GI/AA settings per camera

[tricky]

In multi-camera, complex scenes (architectural interiors for instance), it sometimes makes sense to have different GI/AA settings per camera. Could there be some sort of link between camera and vray settings?

Worth a debate on pros/cons maybe?

[joconnell]

Kind of a general thing - rpmanager or even scene states might be worth a look. Possibly Dave wortley's pass manager too?

[Pixelcon]

You could have working render presets for each camera. Even a script to save and load a preset pre-render for each camera could be something. You could even xref in everything into an empty scene and have your different presets managed that way. One preset per scene.



Aren't scene states and state sets what this is for? I'm so scared of using these 'features'...

[tricky]

Aren't scene states and state sets what this is for? I'm so scared of using these 'features'...

I share your fear. When scene set states (or whatever they are called) were first introduced several versions ago, we tried them and they caused all sorts of issues. I cannot recall what exactly, but it was so much that we stopped using them.

[Pixelcon]

I have serious trust issues after being stung by it just once...

I share your fear. When scene set states (or whatever they are called) were first introduced several versions ago, we tried them and they caused all sorts of issues. I cannot recall what exactly, but it was so much that we stopped using them.

[Dave_Wortley]

Possibly Dave wortley's pass manager too?

Shhh John... I can neither confirm nor deny these vicious rumours...

[alexyork]

Related to this somewhat - MentalRay has/had a unique AA per object feature in an unexposed shader. Very, very cool. Allows you to have lower/higher AA settings per object or even per material, I believe. I used to use this a lot. Vray is pretty intelligent when it comes to working out which objects and materials need greater or fewer samples but having a manual "override" as such was pretty cool in MR. You could, for example, have a scene set up where tree objects such as Forest etc. have lots of samples but everything else has much less, avoiding needless computation on unimportant objects with low contrast, for example.

[joconnell]

It's being worked on as far as I know? It was something requested quite a while ago so it's probably in the queue somewhere.

[Macker]

If you save your render presets, you can use max's batch render to load them relative to specific cameras, and even use scene states (not state sets).

[tricky]

We're on the verge of purchasing RPManager. I've considered it for a long time now, but never taken the leap. Hopefully it will help.

[vlado]

Probably the best thing to do... it's GI/AA today, but tomorrow you might need different resolution, different materials etc.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Dave_Wortley]

Richard, send me a PM with your email.

[pg1]

can't work without render pass manager these days.

[NicoC]

Probably the best thing to do... it's GI/AA today, but tomorrow you might need different resolution, different materials etc.

Best regards,
Vlado

Hello,

To be honest,different resolution per camera is probably the most obvious, and the most widely needed.

[joconnell]

This might be possible to do with a maxscript callback, let me have a bit of a play.