Considering V-Ray for VFX

[SMH]

Hi,

I'm considering V-Ray for photoreal renders. I mainly want to use it for TV commercials/VFX and perhaps some archvis. I have a few questions to the user community as well as the mods:

-How far are we from a production ready V-Ray/Maya6 solution?
-Is there a multi-pass rendering solution within V-Ray and if so how flexible is it?
-Can we export render channel data as OpenEXR images (i.e Diffuse,Ref,Raw,GI..ect)
-How well does it play with compositing solutions like Shake/Fusion? (I/O, transfer issues)
-What are V-Ray's strong points, and what are the most notable weaknesses?

Thanks,

SMH

[percydaman]

Its speed and flexibility are its strengths... It really outshines all other renderers in this regard. Its materials are its weakness... and are really lacking compared to the other renderers.

[SMH]

Its materials are its weakness... and are really lacking compared to the other renderers.

Could you please elaborate a bit? Do you mean the material editor interface ?

[RErender]

IMHO the V-Ray material is capable of reproducing almost any surface, it's only weakness is it's lack of presets. For me the material is very intuitive.

[RErender]

Since I'm here

It was stated last week that 1.5 is in it's final testing of the DR.

There is currently no multi-pass rendering, per se , but there are some methods for previewing a scene.

I have not worked with OpenEXR much, but the channels are available.

Combustion has no problem with it.

I think V-Ray's main strenghth is speed, weaknesses? hmm...still thinking..

[percydaman]

yes its material is capable of creating ALOT of the shaders available to brazil and finalrender, and mentalray, but not ALL. Its SSS implementation is pretty hard to use and slow. If chaos could implement a shader pack like finalrender then it would be top notch. Also there are just tons of shaders that can be made using all of the mentalray options.

[tom schuelke]

Hi

best of vray i think is it´s absolutely unbeaten speed especially in interiores, where no other renderer seems to compare.

there ar like said missing some presets, but its simple "advanced" material can produce nearly all materials you need.

(for example missing dispersion in caustics). SSS could be faster.


the new Beta 1.4750 of the upcoming 1.5 wich is like said arround the corner. is nearly production ready. while it is not ready thinking of distributed single frame rendering it has some workarounds, and its speed compared with the 1.09 version of vray is that fast, that you allmost forget those missing few things.

it has a wide range of passes that can be rendered, while the saving options still are not perfect. for example in the 1.5 all channels are meant to be savable as hdri files with foul uncalamped colors. (if i am not wrong).

you allready can save the cannels but without hdri options thinking of unclamped colors.

what you also should consider :

one of the strongest points of vray is the userbase and this forum. You will rerely find again an as engaged group of users, and you usualy get very very fast answers and help from this place, but also directly from the programmers.

also to consider, vray gets a new version, a standalone version that soon will go faster and be stronger as the old max version will be. this standalone will get very good connections to max but also to maya. dont know how far this is, but the first start of this version the "exe" project still is available, and i think maybe have a year ? maybe much faster, but this the programmers would know much better.

i would consider you just to test this programm. After getting hands on it, you wont go back i am sure. Of course all of us will look over the horriszon to see what other companys produce, and there are other good solutions. But vray at the moment does nearly everything the others do, but it does it faster.

so have good luck with your choise.

Tom

[SMH]

Many thanks everyone, and sorry for posting so late. I had trouble accessing the forum over the last day. For us HDR multi-pass rendring is a critical issue. You can never call a shot done, till you hear the last word from your client. Anyway, I hope we hear some good news on the standalone release and a solid Maya pipeline.

Thanks again,

-SMH

[egz]

What I think RErender meant by mulipass is something like the progressive rendering in F-Primer for lightwave. This is not supported in VRay.

Render channels are supported though, as in Unclamped Color, Specular, Diffuse, GI, Reflection, Normals, Refraction etc. etc. - saved as separate files. I'm not sure all of them can be unclamped, though some of them are.

There is no pass manager built in, for rendering separate objects in separate passes, but http://www.rpmanager.com/ supports VRay, and many people use this for setting up passes.

[cpnichols]

Many thanks everyone, and sorry for posting so late. I had trouble accessing the forum over the last day. For us HDR multi-pass rendring is a critical issue. You can never call a shot done, till you hear the last word from your client. Anyway, I hope we hear some good news on the standalone release and a solid Maya pipeline.

Thanks again,

-SMH

The new 1.5 will have amazing multipass capabilities, at least in the what we have seen in the early builds. Along with your typical material ID, object ID, Z pass, etc... other great passes include: Diffuse, Reflect, refract, Shadow, Raw Lighting (no GI), Raw Global Illumination (no direct lighting), Specular, Caustics, and more.

From what I have been hearing at Siggraph their Standalone implimentation will be slightly different then other rendering engines, tut it also makes a lot of sense.

[travistlo]

This is kind of off topic, but what exactly is unclamped colors?

Travis

[tom schuelke]

travistlo

unclamped colors means that your immages in hdri immages have some sort of more information thinking of the real energy level.

usual rgb images have clamped colors, for example rgb 200,200,200

with unclamped colors you also have floatinpoints behind, it is like a further channel like describing the real energy behind the color.

Tom

[cpnichols]

This is kind of off topic, but what exactly is unclamped colors?

Travis

When color is measured at an 8bit interger, it is usually measured from 0 to 255. with each channel (RGB) being an 8bit interger.

HDRI is usually measured as a floating point when 0 to 255 translates to 0 to 1. For example 50% gray would be (0.5, 0.5, 0.5). Clamped color is the color that is clamped between 0 and 1, Unclamped can go beyond 1, and therefore has a higher dynamic range than 1. For a practical example, in unclamped color, a white wall may have a color of (1,0.98,0.99) and a light bulb may have a value of (6.34,5.34,4.23), and the sun may have a value of (2102,1934,1645). If the color was clamped the light bulb and the sun would both be (1,1,1).

[Adam H. Stewart]

A conversation at Siggraph

At Siggraph I was standing at the V-ray booth and got talking to a guy who worked for an animation company up in Oregon. He is a lightwave user - the company did all those M&M commercials. Anyway he was changing platform and wasn't sure whether to go for Maya or 3ds (he had experience with both) . I quizzed him on this and he said the availability of Vray was what was going to steer his software choice - for him it was the single most important part of his decision. Not a bad testiment to Vray.

Don't know if this helps in your're decision but it makes a nice story for Vray users.

Adam H. Stewart

[travistlo]

Thanks guys, I thought thats what unclamped colors ment, How does that apply in production? Ex: If using levels in photoshop, the whites of the lightbulb will stay white, but the wall, would change?(referencing cpnichols example, and using a 16bit photo)