method for rendering fast previews?

[gimiky]

i'm relatively new to vray and one thing ive been struggling with is a way to get a quick preview of geometry and materials. i deal with scenes and models that go through many revisions and with scanline i was always able to remove all the lights, revert to 'default lighting' and get very quick and informative renders about the integrity of any changes i had made.

with vray it seems the only way to get an image that represents "rendered" geometry involves turning on features that slow the render down. i'm not really concerned with a totally accurate representation of materials so much as i want to make sure all the material breaks are correct as well as ensure there are no strange geometry issues present before i start cranking out 2 hour renders.

anybody have any thoughts/techniques on this?

thanks,
greg

[thablanch]

It is all depending what you do expect from a preview..

For myself, a preview varies in between 20secs. and 2min...
basicly, lower quality you go, faster it gets.

the AA, bring it down to something like -2, -1, not a precise render, but darn fast.

The QMC sampler, the noise toggle, smaller the number, longer it will take. crank it up to 1.0

the Irr map., once again, higher the settings, longer it takes, set it to -5, -3, and the subdiv. to something like 20, 10.

The general image is going to be really "blotchy", but you will read in it most of what will happen in the final image.... overall colors, light feel..

Most important, it is going to be really fast..

Hope that helps

Alain B.

[gimiky]

thanks for your response, alain..

the low settings you suggested will give me a good "overall" color and light, but what i guess what i'm hoping to get is an image that represents the "edges" of the model with a rough indication of material color. with the low AA and GI settings it's very hard to tell if there are geometry issues anywhere because the image is so blotchy and well, aliased..

using max's scanline renderer, i can use the built-in default lighting with normal antialiasing to get super fast 15s renders that show me the geometry exactly as it will be rendered.. in this case i'm not worried about shadows or reflections or exact material representation because the lighting is only there to show me the geometry.

the problem i'm having is that if i want to check on my model with any speed or efficiency after it's been revised, i have to render it in scanline--but this requires standard max materials. jumping between a 'vray' file and a 'max' file can be quite precarious and i wanted to avoid the double work-flows.

[arobbert]

The only way to get a fast Vray preview with clean antialiasing is to use DR with lots of nodes.

Alexie

[natty]

Have a look @ this thread that was started a while back ... about the QMC and how it affects your speed = quility ...

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/foru...ighlight=speed

[arobbert]

Thanks Natty I've overlooked the QMC. It really does speed things up.

Alexie

[gimiky]

thanks for the link, natty.. that helps a lot.

however, maybe i should clarify. the optimized settings you were exploring are particularly effective when trying to visualize GI quickly. i guess i'm hoping to find a way to eliminate GI altogether and still see my model.

as i was saying, with scanline, i can kill any lights and use default lighting to see an antialiased, clean edged version of my model as it will be rendered and max will render it extremly quickly. i'm not worried about lighting at all in this case--it's purely a geometry and material breakup check.

from what i can tell so far, the way vray anti-aliases an image and the way it considers light, this kind of preview doesn't seem possible. i wish i could rely on my viewport alone, but graphics driver inconsistencies and poor quality altogether prohibit this.