Anyone Using VrayHDRI for 8 bit maps?

[soulburn3d]

So I know VrayHDRI has got HDRI in the name, hence these bitmaps would have a gamma correction of 1, but in general I've see a lot of people using this map for all their bitmaps, including textures painted in photoshop that have no High Dynamic Range, and need an inverse gamma of 0.455 applied. What's people's workflow in this case? Are you loading the bitmap and then setting the Inverse Gamma in the VrayHDRI map by hand? Or are most people still using the standard 3dsmax bitmap loader for 8 bit images, since it has its "automatic" mode to guess the gamma you want applied? Just curious at people's workflow.

- Neil

[Shimakaze]

I pretty much always use VRayHDRI at this point. For textures that are non-linear you just have to switch the color space to sRGB (or "From 3ds max" if it's set up correctly). No need to set inverse gamma.

[Seraph135]

Yep. I'm using it for everything these days too.

[Ihno]

And what is the benefit from it?
Is it faster or something?

[rivoli]

I pretty much always use VRayHDRI at this point. For textures that are non-linear you just have to switch the color space to sRGB (or "From 3ds max" if it's set up correctly). No need to set inverse gamma.

that's what I do as well, haven't used max's bitmap loader in ages now..

[Macker]

Not here. See no advantage to it personally.

[viscorbel]

It is faster, as far as I've tested.
It also has a bit better filtering options.

The main disadvantage is that it still doesn't display real-world size textures in viewport and doesn't allow interactive cropping (just manually entering coordinates.)
These two things are so annoying that for me the render speed gain is not worth the hassle.

[vlado]

The main disadvantage is that it still doesn't display real-world size textures in viewport

This one is already fixed, I believe, and will go into the next service pack.

Best regards,
Vlado

[viscorbel]

Now that's great news

This one is already fixed, I believe, and will go into the next service pack.

Best regards,
Vlado

[cheerioboy]

I mostly only use the HDRI texture for loading HDRI panos for lighting. And then sometimes I'll use the Bitmap to VRayHDRI texmap converter because I hear folks say it speeds things up, but I don't think I've ever noticed.

I think there are two reasons I haven't used it to replace the standard bitmap: the fact that I have to click more to use VRayHDRI, once applied I have to click yet again to load the texture. While the Bitmap loads the image browser immediately to pick the texture. And then the interactive crop tool is essential when you're quickly building stuff and needing to crop. Bring those two features in and I might be able to replace the bitmap material.

The name VRayHDRI also makes it hard to learn to use it for everything and not only for HDRI textures/images. What about renaming it to VrayBitmap

[vlado]

What about renaming it to VrayBitmap

Too late... I can't do that without breaking all old scenes.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Oleg_Budeanu]

Too late... I can't do that without breaking all old scenes.

Best regards,
Vlado

Yeah i agree that changing that to VRayBitmap would be really good , as now it is being treated as HDRI map.
Maybe a dialog popup which will offer changing all VRayHDRI to VRayBitmap as with the new settings ?
Also would be really nice to have interactive cropping also , so it can be used in full.

[Morne]

Too late... I can't do that without breaking all old scenes.

Best regards,
Vlado

You can keep the internal description as vrayhdri, just change the UI labels to say vraybitmap. Later on you can add a thing for maxscript when a user references vraybitmap, then vray knows to use the "internal" vrayhdri

[soulburn3d]

Thanks for all the opinions. When I used the supplied vray script to change all the bitmap maps in my scene to VrayHDRI, it automatically set the gammas in each explicitely, so I didn't know there was a "From 3ds max", that's good to know, and setting it like that seems to make the most sense to me.

If there is a way to change its name, that would go a long way to acceptance, as long as it doesn't break old files.

I miss the crop window as well.

And I also found it a little weird that there's the coordinates dialog in there that does nothing unless you use the "3dsmax mapping" mode. Because that dialog is there and not greyed out or anything, its not immediately obvious if its in use or not which is a bit of a pain.

- Neil

[voltron7]

And I also found it a little weird that there's the coordinates dialog in there that does nothing unless you use the "3dsmax mapping" mode. Because that dialog is there and not greyed out or anything, its not immediately obvious if its in use or not which is a bit of a pain.

- Neil

+1 ....I also find this is not so nice...