3DS Max and Vray Standalone

[nweeden]

Hi,

We're experimenting with Vray standalone both from Maya and 3DS Max. From Maya we're getting great results, especially with the Deadline Vray Exporter it's works brilliantly. With 3DS Max on the other hand I'm struggling to get it to work. I've used the right-click menu to export a .vrscene but when I render the subsequent file it doesn't save any output files or render elements. I can force it to render an image if I add the -imgFile="***" variable to the command line but it still doesn't save the elements.

Comparing the files from Maya and Max it looks like the max exporter isn't adding img_file or img_dir (as well as a lot of other options) to the SettingsOutput section. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something or if someone can point me in the right direction to resolve this?

Thanks

Nick

[vlado]

This workflow is a lot better explored in Maya than in 3ds Max (in Maya we essentially guarantee that whatever renders in Maya, will render with the Standalone 1:1); for 3ds Max it is possible that we have some more work to do. Which version of V-Ray for 3ds Max are you using, by the way? I think we had a bug for the render elements export that we fixed just recently.

Best regards,
Vlado

[nweeden]

Hi Vlado,

We're using 3.40.02 and Max 2016, so we're pretty up to date. Yeah the Maya one seems great, especially hooked into Deadline. I edited my .vrscene and added "img_file" and "img_dir" variables and it now saves the main file, this current test might not actually have any elements other than the denoiser, it's actually the separate render channels (rgb and alpha) that we get out of the vfb that aren't saving. We're comparing the speeds between Standalone and Max but we've got the denoiser on and it's being applied to the rgb so without getting the same outputs I can't be sure the images are the same and the speed differences relevant...

Nick

[vlado]

Ok, can you show me the .max file and the respective .vrscene file? You can email them to me at vlado@chaosgroup.com if you don't feel comfortable attaching them here.

Best regards,
Vlado

[nweeden]

I've attached a zip file with a .max and .vrscene file. It's not the one we were testing with but has a fairly typical setup with a couple of render elements, the denoiser and saving files through vfb's separate render channels option. The .max file saves the frames out the .vrscene doesn't.

Thanks

Nick

[tashko.zashev]

Thank you for adding the files for this issue.

I can confirm that we don't export the output properties of the VFB in V-Ray for 3DS Max and I've created a new task about that in our system. Currently the only way to save all channels from the vrscene file exported from V-Ray/Max is to manually edit the vrscene (adding tags for img_file and img_dir) or to use the available Standalone command option (vray -scenefile="" -imgfile="") to specify the path and format of the output file.
Moreover the Denoiser element is set to be applied directly to the RGB/Beauty pass (mode: replace RGB element with denoised result) in order to get it into a separate render pass you can switch to "Store denoised result in separate element" from the Denoiser element advanced parameters. This why you will be able to compare the V-Ray/Max and V-Ray/Maya RGB results.

Also it would be helpful to know the exact V-Ray Standalone version you are using for this render test.