I am completely and utterly frustrated after upgrading to vray 3.6

[matanov]

Nice rapidly growing thread

Just wanted to drop this here:

V-Ray is changing almost every day and you see that changes stacked in major version releases. From time to time I see complains about scenes made with versions several years old, rendering noisy/different/etc with newer ones. So -

1. Don't expect exactly the same result (even with up-to-date settings)
2. If you are not 100% sure what are you doing in terms of render setup always reset to defaults when coming to a newer version and then tweak if needed
3. We are trying to make the defaults enough adequate for any scenario, but there always will be cases that need a little extra touch

Sorry for the slight off-topic.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

This is very well said and it should conclude the thread before it gets messy and people get confused ))

[EXPOSE]

Wow, so I just came back and this thread exploded.
Lele, thank you for your input, it´s very much appreciated. I have to say though that I start getting a little confused now

I also took down the file I uploaded. Again, it was never about the scene itself but only (!) about the general render settings.
I had a "real" scene and basically deleted everything, including shaders, materials, objects etc. as most of those contained either copyright protected materials, geometry or customer parts which of course I can´t upload.
So the scene was bad lighted, there was a huge overbright sphere light (which was experimental from the previous scene) and also the shaders didn´t have anything to do with my concerns. I threw some basic shaders on the teapot and the backplane, I only wanted to demonstrate the harsh noise in the dark areas and relfections as I never managed to get rid of them - with my pre-set render settings. I do understand now that these were in no way compatible or sensible with the current version of vray.

I stuck to the linear workflow that worked very well in previous versions of vray (2.5+) and noticed I can´t continue to work like this any longer. Also none of the presets or even the default values were satisfying in terms of quality and speed.
Now it often happens that a customer wants additional views of old(er) scenes or needs new products rendered in an identical way. That´s where the trouble for me begins as the scenes simply won´t work any longer.

So I will work through the links you guys gave me and try to re-learn Vray ... right now I don´t have a clue what´s good or bad, right or wrong. I feel like a complete "noob" again.
Maybe vray has grown too big and complicated, at least that´s my impression after reading through 3 pages of this thread.

I will start resetting everything to default settings and tweak my way - hopefully - to an almost identical look of what I tried to achieve.

[joconnell]

Now it often happens that a customer wants additional views of old(er) scenes or needs new products rendered in an identical way. That´s where the trouble for me begins as the scenes simply won´t work any longer.

Some of the big vfx houses combat this by keeping a copy of the installer for the vray version used to render a job to get a 100% match - admittedly they've got some clever ways to install / reinstall a build of vray on the fly to their render farm but it's the only way you'll get a perfect match!

So I will work through the links you guys gave me and try to re-learn Vray ... right now I don´t have a clue what´s good or bad, right or wrong. I feel like a complete "noob" again.
Maybe vray has grown too big and complicated, at least that´s my impression after reading through 3 pages of this thread.

We're all noobs really and they're trying to make vray even simpler where possible!

[^Lele^]

Wow, so I just came back and this thread exploded.
Lele, thank you for your input, it´s very much appreciated. I have to say though that I start getting a little confused now

What's confusing, specifically?

I also took down the file I uploaded. Again, it was never about the scene itself but only (!) about the general render settings.
I had a "real" scene and basically deleted everything, including shaders, materials, objects etc. as most of those contained either copyright protected materials, geometry or customer parts which of course I can´t upload.

I didn't think it was the real scene as posted above, no. But the shaders weren't at defaults, showing some authoring. I took a leaf off those to reiterate a few key concepts, changed (a lot) from the years of 1.x/2.x.
EDIT: notice that sending a scene to our support, or in general a chaosgroup.com email (Peter, Vlado, even me.) means it's automatically covered by NDA.
Specific NDAs could be signed without trouble.

So the scene was bad lighted, there was a huge overbright sphere light (which was experimental from the previous scene) and also the shaders didn´t have anything to do with my concerns. I threw some basic shaders on the teapot and the backplane, I only wanted to demonstrate the harsh noise in the dark areas and relfections as I never managed to get rid of them - with my pre-set render settings. I do understand now that these were in no way compatible or sensible with the current version of vray.

Yes, that's correct.
However, it's not doom and gloom, you see, it's ponies and rainbows: V-Ray now only needs to know how clean you want your image, and the rest it's done for you.

I stuck to the linear workflow that worked very well in previous versions of vray (2.5+) and noticed I can´t continue to work like this any longer. Also none of the presets or even the default values were satisfying in terms of quality and speed.

a) Why can't you use LWF anymore? What else would you be using, if not linear workflow?
b) Quality and speed are very confusing terms. Take for example the usual objection "i tried what you said and it came out slower": as it is, it's entirely meaningless.
One needs to find out what happened to the final image, and "Quality" can only ever be determined by looking at the amount of residual noise in the rendered result.
Sure, low max AA is going to be quick, and provided you do not look where you don't like it, you won't ever see the residual noise, nor its unevenness across the screen, nor the useless oversampling forced on V-Ray in other parts of the image still.
Thankfully, as of the latest versions of V-Ray (including 3.6) there is a "NoiseLevel" render element, so even the hardest of die-hards will have numbers to contend with, instead of a whiff of this, a smidge of that, and a pinch of the other.

So, while every user has a slightly different perception of quality, engineers, and particularly those working on the tools you make a living with, you'll want concentrated on measurable, consistent, dependable quality metrics.
It's those we endeavour to share with you here and in the docs.

So I will work through the links you guys gave me and try to re-learn Vray ... right now I don´t have a clue what´s good or bad, right or wrong. I feel like a complete "noob" again.
Maybe vray has grown too big and complicated, at least that´s my impression after reading through 3 pages of this thread.

Change always costs some effort to see through, but hopefully in this case you'll soon see the overarching benefits.
If there is one take-away message, form 3.3 onwards, is "rely on the defaults".

I will start resetting everything to default settings and tweak my way - hopefully - to an almost identical look of what I tried to achieve.

Do the reset, do NOT tweak. It's counter-productive. V-Ray now knows best (through plenty of scene intelligence.) in the vast majority of cases.
All you need to tell it is how clean the image has to be made (noise threshold), and how much it can work to achieve it (Max AA).

[^Lele^]

The tooltip on the max subdivs also mentions MSR

It's a refuse: you'll notice the newer tooltips, for the progressive sampler, do not mention MSR.
Thanks for finding that out, by the way, although i don't think we'll be able to do anything about it for 3.6...

[kosso_olli]

If there is one take-away message, form 3.3 onwards, is "rely on the defaults".

This, and only this is the very conclusion to this 3-page mess.

I should print this and hang it on the wall actually, because I have to deal with this every week. You know, some people try to make things better, making it even worse without noticing. Fiddling with the settings does hardly have any effect these days, at least for the work I do, which involves anything from high-res print images with heavy DOF to animations with motion blur. I always take the defaults, and they always worked.

[Neilg]

I guess good enough for some is not always good enough for others. Some demand scientifically clean, others just want it to look good in print...
I do hope that vray never removes the ability to cut corners and cheat. The appeal of vray for dbox has always been it's customization - if you dont need sharp gi, if there's no DOF to clean up, if there are limited reflections - there's a tweak to the settings which gets a quicker result by making non visible sacrifices. if we had to render everything with default settings we'd have been unable to adapt to surprises and missed deadlines.

[kosso_olli]

As I said, never after 3.3 was I able to improve rendertimes measurably without sacrificing the quality by fiddling with the settings.

[^Lele^]

I guess good enough for some is not always good enough for others. Some demand scientifically clean, others just want it to look good in print...
I do hope that vray never removes the ability to cut corners and cheat. The appeal of vray for dbox has always been it's customization - if you dont need sharp gi, if there's no DOF to clean up, if there are limited reflections - there's a tweak to the settings which gets a quicker result by making non visible sacrifices. if we had to render everything with default settings we'd have been unable to adapt to surprises and missed deadlines.

Show me a scene, i'll show you the error of your ways, or will be shown the error in mine.
Talk will lead no one anywhere.

[M.Max]

^Lele^ I would love to see a case-study for a real \ production scene ..one of Evermotion interiors would be great !

[^Lele^]

^Lele^ I would love to see a case-study for a real \ production scene ..one of Evermotion interiors would be great !

Evermotion has historically had some of the worse possible shading (and sampling/rendering) setups on the planet.
While the defaults would still do their jobs, it wouldn't be overly obvious why: it'd be difficult to see where we gained time and why (as the previous setup oversampled) and where we lost some (to achieve a set N.T. where the original didn't).
I'd prefer a scene which had been carefully created by hand by someone with enough shading and lighting skills so not to make CGI horrors, and take it from there.
Anything goes, however, the principles will hold regardless (or not. ^^).

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Id pitch in with my weekly interior 1 scene if you want. It randers ages, has a lot of dof and simple lighting. If that would be enough Lele? You can find the post here for your evaluation
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...-interior-no-1

[Neilg]

Show me a scene,

All active DBOX work is confidential, however the results I see are consistent.
Its a very easy thing to test - in a scene with no DOF (as these settings dont work when using DOF) it renders faster and cleaner.

Intentionally left some noise in, all other settings are at default. only thing changed is that one leans into the AA and the other leans into the MSR. The one with higher AA is a little slower and noisier.
I can open nearly any production scene and see the same result. you can try it yourself and share your results if you think i'm wrong (no DOF), doesn't take long to change 2 numbers. I do not have an active production scene I can publicly share.

I found a quote from you yourself explaining how this works when searching for vlado's post

AA remains slower a cleaning method than using specialised rays (which is the WHOLE point of having MSR in the first place.).
What Vlado is trying to say, in the video, as I understand it, is that SOME specific situations WILL NEED AA rays, rather than MSR, to be properly cleaned."

And it appears that most of what we render doesn't need the AA to be as high - so the MSR can take over.
We do use high AA and drop the MSR sometimes - I was on the 200E59th film and had to switch for some shots because there was a lot of DOF and fur. For other shots, we had low AA and high MSR. both methods have their time and place but rendering with high MSR cant be wrong when it works. By all means dislike that it's used, but i'm not lying.

[joconnell]

I'll be interested to look at this soon - i'll be picking up some 1 day a frame shots of a fully enclosed interior which is nothing but glossy walls and texture driven area lights, my first instinct is that it's all shading rate but I'll definitely be doing some wedges of settings to see how it behaves!