Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray load

[halgfx]

Hello there.
Is there a way to adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray load the geometry file? I've already disabled the automatic mesh exporting, but Vray always load the geometry and does the slow initialization process. Is there a way to make it keep the geometry in memory? I've tried using the RT engine but it's the same thing.
Thank you.

[halgfx]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

Hey guys, any info on this?

[Hugh]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

I do not know much about that, but as far as I remember, it has been always that way: The meshes are exported when you hit the button, and the materials and scene nodes are created+loaded when you hit "render". As for loading geometry, I think it is the implementation (exported scene, actual disk files) which makes vray load geometry each frame; I mean, in other programs (maya/max) there is no need for this (perhaps vray loads their geometry on the fly), but vray is unable to load blender's geometry, or any of its data at all. That's the reason for Andrey's exporter: vray loads its own geometry format (exported vrscene) and reads material, camera, scene and etc. data settings. This is accomplished by sending commands to vray executable, which will load vrscene, compile and apply materials.

Long story short: each time you hit render, materials are written to disk and are not editable, because they are being used by vray executable. You have to cancel current render, edit materials in blender and then hit render again. Actual geometry needs to be exported each time you change it (mesh edit, not object edit), or gets exported automatically if V+B is set to auto-export meshes.

(Sorry if it doesn't clear anything.)

[halgfx]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

Thank you for your reply. In fact nope, it doesn't clear anything actually but thank you anyway.
The problem is that Vray takes a lot of time to load the geometry (if it's complex), so maybe there's a way to keep the geometry in Vray's memory and make it only reload the materials and lights. This would save a lot of time for me. Maybe some way to keep the Vray process alive and only send it instructions to refresh the mat+lights and re-render, without having to reload all the geometry. It should only load the geometry when it is exported. Depending on the scene, the workflow is really slow.
Thanks.

[rws]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

Send big bribe to Andrey to get him finish the realtime.

[halgfx]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

Hahaha . Seriously, I'm a developer also and I'm gonna take a look on the real time stuff. I think the old realtime exporter does exactly that (keep the process running and sends only basic instruction on-the-fly) but i'm not sure. I've read some docs on the standard version and also the binary file help and it seems there's no way to keep the process running and refresh only the lights/materials.

[halgfx]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

It seems VrayRT does exactly that, you can send commands on the fly regarding materials, objects location, rotation and scale, lights properties, etc. the testing build (vrayblender) already have the code to do that, but I think it's not stable, don't know.
I'm going to try to make a reduced version and commit it as an optional parameter to interactively update the rt engine (in the rt rollout).

[andybot_cg]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

Thank you for your reply. In fact nope, it doesn't clear anything actually but thank you anyway.
The problem is that Vray takes a lot of time to load the geometry (if it's complex), so maybe there's a way to keep the geometry in Vray's memory and make it only reload the materials and lights. This would save a lot of time for me. Maybe some way to keep the Vray process alive and only send it instructions to refresh the mat+lights and re-render, without having to reload all the geometry. It should only load the geometry when it is exported. Depending on the scene, the workflow is really slow.
Thanks.

Am I missing something? Can't you just set your options to export the scene manually? (Under "exporter" - uncheck the option for "auto export meshes" When you do that, you get a button that shows up to allow you to export mesh any time.) Then your meshes are only exported only when you need to update, and not every time you hit render. You can adjust cameras, materials, with no need to re-export the mesh, the geometry is already there and vray can run right away.

[halgfx]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

Am I missing something? Can't you just set your options to export the scene manually? (Under "exporter" - uncheck the option for "auto export meshes" When you do that, you get a button that shows up to allow you to export mesh any time.) Then your meshes are only exported only when you need to update, and not every time you hit render. You can adjust cameras, materials, with no need to re-export the mesh, the geometry is already there and vray can run right away.

I'm doing that already, and nope, the geometry isn't "already there", it's in the disc, and Vray have to read and optimize that, what takes a lot of time depending on the complexity.

The only way around this problem is by using the interactive mode of Vray, that allows the Vray process to keep running and you just "feed" it with materials and stuff, so the geometry stays in vray memory.

I could do that myself, but that blender stuff is incredibly hard and not pythonic at all, so maybe it's going to take a lot of time. Also, it has to be exhaustively tested imho, so my main objective is to make an optional interactive mode that can be merged into stable and at first only allows basic stuff (like changing the lights and camera parameters).

[andybot_cg]

Re: Adjust lights and materials without having to wait Vray

I'm doing that already, and nope, the geometry isn't "already there", it's in the disc, and Vray have to read and optimize that, what takes a lot of time depending on the complexity.

Well, yes, vray still has to load it, but I don't think I've had a scene take longer than say 5-10 sec. to load, and I'm looking at stuff with >100MB file with some thousands of particle proxies. How long are you waiting? How long is "a lot of time"?
In any case, I'd love to see real-time working better, but it seems to me it only refreshes a few times before you have to restart it. I agree it would be nice to see it develop further.