Updated - New Script "Imap Control"

[zapcat]

Ben, you can merge irradiance maps using map viewer which can be downloaded from the same location as the beta versions of vray.

[Ben Ando]

Yes zapcat, and thanks, that’s fine for renders where nothing is moving in the scene.

However, I believe an “add to target map” (or whatever you want to call it) would be useful for animating small amounts of geometry in complex scenes. I see this working in two phases:

1. Firstly you would do a pass where you calculate irradiance map for the “background” (or static geometry) for the whole sequence using “incremental add to current map”. The moving geometry would need to be hidden for this pass. It would be a one off pass and irradiance map would be saved.

2. The next step would be carried out at render time, for each and every frame. This would be to calculate the irradiance map for the moving objects (unhidden) and add it to the saved irradiance map created in the first pass.

For complex scenes with minimal animation of geometry this would be a dream as the irradiance map for the entire scene would not need to be calculated at every frame, just the addition of the moving parts. Therefore the render times would be considerably quicker. The background would have GI and the moving objects would have GI there just wouldn’t be as much GI interaction between them as there would be if you rendered the whole GI for a scene.

If only you could force network renders to revert to a saved irradiance map before each render, then use “incremental add to current map” to make the additions. Would be the best I think??

Ben

[RErender]

Sorry guys somehow I missed the last few posts.

Tom - Another use is to render imaps in backburner on several machines at the same time to be merged with imapviewer, instead of having to send the whole job to one machine with incremental add.

Zapcat - there is not direct script access to saving photon maps, I believe though that if you check "convert to irradiance map" the info will be saved with the imap (not sure if that is true, but Vlado did say that lightmaps work that way).

Ben - Nice technique, should be pretty easy to implement. I'll see what I can do.

[Ben Ando]

Thanks RErender, that would be awesome!!!

[RErender]

If I don't get it done in a few days, Remind me

[gafl]

I DO agree with your technic Ben.
There should be something to compute moving and static objects differently implemented in Vray. This is a very big step in computing science.
I've allways thought about it and I supposed It was hard to implement...

I don't really see how to do that in script language, how to make the difference... except if you point the moving object out.

You can already do that when you use Photon mapping.
For instance, you get the photon map of a static scene, you add the
moving objects next and you compute the animation.
I don't know in what degree the light should not be good on the moving
objects, but it works without having photon map computed over them.
I haven't tried it with lightmap, maybe it works too.

Good luck Rerender !
Gael

[biglolly]

Hi Everyone,

This script is great Eric, but the only thing I can't figure out how when I want to render my final image sequence, do I load the irradiance maps set out at 20 frames apart.

Last night I rendered and saved an irradiance map for every 20th frame. I have a folder full of these now. That bit is okay. It's the loading of the maps that is the problem for me.

The irradiance maps are all called something like "imap0213.imap" and then "imap0233.imap", "imap0253.imap" and so on, every 20 frames. - so how do I load the imaps in sequence as I'm rendering out each frame?

Do I put in the first file in to the vray advanced irradiance map parameters box where it says "from file" or do I point to the first map in the sequence using varcht tools? I'm confused

Where or what do I use to tell max to render using all the irradiance maps as the animation goes along?

Here is a pic of my settings.

[RErender]

If you don't have any moving objects in your scene then it is as easy as merging those imaps into one and loading it in the render dialogue. Use imapviewer to merge the 20th imaps.

[biglolly]

Cool - I'll give that a try.

[biglolly]

Hi there,

when I merge the maps (even just 2) and set it to render it doesn't work. It all comes out looking incorrect. The irradiance maps do work when I select the individual frames that I had rendered them with...just doesn't want to work as an animation.

[RErender]

are there moving objects in your scene?

Also if you saved incrementaly from one machine the just use the last frame it should be the biggest and hold all the information.

[nlo]

hi rerender, this script turns out to be lifesaver for me...

just one question: when i use your script over backburner only on one machine and with multiframe incremental turned on, it still saves single imaps and not incremental imaps - which i hoped it would do.

is it possible to change that?

another problem occured at rendertime: i use multiframe incremental and after 10 frames it stops saving the imaps but keeps on rendering and saving the images

[biglolly]

Hi Guys,

I used the 2nd last irradiance file - the last one was corrupt or something, and it seemed to work well! Thanks!

One further question - I noticed some artifacts when I rendered the sequence - like light appearing where it should not. It wasn't very noticeable, but I imagined that this was happening because there weren't enough irradiance maps. I rendered every 20 frames which might have been too much?

Cheers,

Biglolly.

[samuel_bubat]

Cool. Thank You.
I´ll check it out !

cheers

[biglolly]

If I'm going an incremental add to current frame irradiance map, and it's rendering on 4 separate nodes...will this work? Or do I have to have it save each map for each frame individually and then combine?