Add setting in Global Switches

[Morne]

...to globally switch off Dispersion.

Don't know if there is already a setting like that or not
Removed it from all materials in all xrefs in a project and the render went down from 17 HOURS to 11 minutes!

So instead of using Colins VMC to remove it in each max file, it would be easier to just switch it off in global settings when submitting the render.

Yes it looks nice with it ON, but 17 hours vs 11 minutes is huge

[tashko.zashev]

This is a really big difference in render time. How many refractive objects you have in the scene?
However, I'm going to log this request in our system.

[Morne]

That specific scene had 14 XREFs with a gazzillion lights, thousands of objects and hundreds of materials

[stefan_b]

Hi Morne, at this stage we are not going to add such control to the global switches. Dispersion is off by default and its existence depends on each specific material.

[Morne]

Hi Morne, at this stage we are not going to add such control to the global switches. Dispersion is off by default and its existence depends on each specific material.

Just to be clear, we're talking about the same thing right? I'm talking about the Abbe number in the VRayMtl. Yes, creating a NEW VRayMtl, has this setting off. But, importing assets from various sources, deadlines etc and this setting having the ability to be the difference between a 17 hour render and a 11 minutes render makes me question this.

Makes perfect sense to me to have a global setting in the render settings to use the setting in the VRayMtl or to ignore it, just like there is for override depth, reflective/refractive/ glossy effects, maps etc
I urge you to re-consider.

[gregvfx]

plus one on any more control on override! when debugging scenes with zillion of things coming from different artists who still work vey differently despite being a dictator it could save the day before delivery...

[Morne]

plus one on any more control on override! when debugging scenes with zillion of things coming from different artists who still work vey differently despite being a dictator it could save the day before delivery...

+1 what Greg said

[LudvikKoutny]

It's super easy to have scripts to do this. I don't know Maxscript but even I can write: for mats in (getclassinstances VrayMTL) do mats.refraction_dispersion_on = off

If there was supposed to be global checkbox for every material setting that can affect rendering performance, render settings window itself would grow to be twice as large.

I don't know many V-Ray asset libraries that come with dispersion enabled by default. So it's most likely your error in material setup in the first place. Render settings should not accomodate for obscure user errors, actually, they should be as minimalistic as possible. Mass material management should be task for Autodesk to supplement, not Chaosgroup.

[Morne]

It's super easy to have scripts to do this. I don't know Maxscript but even I can write: for mats in (getclassinstances VrayMTL) do mats.refraction_dispersion_on = off

If there was supposed to be global checkbox for every material setting that can affect rendering performance, render settings window itself would grow to be twice as large.

I don't know many V-Ray asset libraries that come with dispersion enabled by default. So it's most likely your error in material setup in the first place. Render settings should not accomodate for obscure user errors, actually, they should be as minimalistic as possible. Mass material management should be task for Autodesk to supplement, not Chaosgroup.

Err no. This will permanently switch on off the setting for ALL materials. What if you're doing tests and want to ignore it globally? Easy enough. But what about switching it back on for relevant materials only and not the entire scene?

Again, this can probably be done with "Selected Objects" with Olly's VMC script, but a global button is way easier in my opinion

Not all 3rd party files come from a library. It can mean there's a bunch of other people involved internally or externally and troubleshooting in these cases becomes an issue very quickly

[Oleg_Budeanu]

Err no. This will permanently switch on off the setting for ALL materials. What if you're doing tests and want to ignore it globally? Easy enough. But what about switching it back on for relevant materials only and not the entire scene?

Again, this can probably be done with "Selected Objects" with Olly's VMC script, but a global button is way easier in my opinion

Not all 3rd party files come from a library. It can mean there's a bunch of other people involved internally or externally and troubleshooting in these cases becomes an issue very quickly

Completely agree, would be cool to have such thingy.

[vlado]

Dispersion was originally supposed to be used just on some "hero" objects like jewels etc. It was never intended to be on for everything

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morne]

Dispersion was originally supposed to be used just on some "hero" objects like jewels etc. It was never intended to be on for everything

Best regards,
Vlado

Makes perfect sense to you and me, and yet users will be users. There's also some material conversion scripts out there that turns this ON for all materials by default. When you have a 2GB max file with 14 XREFS and millions of objects and 300 materials, and everything is named object1 object2 and material1 and fdjfkjfh and material#4652, then you can understand where a global switch can be useful

[gregvfx]

My point exactly. Actually this particular problem isn't happening often (thousands of shaded objects this way) but that's the thing with unexpected problems: they are unexpected.
Global switches allow for quickly figure what feature is taking forever to render.
But I wouldn't insist on that, there are a lot more important things to bring to VRay...

[Oleg_Budeanu]

Dispersion was originally supposed to be used just on some "hero" objects like jewels etc. It was never intended to be on for everything

Best regards,
Vlado

You will be surprised...

[Sbrusse]

What about the over ride color diffuse mtl Vlado,

Still eagerly waiting for this as it's the most efficient way to have a over ride mtl that keep all the bump/displace/reflect/refract details.

Thanks
Stan