Min/Max settings for both VRayAerialPerspective and VRayEnvironmentFog height and distance

[Joelaff]

You mean his to use the empty volume grid for fog, or his to use it with the distance texture? I have yet to use it with the distance texture— that was a brainstorming guess at something to try.

Just to use the volume grid you add a volume grid and click cancel when asked to load a file. Then go to the rendering settings and set smoke to use the smoke channel rather than simple smoke. Then go to the curve and set the leftmost point Y (output) value to something like 0.01 experiment with different values to get the results you want ( it might be very small).

Be sure to also set the minimum visible opacity to a low value (lower is slower). 0.001 is likely e decent starting point. You want it as high as possible for render speed, but you may not see fine fog without keeping it low.

Use the grid settings to control where the fog is, and experiment with the cell size to determine how many cells you need. Fewer cells is faster, more cells is more accurate, but 1-3 million cells is usually pretty adequate, depending on the scene.

[Pixelcon]

You mean his to use the empty volume grid for fog, or his to use it with the distance texture? I have yet to use it with the distance texture— that was a brainstorming guess at something to try.

Just to use the volume grid you add a volume grid and click cancel when asked to load a file. Then go to the rendering settings and set smoke to use the smoke channel rather than simple smoke. Then go to the curve and set the leftmost point Y (output) value to something like 0.01 experiment with different values to get the results you want ( it might be very small).

Be sure to also set the minimum visible opacity to a low value (lower is slower). 0.001 is likely e decent starting point. You want it as high as possible for render speed, but you may not see fine fog without keeping it low.

Use the grid settings to control where the fog is, and experiment with the cell size to determine how many cells you need. Fewer cells is faster, more cells is more accurate, but 1-3 million cells is usually pretty adequate, depending on the scene.

Thanks! I'll have a go

[Joelaff]

With the minimum visible opacity I believe I was off by an order of magnitude. May need to go more like 0.0001 or possibly lower.

I have had some crashes using volume grid in IPR. I think the latest dailies may have fixed these. Just save often until you are sure. The crash would happen when stopping IPR.

You can set the mode to Ray traced and try a little phase function to get directional scattering through the volume. Not always required (and slower), but looks better in some cases.

[Pixelcon]

With the minimum visible opacity I believe I was off by an order of magnitude. May need to go more like 0.0001 or possibly lower.

I have had some crashes using volume grid in IPR. I think the latest dailies may have fixed these. Just save often until you are sure. The crash would happen when stopping IPR.

You can set the mode to Ray traced and try a little phase function to get directional scattering through the volume. Not always required (and slower), but looks better in some cases.

I think this tells me that this is way too complex for simple fog and why Aerial perspective was such a godsend when it was introduced back in 2016? Either way just a few simple controls would round it out....................................

[Joelaff]

If Aerial Perspective works for your needs then perhaps so. I always have trouble getting the looks I want with it. Also, the VolumeGrid is usually faster (everything is scene dependent).

[Pixelcon]

Bumping this because this thread is nearly a year old and I've been banging on about this for longer than that. Thank you of course for implementing the 'affect alpha' feature. This has helped immensely. But as it is the feature it's just not usable without a lot of messing around in photoshop to achieve the min/max effect that I'm asking for.

Pleeease please please please can this be implemented? There are a lot of users out there who don't use the forums and don't voice their wishes and a lot of them dont care about fancy file formats, or anything to do with cloud rendering or collaboration tools, path guiding, OSL, Volume grids, vrscenes, etc. etc. etc. We want the basic tools to work and be useful.

[Vizioen]

+1 from me as well, I refrain from using it most of the time as it is pretty much everywhere. Just a control from where it should start should suffice in my case.

[GregoryVFX]

Hi there,

Almost a year have passed since initial post.

Any work done towards getting at least a starting point for the Aerial Perspective, like an offset from the camera's pivot?
Aerial Perspective is still pretty much useless, applying tons of fog into the foreground elements, just because...

Came on guys; we need this feature a year ago, please....

[urbanite]

I would like to be wrong but I am not sure if we see those improvements before V7, for obvious reasons. Chaos ditched perpetual upgrades in Corona so I expect the same with 7.

[Vizioen]

I would like to be wrong but I am not sure if we see those improvements before V7, for obvious reasons. Chaos ditched perpetual upgrades in Corona so I expect the same with 7.

What I don't understand is that Chaos as well as other companies have Buy buttons on their website. I'm not buying anything really...I'm renting actually {shrug} Also not fan of the way things are evolving but at least customer support is a lot better than Autodesk's.

[GregoryVFX]

What I don't understand is that Chaos as well as other companies have Buy buttons on their website. I'm not buying anything really...I'm renting actually {shrug} Also not fan of the way things are evolving but at least customer support is a lot better than Autodesk's.

Autodesk's customer support is simply amazing, in my experience.
I had their whole support team the other day on long zoom calls, trying to figure out some showstopper problems with Max 2024 and after hours of brainstorming they delivered on the solution.
Now, unless their Max team is a special group of wonderful people, I would say they are like that with any of their products and with any customer, not just me cause I'm pretty...

[GregoryVFX]

On the topic here, a controllable starting point of the aerial perspective would turn this tool into bread and butter that could be used on anything, instead of the very few and sparse use cases that it can be utilized at the moment.
Unless its impossible to code that in, I can't see a reason why devs haven't got that in already for so long time.
The devil is in the details and it's the little things that make the huge impact.

[Pixelcon]

I even made a mockup! Doesn't this mean the work is pretty much done?

I propose 'affect utility elements' such as z-depth, multimattes, etc. etc. These elements, like the alpha, are usually needed UNaffected.
A falloff curve where X's range is defined by the min/max settings and Y defines visibility. So simple yet how powerful and flexible it could be...

[GregoryVFX]

Any devs here?
Can we get some traction on this one, please?
Thanks.

[Pixelcon]

I even made a mockup! Doesn't this mean the work is pretty much done?

I propose 'affect utility elements' such as z-depth, multimattes, etc. etc. These elements, like the alpha, are usually needed UNaffected.
A falloff curve where X's range is defined by the min/max settings and Y defines visibility. So simple yet how powerful and flexible it could be...

Should point out that I actually forgot the min/max settings in the mockup