"Devide shading subidvs" leaves Vray working linearly? Is this correct?

[vlado]

Come one guys... do you really want THAT to be a future of rendering?

As you've probably noticed, for a long time I've been trying to convince everyone that sticking to the basic universal settings in the majority of cases is perfectly fine and will give good results with good render times. When setting up a scene, I myself couldn't care less what subdivs went where and I certainly don't have the patience to adjust everything by hand...

Best regards,
Vlado

[Lupaz]

Just a humbled idea: May be there could be a V-ray lite, with universal settings by default without the chance of fooling around with anything, and V-ray Pro with all the options to make adjustments by hand (for which I believe Akin's calculator would be a nice UI).

[LudvikKoutny]

As you've probably noticed, for a long time I've been trying to convince everyone that sticking to the basic universal settings in the majority of cases is perfectly fine and will give good results with good render times. When setting up a scene, I myself couldn't care less what subdivs went where and I certainly don't have the patience to adjust everything by hand...

Best regards,
Vlado

I understand that, but the problem there is that universal settings are not optimal. You often waste some resources. If you render a hi-res print, then it's fine, but if you have to render 500 frame animation with each frame taking 90 minutes, then saving even as little as 15 minutes on a single frame can make a significant difference. Corona is quite a good benchmark for this. It lacks most of the sampling settings, yet under the hood distribution feels a lot more optimal than universal settings in Vray, as i generally get better rendertimes.

I still stand behind my opinion that divide shading subdivs checkbox does not do what it should. So if you do not know how to fix it (make it truly linear), then it would be appropriate to remove it, as it is indeed useless.

Also, could you please tell me what your official suggested workflow for universal settings in Vray 3 is? Because i've browsed this forum a LOT, and i found some scattered fragments and myths about it posted by many users, but i was not able to find that original post by you, where you describe what to do. Old Vray 2 universal settings approach did not work well if you used for example VrayDirt to create procedural weathering effects for your material, as it often did not shot enough shading rays to yield a meaningful result for VrayDirt and it required setting VrayDirt subdivs to values beyond 1000. I believe these new universal settings can handle it, considering now we have min. shading rate.

[kosso_olli]

My settings are these for most of my scenes, I am working for print, though:

Min. AA is 1
Max. AA is 32
Shading Rate between 8 and 32
DMC noise threshold is 0.005
Max. Ray intensity is 10
Embree is on
Reinhard color burn set to 0.01, mode to none.

This renders quick and noise free, never need to set any subdivs for myself. VrayDirt is no problem, use it all the time with these settings to make some weathering effects on my materials.

[joconnell]

I still stand behind my opinion that divide shading subdivs checkbox does not do what it should. So if you do not know how to fix it (make it truly linear), then it would be appropriate to remove it, as it is indeed useless.

I'd say the only thing you're going to get linear is the adaptive subdiv sampler, all of the dmc stuff is going to adapt to fill in quality losses in noisy areas and speed up in clean areas. Either that or mainly rely on the noise threshold as your linear speed versus quality control.

[LudvikKoutny]

Soooo....

can i get those official Vray 3 universal settings?

[alexyork]

Maybe, in tune with Kosso's post, we should get an updated vray 3 universal settings rundown, so we can try it out.

This thread has been very helpful in understanding the different ways to control AA Vs Secondary Samples (i.e. AA Vs Glossies etc.).

[joconnell]

Soooo....

can i get those official Vray 3 universal settings?

Yep, as Kosso_olli mentioned, 1 / 50 approx, noise thresh to whatever you need and gradually raise min shading rate to clean up secondary noise.

[alexyork]

Any reason why max ray intensity to 10 instead of default 20? Does this affect rendertimes or is it purely to catch any unwanted overbright pixels?

[alexyork]

And I would add, turn Probabalistic Lights OFF for proper scene control as well, as discussed in a different thread.

[alexyork]

For this new universal model, what should we use for general vray light samples and for general glossy materials? 16? 24? 32? 48?

[joconnell]

Vlado reckons don't bother changing any of them at all. I'd stick to powers of two as you've suggested and if any materials are problematic then you'll have to raise them to a multiple of whatever your max aa is to have any effect over the division routine.

[AlexP]

Yep, as Kosso_olli mentioned, 1 / 50 approx, noise thresh to whatever you need and gradually raise min shading rate to clean up secondary noise.

Problem with that is, how do you know when to reduce noise threshold and when to up the MSR?
This is almost too much interaction for universal settings imo

[kosso_olli]

Sorry, forgot the most important thing: The global subdivs multiplier gets set to 0. Please see the attachment for my render settings. GI and Light Cache are mostly set at their default, I sometimes raise the LC subdivs, though.



Some results of this workflow can be found here. You can still gain some seconds by using the traditional workflow, but I can't be bothered to do this anymore. The new technique is so much simpler...

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...282#post622282

[alexyork]

Vlado reckons don't bother changing any of them at all. I'd stick to powers of two as you've suggested and if any materials are problematic then you'll have to raise them to a multiple of whatever your max aa is to have any effect over the division routine.

I forget what the default for them is, now... 16 I think? I work with merged lights and Siger shaders all the time so rarely with anything default.