vray and corona

[LudvikKoutny]

A reflection multiplier was in fact requested, several times, but I'm not adding it The reason for adding the spinners was that in order to achieve the effect they wanted, users added two lights anyways, practically doubling all the lights in the scene. Now you may say that it's a stupid thing, but it needed to be done and the job had to go through in a reasonable time. So there you go.

It's a bad example. I can't code this in V-Ray and I don't want to. It will be way way more complicated and will slow down the rendering. My original solution with the two spinners is easy to implement and doesn't affect render times. A ray switcher map can be very useful in lots of situations, this is not one of them. For the record, this doesn't work in Corona either, but feel free to ask Ondra to implement it...

Best regards,
Vlado

I don't think doing something like that is stupid. I myself had to put up with some really crazy client requests.

Just that it could be solved in a more gentle manner than just slapping it in the UI. I believe you rayswitcher map may be a problematic and slow solution, but I still think there could be some compromise, both in terms of UI layout and amount of controls. Generally speaking, whenever someone requests something, I'd always consider if there is a way to make that feature more universal or if there is a way to extend fuctionality of some other feature to cover requested use case as well.

There are some of the knobs lurking around V-Rays UI that feel like they were requested by one specific person for one specific job, and left there ever since. It's not necessarily a bad thing, because sooner or later, someone else will come across that obstacle as well, but from time to time, it's not a bad thing to do some clean up and unification

[vlado]

I'd always consider if there is a way to make that feature more universal or if there is a way to extend fuctionality of some other feature to cover requested use case as well.

What makes you think we don't do that There are many requests that we've denied for various reasons, it's not like we implemented every requested feature under the sun.

There are some of the knobs lurking around V-Rays UI that feel like they were requested by one specific person for one specific job, and left there ever since. It's not necessarily a bad thing, because sooner or later, someone else will come across that obstacle as well, but from time to time, it's not a bad thing to do some clean up and unification

Yes, I agree with this.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jasonhuang1115]

You will be able to use the standard V-Ray renderer in interactive mode. Eventually V-Ray RT will focus on GPU rendering exclusively. So you'll end up with only 2 engines - a CPU one and a GPU one. This is still a few months down the road though.

Best regards,
Vlado

Just a few months away from only using interactive standard and RT GPU...Awesome to hear that really, Vlado.
Hope Maya users will be able to get that soon after the Max version...

[LudvikKoutny]

What makes you think we don't do that There are many requests that we've denied for various reasons, it's not like we implemented every requested feature under the sun.

I don't think you implement everything under the sun, just that sometimes it could be implemented with a little more elegance. Some of the recent examples are subdivs calculators in UI, which became quickly obsolete with 3.3 universal settings, yet they've thrown off the V-RayMTL UI which looks quite clumsy now

Or those mentioned VrayLight multipliers, that cluttered VrayLight so much it needed division into rollouts, which in turn actually increased visual complexity instead of decreasing it

or MIS toggle for VrayLight.... why? :O

I remember you saying you are working on the simplification already over a year ago. And yes, while things mostly seem to go the right direction, UI of the most used features, like VrayMTL or VrayLight appears to have gone the opposite direction to me.

I actually can't dig out much more honestly, because there's not that much more to point at. That makes your point quite true I guess I'd just like to see things laid out in a more professional aesthetic way... It's those little things, that add up together to convince people Corona is much easier to use than V-Ray, and inevitably lead to threads like this one.

If you put VRayMTL UI next to the CoronaMTL UI for example, it looks like you are looking at kids' toy phone next to the Boeing 747 cockpit dashboard. Yet in the end, there is not much more V-RayMTL can do compared to CoronaMTL

[padre.ayuso]

It's a new render element that contains a denoised version of the image. The render element has some parameters for the strength of the denoising and a button to recalculate it after the render. There's an option to also overwrite the original RGB image with the denoised version, but it's not enabled by default - my guess is that it is good to have both the original and denoised versions.

Best regards,
Vlado

That's actually a good implementation, sounds like a good way to go about it. Can't wait now for those weeks to pass by and try this out. Does it work with RT GPU?

[Lupaz]

It is somewhere on the "to do" list to investigate the performance hit and decide whether to change the default

hmm. There's something I don't understand. It has to do, i think, with how chaosgroup releases new features.
Instead of make them part of the new defaults, they remain off and sometimes hidden.

So, even if I can have my own defaults, it happens to me with vray that i never know what I'm missing and find cool things by chance.

In the case of the abbe number (just to give an example), I would've liked if when it came out it was ON by default.
Worst case scenario someone may complaint it's taking a while to render and can turn it off.
But at least we're using it if we don't care about tweaking.
just my 2 cents...

[vlado]

I'm not going to argue, it's a valid opinion for you to have, even if I don't share it completely.

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

If you put VRayMTL UI next to the CoronaMTL UI for example, it looks like you are looking at kids' toy phone next to the Boeing 747 cockpit dashboard. Yet in the end, there is not much more V-RayMTL can do compared to CoronaMTL

Very true, but you get the asshole users in big vfx companies who'll request very specific things that they need for their workflow - the wider the user market gets for a renderer, the more things need to be bolted on to service the users. Take for example animal logic, they wrote their own renderer for the lego movie which only does exactly what they need to do and nothing else. If they keep trying to modify and expand it for projects that aren't totally hard surface and start adding in things like hair or fur then it'll probably look a wee bit less streamlined

[Morbid Angel]

its not uncommon for renderers like arnold f.e. to have two or more versions which are used strictly by a given studio and otherwise not avail to public. I like vray for its extended flexibility. Flexibiliy does mean more options, but its a good thing. The fact that "YOU" as a user do not understand their functionality, or confused by their number is not the renderer's fault

Try looking at render man, or mental ray (from old days).

[Lupaz]

I'm not going to argue, it's a valid opinion for you to have, even if I don't share it completely.

Best regards,
Vlado

Awesome line!

[vlado]

If you put VRayMTL UI next to the CoronaMTL UI for example, it looks like you are looking at kids' toy phone next to the Boeing 747 cockpit dashboard. Yet in the end, there is not much more V-RayMTL can do compared to CoronaMTL

You can really say that? There's the diffuse roughness, which CoronaMtl doesn't have; the option for reflections to fall off with distance (not everyone needs it, but useful for product shots); the options to let render elements through the reflections and refractions; the abbe number. These are things that VRayMtl can do that CoronaMtl can't. At least some of these will be added to CoronaMtl in the future. Maybe not in the "Basic" rollout, that's true (but then someone like Guido will complain that they are hidden and should be on by default), but they will be there.

There are certainly things that can be hidden (f.e. the exit colors - I don't know if anyone uses those anymore), and others can be stuffed into an "Advanced" rollout (like the dim distance, again hardly everyone needs it), but it's not like we added options to make you feel like a pilot...

Best regards,
Vlado

[Lupaz]

Probabilistic lights was implemented this way. On by default.
Later you have people complaining about bugs, but at least we know it's there.

[jasonhuang1115]

its not uncommon for renderers like arnold f.e. to have two or more versions which are used strictly by a given studio and otherwise not avail to public. I like vray for its extended flexibility. Flexibiliy does mean more options, but its a good thing. The fact that "YOU" as a user do not understand their functionality, or confused by their number is not the renderer's fault

Try looking at render man, or mental ray (from old days).

And looking at how many arch-viz guys choose PRMan/mental/Arnold as their choice of weapon...
Sometimes it feels to me it's back or down to arch-viz vs. vfx again. You got PRman and Arnold focusing on the high-end VFX/feature animation while Corona (along with other engines) gaining arch-viz users with easy UI/setup and great out-of-box results. I feel it's quite challenging and a constant battle for Vray, with great flexibility and users in both camps asking features they want, to address both, gaining users from both camps, and out-perform each renderer that currently focus on a single market as it grows.

[vlado]

Probabilistic lights was implemented this way. On by default.
Later you have people complaining about bugs, but at least we know it's there.

Sometimes it's a good idea, and sometimes it isn't.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morbid Angel]

Well back to original discussion - is vray and corona similar in output, imho yes. If people don't like or feel vray is too much, they are free to choose corona or another render engine. But I bet soon enough they come back. I'd like to hear from some one who left vray for another renderer and didn't comeback (was totally satisfied with the choice)...

Saying things like - it feels more natural its just imposing your own "feeling" without any facts what so ever.