Speedtree ?

[bernhard]

Hello friends !

Today we rendered our first scene file with the updated lates relaese of vray.
Suddenly, we have an issue with the Speedtree plugin.

It seems to be some maps don't render .
Here is a snapshot.



And ideas what causes that problem ?

thx a lot for every little help,
bernhard

[vlado]

Here is my comment to this for another client:

"...the problem is because of a work-around I once implemented for older versions of SpeedTree - the tree trunk was not smoothed, so V-Ray forced mesh smoothing on the trees; but now it seems that this messes up the leaves (since they have two sides, the smooth vertex normals end up pointing in weird directions rather than perpendicular to the leaf surface). If I remove this work-around, the leaves render fine, but the trunk is faceted.

In previous versions of V-Ray, for bitmap filtering, V-Ray used the geometric (non-smoothed) surface normal like the scanline renderer and SpeedTrees were fine, but it was requested from several users that we use the smoothed surface normal instead - which unfortunately leads to these issues with SpeedTree.

So I'm not really sure how to proceed here. It would be best if the SpeedTree object itself sets surface normals information correctly, but if the SpeedTree developers have any other ideas for a work-around on our side, they are most welcome."

It is not particularly difficult for me to add yet another option in V-Ray for this specific case, but it would really be better if this was done properly on the SpeedTree side.

Best regards,
Vlado

[trick]

Does this problem disappear when setting bitmap filtering to none ? Because waiting for a SpeedTree Update is like waiting for next XMas, if not longer.

[vlado]

Yeah, turning off bitmap filtering helps, of course.

Best regards,
Vlado

[trick]

For compatibility reason I'm still on RC3. Since I would like to go to Max2008/VRay1.5sp1 I would like to know some more. Is this problem coming from the opacity channel only, or from other channels too (that would be bad for anims ) ? In other words: is it enough to set filtering to none in opacity channel ?

[vlado]

You would have to set the filtering to none for all leaf textures (opacity and diffuse).

Best regards,
Vlado

[trick]

This is not so great. Did you contact IDV or Digimation about this issue yourself ? I can forward this thread to support, but since I'm still waiting for a 64bit plugin since a really long time. I doubt it will speed things up.

[Dynedain]

I am so sick of speedtree. I didn't even install it on Max 9 and probably won't on Max 2008 either. Their proprietary object and geometry generation is as much of a paint to work with as RPCs.

[trick]

I can only agree. But I really like the specific style their trees have. I also have NatFX, XFrog and Onyx and all have their own style: I even have specific trees for specific clients. If they only knew the headaches this gives me....

[vlado]

Yes, Digimation are aware of this issue and it has been forwarded to the SpeedTree developers, as far as I know.

Best regards,
Vlado

[mike_kennedy]

onyx trees we found convert nicely and have few issues with vray