V-Ray Render Optimization - an in-depth Guide (call for Before/Afters)

[joconnell]

Sure - if you followed the tutorial and the approach you'd have arrived at what your correct aa was as the very first thing - was it indeed 1/32 at that point? It seems quite high to me personally, but again I haven't seen your scene!

[ben_hamburg]

Yeah, thats actually where looking at the sample rate element led me to...
Lots of foliage with fine detail plus the reflections in the ocean...
Actually I switched to brute force with light cache for second GI and now it finally renders ok.
I don´t mind saving myself the trouble of creating a prepass for the irradiance map and even if I still don´t understand why it´s working better with brute force...but I guess I´ll just go with it for now...

[vlado]

I don´t mind saving myself the trouble of creating a prepass for the irradiance map and even if I still don´t understand why it´s working better with brute force...

The irradiance map makes sense for flat surfaces where it can interpolate between sparse GI samples; if the GI in almost every pixel is going to be different (like in the case of foliage), it doesn't really help much.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ben_hamburg]

Thanks Vlado for chiming in, actually the buckets already slowed down way before they got to the part with the foliage. They stopped at a carpaint material, but I guess thats also bad for interpolated GI solutions?
I´ll see where BF+LC takes me in this project, i´d love to switch to a simplified workflow for animated projects and that solution probably benefits greatly from optimizing your scene!

[fraggle]

If you follow the workflow outlined in the tutorial, it should address the needs of any scene - one step at a time. After all, the very first step is to set your AA high enough to resolve the things you guys mentioned.

Thanks, that's a very good complement to Grant video.
However, What about low ambient light scene (interior with no opening or tiny opening)? Because ideal scene where light is plenty and source light is limited (1 HDR + one key and one fill light) is always a straight click even with universal value but the real difficulty rise as well as the render time when the scene is dark with almost no natural light and plenty of artificial light source with reflective floor and furniture (typical for interior, i.e. hotel hall, spa, underground...).
I would like to have your professional input on that particular difficult scene.
thanks

[RockinAkin]

Thanks, that's a very good complement to Grant video.
However, What about low ambient light scene (interior with no opening or tiny opening)? Because ideal scene where light is plenty and source light is limited (1 HDR + one key and one fill light) is always a straight click even with universal value but the real difficulty rise as well as the render time when the scene is dark with almost no natural light and plenty of artificial light source with reflective floor and furniture (typical for interior, i.e. hotel hall, spa, underground...).
I would like to have your professional input on that particular difficult scene.
thanks

It shouldn't matter what kind of scene you throw at this workflow - it will still be able to handle it.

There isn't any voodoo or anything crazy happening in this workflow that can fall apart depending on specific types of scenes... It's simply a procedure to make sure your sampling is as balanced as possible - yielding the best mix of quality and render speed. The more your scene is dependent on blurry effects like reflection, soft shadows, etc - the more you'll be able to optimize it over the Universal Settings approach.

[ben_hamburg]

It shouldn't matter what kind of scene you throw at this workflow - it will still be able to handle it.

Well, it worked for me on pretty much everything so far, except for scenes with lots of refractions or opacity (not talking about opacity mapped leaves, I know about the filtering Tip).
I´m having a hard time optimizing these scenes, even if there is no glossiness going on whatsoever.
Also translucency really screws with the sampling, I had that one scene where I just couldn´t get rid of the noise visible in the refraction element.
But I guess those scenes are just hard on the renderer, no matter how much I´d like to help it...

[vlado]

Also translucency really screws with the sampling, I had that one scene where I just couldn´t get rid of the noise visible in the refraction element. But I guess those scenes are just hard on the renderer, no matter how much I´d like to help it...

It would be useful to get us scenes like this for debugging purposes, maybe we can figure out a solution.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ben_hamburg]

I sent a scene to support, happy debugging!
Telling me what I´m doing wrong would also make me happy...

[RockinAkin]

If you get a chance and are able - I'd be interested in taking a peek at the scene as well. akin@cggallery.com

[RockinAkin]

Just a quick heads up for any Russian V-Ray artists - the tutorial is now available in Russian thanks to Andrew Krivulya!:
http://3dventa.com/urok/vray-optimiz...ogo-renderinga

[ben_hamburg]

Hi Akin, I sent you the scene via mail, hope it helps!

[ben_hamburg]

I had trouble with another scene, dark tinted glas material, seemed like the only way to get rid of the noise here was to lower the DMC Noice threshold (down to 0.005)...as it turned out I´m still confused about gamma with Max 2014 and Vray 2.4 - in color mapping I had set gamma to 1.0 and mode to "none", once I set Gamma to 2.2 (we´re saving out as 1.0 but applying gamma correction in post), the noise cleared up just as well...

[glorybound]

I have a scene that I am using an HDRI in a dome light, and the same HDRI in the MAX's environment. I am doing this to get the alpha, and to control the ambient apart from the background image. But, the problem I am having is I can't increase the environments subdiv, so my sky is red and yellow on the VRaySampleRate. I hope this makes sense.

[ben_hamburg]

You need to increase the subdivs of the AA sampler, but afaik it´ll not matter for render times, so I´d suggest you set your AA subdivs according to the needs of the rest of the scene...