Vray 3.5 Beta - IPR doesn't respect changes in render resolution

[Alex_M]

If I change the render resolution and run IPR, IPR doesn't pick up this change. I have to first make a "normal" render and then start the IPR to render in the new resolution with it. Screenshot below.

[vlado]

Thanks for the pointer; for the next beta the idea is to lock the IPR resolution to the current VFB window size.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Alex_M]

I have the nightly from a couple of days installed and locking is working fine now, thanks.

But now another problem appeared that I haven't find a solution for. The resolution changes dynamically with resizing of the VFB. What if I want constant resolution with IPR even if I resize VFB? Is there a button somewhere that prevents this dynamic resolution change ? I'm sure there is one but I just couldn't find it. I see how it is useful in some cases but in others (like the current job I'm working on) I would like for the resolution to stay constant regardless of VFB window size. I'm constantly moving around and resizing VFB even tough I'm on 2 monitors and this is a bit of a problem. I imagine people with 1 monitor would be doing this even more often.

[vlado]

Can you explain in a bit more detail why you would want the resolution to stay constant? I could add an option for this, but I'm trying to minimize the available buttons Other users expressed (rather extreme) annoyance at having the IPR resolution match the render resolution. Why is the interactive resolution a problem?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Alex_M]

Can you explain in a bit more detail why you would want the resolution to stay constant? I could add an option for this, but I'm trying to minimize the available buttons Other users expressed (rather extreme) annoyance at having the IPR resolution match the render resolution. Why is the interactive resolution a problem?

Best regards,
Vlado

I'm fine with dynamic resolution, it's cool and I'll certainly use it when possible but most of the time I have a lot of windows open on my 2 monitors so I shuffle them around and resize them rather frequently when working, VFB included. I don't know about other people but I can have 5 windows open at the same time such as Max, material editor, a reference image, light lister and VFB. It's a mess. Because of this I move and resize VFB (and other open windows) rather frequently. Hopefully I wouldn't have to buy another monitor for VFB. I have no more space on my desk. Unless I get one of those spidery arms that swivel. That would certainly be cool looking on my desk. I'll look like one of those stock broker guys that yell a lot.

PS: I just noticed the same thing happens in RT. This doesn't make for a very fun experience. Is there no switch to make the resolution constant? Am I the only one that has problems with this behavior? Am I the only one with meager 2 x 1080p monitors in this 21st century of triple-monitor 4k goodness?

[vlado]

Is there no switch to make the resolution constant?

I can add one, but I want to see how many people will complain first

Best regards,
Vlado

[adanmq]

Hi Vlado, I also will love to have the option for non dynamic resolution. Dynamic resolution it´s fine for quick look dev but sometimes you need to have the final resolution and camera position and use regions in order to see fine details and keep the final camera/resolution, especially if you are making really big print jobs. Because it´s not the same zooming in whit the camera, you need to see if your details pops up on the final camera not in a different close up. It´s also important to configure displacement for example or high frequency bump.

I understand the need of minimizing options so inexperienced users can´t mess the settings and you are making a great job, but i love V-Ray over other "easy to use" render engines because i have control xD

BTW the last version looks really amazing, thanks for all the hard work you are putting on this engine.

Best!
A.

[Alex_M]

I can add one, but I want to see how many people will complain first

Best regards,
Vlado

Frankly speaking, I would rather not have this dynamic resolution thingy if the problem is adding a new switch. Most of the jobs I'm working on leave me with no free space on my monitors so this really stops me from using IPR when it refreshes constantly. I guess it would work for simple scenes and tests but for a real production I would guess no one has just Max open on their main monitor and their 2nd monitor completely clean of open stuff. I'm really curious to know who wanted this functionality and what's their workflow (and how many monitors they have cause having only 2 clearly is not enough for me now! ). Maybe we can have a thread or a poll somewhere where we discuss how useful this is?

[LudvikKoutny]

It's about third time there is same thread for this problem. And people always repeat same two things:

1, "But I need big resolution during IPR because I need to see the detail up close::

A, Nothing prevents you from exiting camera view into perspective and moving view in your scene to go take a look at that distant object up close. It will also improve your shading, as you won't be locked down to a single angle and will be able to evaluate your object from all angles.

B, If you really need to tweak that object from single camera angle, then what you want is to zoom in there, not to make your interactive resolution 4k and then drag a region, because first of all, that would be a ridiculous workflow, and second of all, large resolution really does kill any interactivity, even if you are sitting on a quad xeon machine. So right solution here is to simply implement view zooming, either using 2D pan and zoom feature of 3ds Max viewport, or RealZoom feature that V-Ray RT has. Wrong solution would be reverting the fixed IPR VFB resolution to the old, broken one.

2: "But I usually have many windows open and shuffle/resize them all the time":

Again, there's a proper solution to this - having option to run IPR inside of viewport instead of VFB, your VFB won't then be constantly floating on top of something and you won't be needing to constantly move/resize it around.


It's just that many of you are constantly looking just at a tip of your nose rather than in the distance when it comes to workflow design. You will sooner or later inevitably encounter scenario, where you will be doing frequent renders in some more complex scene, where you will really need small IPR preview, because large one will have so slow feedback IPR will become pointless. Then you will be stuck in an endless loop of switching resolution between preview IPR one and production one. I know it, because I was stuck in such a loop, when Corona guys where figuring out how IPR should work.

Look, on average, if you have 1920x1200 screen, when you start stock 3ds Max, if you view quad viewport layout, one viewport takes about 1/9th of the total screen resolution area. Now this is the thing that most of the people do not seem to realize: If you run small IPR at resolution of one viewport, you will have fairly fast feedback, but if you run IPR at your production resolution, it won't be just a little bit slower... it will be about 9 times slower! So think about it this way, if you have moderately complex scene, and it takes about 4 seconds to get first reasonable pass you can evaluate, then at maximized 1920x1200 resolution it will take about 36 seconds. From the time you change something in the scene to the time you will see what happened, it will take you 36 seconds... I can take a run to the restroom or grab a sandwich from the fridge in such a long interval I would be surprised if someone considered 1/36th (or 0.028 ) FPS to be interactive framerate.

So to wrap it up, you need to keep in mind that with today's hardware, especially CPU hardware, you need to keep your resolution small in order for interactive rendering to be truly interactive. At the same time, you usually want to render your production mode renders a bit larger, to see all the detail together. So most of the times, you want these two resolutions to be independent. The problem is that it's really hard to convince people about this before they encounter this problem, not after it.

[LudvikKoutny]

Because it´s not the same zooming in whit the camera, you need to see if your details pops up on the final camera not in a different close up. It´s also important to configure displacement for example or high frequency bump.

There is a proper way to handle this as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSw2jwZAiM

[Alex_M]

Sorry, Recon442 but I have to humbly disagree on your points.

It's about third time there is same thread for this problem. And people always repeat same two things:

1, "But I need big resolution during IPR because I need to see the detail up close::

A, Nothing prevents you from exiting camera view into perspective and moving view in your scene to go take a look at that distant object up close. It will also improve your shading, as you won't be locked down to a single angle and will be able to evaluate your object from all angles.

I never said I need bigger resolutions. What I said is I want it to be locked when I need it to be. I never run IPR on resolutions higher than 1000-1200px width or height and I don't plan to do so whatever machine I'm working on, be it a single cpu or a quad xeon.

2: "But I usually have many windows open and shuffle/resize them all the time":

Again, there's a proper solution to this - having option to run IPR inside of viewport instead of VFB, your VFB won't then be constantly floating on top of something and you won't be needing to constantly move/resize it around.

Not exactly a solution. How do you make color corrections such as exposure, curves, white balance, color balance, etc. if you run it in the viewport? Maybe in this case we would need an external interface that has these controls and update the IPR in viewport?

B, If you really need to tweak that object from single camera angle, then what you want is to zoom in there, not to make your interactive resolution 4k and then drag a region, because first of all, that would be a ridiculous workflow, and second of all, large resolution really does kill any interactivity, even if you are sitting on a quad xeon machine.

Again... I never said I want to run IPR in 4k or any other ridiculous resolution for an IPR engine. You should drop this argument. I want to have the option to not constantly refresh on me if I resize the window when I want to do this.

So right solution here is to simply implement view zooming, either using 2D pan and zoom feature of 3ds Max viewport, or RealZoom feature that V-Ray RT has. Wrong solution would be reverting the fixed IPR VFB resolution to the old, broken one.

This however I think is a viable option/alternative that I approve of!


Don't get me wrong, I am all for having the option for dynamic resolution, it's really useful in many cases and I would certainly use it, but how about having the option to also turn this feature off in cases where this is not desired? If the problem is that it's another button that adds clutter, I think we can think of a way to reduce/clean clutter by other methods like combining buttons/menus or something. I'm sure there must be a way to handle this problem.

[adanmq]

Hi Recon442.

Thanks for your point of view on this subject but i´m not agree with you sorry.

You are assuming you know better than me want i want and why and that´s not right. I don't care how you want to work, i definitely can see some pros on dynamic resolution and i will use it a lot for sure in my work but i also see some heavy cons, that's why i'm asking the ability to choose (the option can be hidden or turn off by default like many otters) i don't understand why you need to convince everyone to work the way you like it dosen´t have any sense on our industry.
I´m not new to 3D i start working on the industry 20 years ago and i use Vray for almost 10 i´m not claiming i know everything but believe me i know what i want on my job and why. I just don't understand why you are so mad. We are only asking for an option, you can still working the way you want even if i use Dynamic resolution 90% of the time i want to be able to disable it 10% of the time. Win win.


PD: Excuse my English

Best!.
A.

[kosso_olli]

There is a proper way to handle this as well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSw2jwZAiM

I have to agree, I quite like that approach.

[LudvikKoutny]

You don't need to apologize for disagreeing. I am always happy for any constructive discussion. I may not always be right, and if someone brings up interesting points, it's something I can learn from, or something to make me stop and think.

Yes, you particularly did not mention using larger resultion, but the guy above you, Adanmq did. He wants to use a workflow of rendering final resolution and dragging render region to see how details look in big resolution. That is definitely a valid workflow, I am just not sure it's worth introducing new problems because of. Especially when support of render-time zooming resolves requirement of this workflow even better.

As for color corrections during IPR, yes, this is probably the main drawback of using IPR in viewport, but when you think about it, point of using IPR is to work in real time on things that are not possible to do in offline rendering. All of the VFB color corrections are tweakable in real time even during offline rendering. So you can easily tweak your colors and stuff when rendering in production mode, or when doing IPR in VFB. But most of the time people use IPR is when building scene/shading. Not when tweaking color corrections. Dynamic resolution would not have any impact on this, but I do understand it adds to the appeal of using IPR in VFB.

Seems like biggest issue here is the refresh... I don't think it's that big of a deal, because the entire point of IPR is refreshing. I don't have nightlies yet, so I am not sure, but maybe V-Ray completely restarts IPR rendering when you resize window. That could be the problem. If you just move viewport around, feedback is instant, and I don't think there's much preventing from VFB resize doing the same, just modifying the camera in the scene, and keeping everything else in memory. In that case, refresh would still occur but would be pretty much instant.

I am just not sure that small specific issue of IPR being restarted during VFB resize is worth adding workflow problem of having to juggle different resolutions between IPR and production. Even if you do shuffle and resize windows around, you probably don't do it as often. And all that happens is that you wait for a few more seconds. What would happen in the other case that instead of just waiting a few seconds, one would have to open render settings and type in different numbers every time.

There's one more argument someone could bring up, that you've been rendering in IPR for a long time, and you have clean image, and then you accidentally resize VFB and restart the IPR, losing all data. But I don't see it being valid either. IPR at this moment is not nearly as stable when it comes updates, so any small click anywhere can accidentally trigger refresh. It should not be used as a means of rendering final image.

The reason people say IR in Corona is so good is mostly that it doesn't try to be final image rendering tool. It's built around providing a best interactive experience possible. If you try to combine both, you will get below mediocre interactive rendering experience as well as below mediocre final frame rendering experience.

[LudvikKoutny]

Hi Recon442.

Thanks for your point of view on this subject but i´m not agree with you sorry.

You are assuming you know better than me want i want and why and that´s not right. I don't care how you want to work, i definitely can see some pros on dynamic resolution and i will use it a lot for sure in my work but i also see some heavy cons, that's why i'm asking the ability to choose (the option can be hidden or turn off by default like many otters) i don't understand why you need to convince everyone to work the way you like it dosen´t have any sense on our industry.
I´m not new to 3D i start working on the industry 20 years ago and i use Vray for almost 10 i´m not claiming i know everything but believe me i know what i want on my job and why. I just don't understand why you are so mad. We are only asking for an option, you can still working the way you want even if i use Dynamic resolution 90% of the time i want to be able to disable it 10% of the time. Win win.


PD: Excuse my English

Best!.
A.

I do understand your point, don't get me wrong. It's just my general approach of having as few buttons as possible. I know everyone has different workflows, but if softwares always included switches to switch to everyone's favorite workflow, it would end up being worse than Krakatoa render settings UI. IMHO the good way of going about it is simply picking the most simple and superior workflow, and making that the default.

That being said, I do agree that in this case, switch would not be that big of a deal. It will just confuse a few people here and there.