the same time.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Nicinus]

Thanks for that, these are exactly the points I'm trying to make... and I know there are people who will argue, but that's the way things are heading.

Best regards,
Vlado

Well, I'm very happy to hear that at least you agree as you are the one that counts. Seriously, why don't you guys look into something like SolidRocks? I know I would be lost without it, and the few times I've dabbled on various settings on my own I've never been able to render quicker than SR anyways. I've mentioned this earlier in another thread a long time ago, but I truly believe that SR would have been even easier to use if Subburb didn't have to accomodate all the endless requests from advanced users (and since they've always been the bulk of the market what choice did Subburb have?).

I think Chaos is approaching, instead of the basic, intermediate and advanced buttons, a point where you have two levels: 'creative choices' and 'under the hood'. Why not invite some of the creative rock star users that are now being lured by Corona, and you don't want to lose, to participate in a UI panel?

[vlado]

Seriously, why don't you guys look into something like SolidRocks?

SolidRocks is awesome, but I think it's approaching a point where it is just as complex as V-Ray itself.

Why not invite some of the creative rock star users that are now being lured by Corona, and you don't want to lose, to participate in a UI panel?

I'm not entirely sure what good that would be. Without meaning disrespect to anyone, users typically don't know what they want from a product until they see it done. We can do all the panels that we like, but "design by committee" for software rarely works. As for Corona, I don't see how we can do much about it - it is there, it works well and people will use it no matter what we do. For V-Ray, simplicity of use is quite obviously not the strongest side and although things can be improved, I don't think that trying to match other products will be a successful strategy. We need to focus on other things that make V-Ray unique and useful.

Best regards,
Vlado

[piotrus3333]

Simplicity is right there under your noses. I've just done little test with quick settings. I stripped an old scene and put it through fresh 3.0 file. all settings default. decent render fast, half an hour of tweaking shaved off 10%. I did everythig like a proper vray noob - I touched one drop down menu and moved two sliders...

[Nicinus]

SolidRocks is awesome, but I think it's approaching a point where it is just as complex as V-Ray itself.

We can do all the panels that we like, but "design by committee" for software rarely works.

I don't think that trying to match other products will be a successful strategy. We need to focus on other things that make V-Ray unique and useful.

I hear you, and the reason the grass is greener on the other side of the fence is usually because it rains more there. Most people looking at the latest and greatest underestimate the the time the extreme functionality and versatility of Vrayhas taken and that it will take a long time for others to catch up with, if ever. Ironically I remember when Vray was seen as very user friendly.

Having said that, and by your own account acknowledging that the market is going towards more efficient and artist driven interfaces, I don't think it necessarily has to do with matching other products as much as it has to do with creating an elegant front on your own. Res ipsa loquitur, artists are less and less willing to put in the effort anymore. If you would agree that Chaos perhaps traditionally has a more technical approach to the industry compared to newer players that now may appear to be more artist driven, it might not be such a bad idea with a panel to get alternative feedback. Instead of looking at it as 'design by committee', I think I'm more suggesting a 'select power user in-depth survey'. We all know you have the best core.

I don't know what SolidRocks does under the hood, but I'm really only using the preset and the slider. Most other buttons are for convenience, no numbers to be seen anywhere.

[glorybound]

I started using V-Ray because it was producing the best images on the internet, hands down! I don't think money was even an issue; I wanted to produce awesome images, no matter at what cost. Now, I am seeing great images from almost all the engines, so it has become a price war. To tell you the truth, V-Ray didn't become confusing until I started hanging out on this forum. You guys over think too many things! I would still pay for V-Ray, even if it cost more and produces images just as good as the other, if I didn't have to re-learn so many things. But, if a render engine cost less, was easier to use and produced just as good images, I would probably think about moving (especially when I start building out a render farm again). And I agree, this spending hours to gain 10% render times is a game that I am done playing. Currently, I spent almost the same amount of time trying to get a clean render in a timely matter than I do modeling and texturing. Just my 2 cents.

[RockinAkin]

Perhaps a good solution would be to take the Basic, Advanced, and Expert mode concept that was introduced in V-Ray 3.0 and streamlining it into just two modes: Basic and Advanced

In Basic mode most sampling controls are hidden and only a noise threshold / time limit is given to the user to control overall image quality.
In this mode V-Ray can do whatever Vlado feels is the best 'auto-pilot' approach to reaching the final image quality as efficiently as possible.
This is the mode you'll want to stick to if you're granted the luxury of being in the 'Artist time is more valuable than Machine time' camp.

Then the Advanced mode gives the user full control over the sampling throughout your scene, which is hopefully presented in a way that is similar to my mockup to make it as user-friendly and intuitive as possible, while still offering low-level control of how V-Ray will be sampling the scene.