vray and corona

[vlado]

Setting up lights, cameras, IBL and such is a daily bread. If you are dealing with messy cluttered user interface every day, several times that day, you learn to appreciate a clean layout that much more. If you are a new user, choosing a rendering engine, only way through which you perceive the renderer is the UI. You don't see the code, you see just the buttons and knobs on the front end. And based on that alone, many of the new users, and even some of the existing ones, will make an assumption about how difficult the renderer will be to use.

Yes, of course, I realize that; will get to those. It's not like you wave a wand and it happens Rendering is not magic, contrary to what some people say... just lots of hard work.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Paul Oblomov]

Vlado, your highness, may I kill 'em all ?

[Ivan1982]

Well removing buttons is maybe good thing for someone who don't use those buttons, but there are people who are willing to use them and know how to use them and that is why they are there... There is perfect solution with basic/advanced/expert buttons.

Also you "can't" blame people thinking they are experts, if they want everything to be expert enabled

People blame it on computer speed... client crazy evil eye, who knows.

Well it is difficult to point finger at yourself, maybe as it does look idiotic to do so, but sometimes it is the only way, or use mirror and make it more cool like in taxi driver "talking to me scene".

[vlado]

Well removing buttons is maybe good thing for someone who don't use those buttons, but there are people who are willing to use them and know how to use them and that is why they are there...

It's not about removing things as such, it's about making them more comfortable, I guess. Even people that like to tweak things could appreciate if they have fewer steps to click through on average.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Lupaz]

imho the defaults aren't the best yet.

For example, Not too long ago we still needed to check "affect shadows".

Why isn't abbe number checked by default if it makes a more accurate refraction? Or why isn't "reflect on back side" checked?

There's no way a new user would know these things in the first year of using vray.
I'd rather have everything that can make a better looking rendering ON by default.

This is a difference between vray an corona also. (I hope I'm not offending anyone).

[vlado]

Why isn't abbe number checked by default if it makes a more accurate refraction?

Because this option specifically has the tendency to make glass rendering a lot slower. F.e. for the same reason Corona doesn't have GI caustics from glass enabled by default, even though they would make the refractions more accurate.

Or why isn't "reflect on back side" checked?

Initially, for the same reason as above. It is somewhere on the "to do" list to investigate the performance hit and decide whether to change the default.

This is a difference between vray an corona also. (I hope I'm not offending anyone).

<shrug> Corona makes a lot of these choices for you too (GI caustics being one of them, for example). It's not like it's unbiased... One of these choices causes Corona to produce splotches in a very ordinary situation involving two rectangle planes and a sun light (see attachment); would a new Corona user know why they happen and how to fix them?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Lupaz]

Because this option specifically has the tendency to make glass rendering a lot slower. F.e. for the same reason Corona doesn't have GI caustics from glass enabled by default, even though they would make the refractions more accurate.

Initially, for the same reason as above. It is somewhere on the "to do" list to investigate the performance hit and decide whether to change the default.

I understand, but then you have problems like the one described in this thread:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...ook-like-glass

[vlado]

I understand, but then you have problems like the one described in this thread:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...ook-like-glass

Yes, which is why I said we're considering changing the default. It made sense before, maybe it doesn't make sense now. Btw, I updated my post after you replied, sorry about that.

Best regards,
Vlado

[mitviz]

would a new Corona user know why they happen and how to fix them?

Best regards,
Vlado

that's why we bother the developers like you

[LudvikKoutny]

Well removing buttons is maybe good thing for someone who don't use those buttons, but there are people who are willing to use them and know how to use them and that is why they are there... There is perfect solution with basic/advanced/expert buttons.

Also you "can't" blame people thinking they are experts, if they want everything to be expert enabled

People blame it on computer speed... client crazy evil eye, who knows.

Well it is difficult to point finger at yourself, maybe as it does look idiotic to do so, but sometimes it is the only way, or use mirror and make it more cool like in taxi driver "talking to me scene".

There is a certain threshold.

When it comes to the technical setup, if there is a value box that can not be set to some reasonable default that works for the most of the scenes, and only a human being can decide what value should be there, then that value box should stay. But if there is a value box, that if tweaked perfectly, will give you maybe 5% speed boost at top, while when set poorly, will reduce your rendering performance by 30%, then such knob should be simply hidden.

When it comes to artistic setup, there may be buttons for things that can already be achieved in a different way with less or equal amount of clicks. The general problem of not only renderers, but 3D softwares in general is making a button for every specific tasks instead of making one universal tool to cover not only that specific case, but to cover all the similar cases someone may stumble upon in the future.

A practical example:

Someone some time ago did not think that having separate visibility switches for V-Ray light was enough, so he requested multiplier values for affect diffuse and affect specular. And now it is missing affect reflections multiplier, so if that requests gets fulfilled, we will get even one more spinner for the V-RayLight.

Now imagine a different solution: A rayswitcher map that has direct visibility, diffuse/gi, reflection and refraction slots.This map can be plugged into the materials to return different colors for different ray types, it can be plugged for example in Vray environment fog, so fog will have different color in reflections, or different intensity in reflections, if you keep all colors white, except reflection color, which would be slightly gray! Or fog can be white for all ray types, but bounce less GI because diffuse/gi color will be darker gray.

Well, why am I talking about fog? Just to showcase the example of such universality. This map could also be plugged into VrayLight color slot! So you want reflections to have only 20% intensity? Fine, just change reflection color of the map to 20% gray... Do you want 20% diffuse but reflections to be 100%? No problem, just swap the two colors. But do you want the light to illuminate red but reflect as blue? No problem, just set diffuse to red, and reflection to blue. And you can also plug in the maps! Do you want V-Ray light to be softbox when visible directly, but regular plain color in reflections, or different softbox texture in reflections? Easy, just plug in the different maps for reflection/direct visibility.

So this is an example, where one universal map could bring all the advanced override functionality to V-Ray Light, without need to add a single button to the UI Plus it would be a map that would be usable across entire renderer, in materials, environment, atmospheric effects, etc...

Not saying it needs to be implemented, just an example of debunking common misconception that a flexible solution needs lots of buttons

[glorybound]

My 2 cents is, I don't know how V-Ray can get any easier since 3X. Now, the software doesn't get in the way and it just works without touching anything. I don't know if V-Ray would have made these changes if it wasn't for engines like Corona; competition is good.

[vlado]

Someone some time ago did not think that having separate visibility switches for V-Ray light was enough, so he requested multiplier values for affect diffuse and affect specular. And now it is missing affect reflections multiplier, so if that requests gets fulfilled, we will get even one more spinner for the V-RayLight.

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.

Now imagine a different solution: A rayswitcher map that has direct visibility, diffuse/gi, reflection and refraction slots. This map could also be plugged into VrayLight color slot! So you want reflections to have only 20% intensity? Fine, just change reflection color of the map to 20% gray...

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

[Ivan1982]

Exactly, vray is simpler than ever, it gives you opportunity to play with settings and use understanding of engine to give you much better results. By experience, scene setup is 90% of render times or problems people usually have.

Sometimes it's easier just not to think and hit render button and have more or less usable product at the end, but people shouldn't forget this is their job, stop ignoring that, most of the time it's your fault, lack experience or whatever.

It is your job to know all this things. So learn whatever and whenever you can it will be better for you in long run.

[jasonhuang1115]

Yes, we are working on the interactive part...

Best regards,
Vlado

This is particularly exciting to hear for me, Vlado. Does this mean that the standard render will equal to RT CPU so users end up with two engines (RT CPU and RT GPU), instead of 3 engines as of now?

[vlado]

This is particularly exciting to hear for me, Vlado. Does this mean that the standard render will equal to RT CPU so users end up with two engines (RT CPU and RT GPU), instead of 3 engines as of now?

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