Node Based Editor to link Cameras, Lights and Render Settings

[Morne]

Hi all

So if you think of state sets etc, they can be useful, although sometimes a bit tricky and difficult to remember what settings was used where.

What would be really nice I think, is a node based editor. All the vray cameras and lights will be listed here. When you want to render cam2 for example, you can node connect lights and instanced lights (as per vray light lister) to a camera. This will be much quicker than state sets I think as you will also have a visual representation of which set of lights will be on or off for whichever view. Same thing for render settings. You can save your render settings as a preset and the preset will be listed in the node editor also, and then just drag and connect whichever preset to whatever camera you want.

If you click on an item in the node editor, it can display the settings for that item on the right.

[vlado]

I'm really hoping Autodesk will do something in that regard as this is a feature that all renderers can benefit from. Not that we can't do it, but it would take resources from work on V-Ray itself.

Best regards,
Vlado

[theedge]

Sure the whole rendering paradigm in 3ds max would need a complete overhaul. Today everything is scattered in different tools and places : scene states, states sets, batch render,... Some solutions like RPmanager or Batch Camera Manager help a lot in that regard. But a node based system à la houdini render nodes would be so much better.

[Rens]

Still my favourite is the XSI/Softimage render pass setup, if you're interested in how it works LPM render pass manager is based on that. You define object groups and give them settings to override, then you just drag and drop objects in. Clean and easy to see what does what!

[Morbid Angel]

I think maya has one of the best ones i've seen. Its really easy to see and tell what's been done and how its handled.

[Dave_Wortley]

Yeah That'd be really nice to have :P

[vlado]

I like the way this is done in Maya too. I could never wrap my head around the Softimage implementation. I'm also not sure why Autodesk went so many different ways for this. As theedge mentioned there is batch render, state sets, scene states - and none of them quite does what users want it to.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morbid Angel]

Yeah I agree. Same with reference, we have xref object, xref scene, container, assembly....But none quite do the job 100%. What a good way to confuse the user.

What I like about maya's render layers is that channels change color (turn orange) when they are overwritten on that specific layer - its a great way to visually tell whats happening. You can override any attribute - object position or shader does not matter.

I think the new state sets does this but its not immediately visible to the user unless you have the ui open where you look down the massive tree of changes.