Announcement

**chris_phillips** · 28-08-2021, 11:09 AM

I should also mention I was using latest build of Cinema r21.

**Muhammed_Hamed** · 30-08-2021, 10:24 AM

First, second and fifth are top priority in my view..
First one is "Debug Shading isolate select" , available in Vray Maya/Max/Houdini, Second is "test resolution" which is also available in Vray Maya/Max/Houdini

And I agree on fifth, about the layered texture.. This needs to be improved similar to the other Vray plugins

I will add a request for "real zoom" feature similar to Vray for 3Ds max, similar to first and second it will make the workflow much easier

**shaio** · 30-08-2021, 10:50 AM

Hi chris_phillips ,

Thank you for the detailed feedback, and apologies for the late reply. I'll try to address your points as much as I can.

1.) Solo texture to view in the VFB to view how a texture is mapping onto geometry. Use this feature all the time in all of the other render engines I use and it’s absolutely imperative to have asap.

If you're talking about the solo mode in the Node materials then yes it is in our to-do list of the improvements that we have for the V-Ray Node materials.

2.) VFB render size - The ability that other dcc’s have to simply change the resolution only for lookdev in the vfb to a percentage of c4d’s render setting’s set resolution.

This is also in our to do list but unfortunately not with high priority. We're aware of how useful those tools inside the VFB are, but we need to catch up with some more important features for now. I hope it's understandable.

3.) vrayRamp node in shader graph. What more can I say here! Need those gradients! Additionally to this one - I use ramps to grade textures. It seems with the vrayRamp node in the traditional stacked materials available in c4d doesn’t operate this way. I love that you can slot textures in separate knots! But is there also a ramp node in Vray that allows to simply grade a texture through a ramp?

The reason why we didn't include the VRayRamp node is because we're having some technical issues and we're working with Maxon to resolve them. We know how important the Ramp node is so when we released V-Ray with support for the Node editor I included a note about it in this post.

4.) Multisubtex in shader graph is a must as well. Additionally to this - is any nodes we can get to have better access to mograph attributes / color / etc.

We're currently working on some improvements for the MultiSubTex, and we've decided to not include it the nodes until it is fully ready. If everything goes to plan, it should be ready for the next big update.
As we improve the Node editor support, we will gradually be adding nodes that support Mograph attributes. This will also add support for the Mograph shaders in the Classic Material editor as well. I would be happy if you can share a list of important for you Mograph related shading nodes, so we can prioritize them accordingly.

5.) The vrayLayered node is a little frustrating in that every time you add a new layer it makes that new layer the bottom most layer. I read that this is how it’s intended in the help manual. I can’t help but find that so unintuitive. Usually when you’re building layers of textures or whatever, you start from the base color then add on top of that. This requires me to make a guess at the start of how many layers i’ll need… so I’ll create like 8 layers just so I can build on top of my base layer just to avoid having to re-drag connections to the appropriate ports each time i add a new layer.

Yes, it is a little unintuitive, and we're aware of since we've done it the right way for the classic VRayLayerd shader. Like in the classic VRayLayered shader, we wanted to have more options and control for the layers on the node based one as well, and we had to write our own custom UI for that purpose. This of course comes with its limitations and technical issues since it isn't natively coming from Cinema 4D node, therefore some limitations prevented us from doing the sorting correctly. It is in our to-do list for improvement for future releases.

6.) Shader graph for vrayMaterial:
- new SSS mode: doesn’t change the parameters to “SSS color” or “Scatter Radius” or “Depth (cm)” - it retains the same parameters as the Translucency options. I’m not sure if it’s simply just the names that aren’t updated but the ports are working properly? Or if the ports are actually incorrect. I was having inconsistencies I THINK between using a Classic Material with SSS and a new node graph with SSS with the same exact properties. (not 100% sure if i was matching my values exactly)

The ports are working correctly according to my tests. It's just the labels that are not updated. Thank you for pointing this out. I'll add it to our bug tracking system.

6.) Float arithmetic node can’t be fed into a maxon noise’s scale parameter in the shader graph. Here I was trying to take a value and link it to 4 different maxon noises, but have 3 of them multiplied by a different number for variation and link up their scales to stay proportional.

We will have to look in to this one. I'll try to recreate the same setup here on my end based on your description, but it will be best if you can share a scene, so we can take a look at and fix it if needed.

Ive seen others mention how slow c4d can load with the number of vray materials in a scene. I can say I’ve noticed a slight slow down as well albeit i’ve been working with a very simple scene.

Most of the slow load times that people are mentioning here on the forums are related to the classic materials, and we've done some of our first fixes in that regard. The fix doesn't affect the node materials, mainly because they're completely different implementations, but there is space for improvement there as well. With that being said, I'm not sure what V-Ray build you're using, but it will be best if you use the latest stable build from our nightly builds site to ensure you have the latest improvements for the materials.

8.) last thing - i know it’s coming just wanna simply say i can’t wait for the command to update all the lights into the scene from the adjustments made in the vfb lightmix. pretty rad feature!

Yes, this is a pretty requested one, and it is in our to-do list for the near future. We've already increased it's priority.

Let me know if you find this information useful. I'll be more than happy to answer if you have more questions or requests.

**chris_phillips** · 30-08-2021, 08:43 PM

Ivan — thanks so much for taking the time to read everything I wrote and responding to each. Means a lot!

Your responses for items 1-3 all make sense!

4.)

I would be happy if you can share a list of important for you Mograph related shading nodes, so we can prioritize them accordingly.

Off-hand (cause im out of town) - Being able to access color data / indices / etc. Honestly… I would look to redshift’s ability to tap into mograph with their attribute nodes. https://docs.redshift3d.com/display/...oduct=cinema4d

5.) For the way you described the vrayLayered shader - I think for both the classic material and the node graph it’s unintuitive. It’s definitely less hassle in classic because you can move the textures up or down easily. But it would make more sense if each new layer you created would go on top of the previous layer instead of underneath it.

6.) Good to know about the SSS ports being just mis-labled in the shader graph.

7.) I’ll try to submit a scene when im back home to test out the arithmetic node. If ya don’t want to wait however - Simply create a node graph with a noise. Then create a value node piped into an arithmetic node (or just create an arithmetic node). try piping the arithmetic node into the Noise’s scale parameter - it won’t accept it.

8.) I’ll definitely try out the latest nightly build when im back in town.

**chris_phillips** · 07-09-2022, 02:54 PM

I wanted to resurface this with some new thoughts I've had while playing with the vray 6 beta! It's a lot to unpack Im so sorry for the huge list. But it's just notes and thoughts I've had this past couple weeks and wanted to share with you.

First off - Some must haves!

1.) Solo texture to view in the VFB to view how a texture is mapping onto geometry. Use this feature all the time in all of the other render engines I use and it’s absolutely imperative to have asap.

2.) VFB render size - The ability that other dcc’s have to simply change the resolution only for lookdev in the vfb to a percentage of c4d’s render setting’s set resolution.

3.) Any nodes we can get to have better access to mograph attributes / color / etc. Maybe my most important feature request. Already been discussed in other posts I know - but simply put the ability to pull in mograph user data.
https://help.maxon.net/c4d/s26/en-us...CommonUserData

4.) It would be great to have an option in the VFB to ignore the Cinema4d Render settings frame sequence. If I have an animation, I have to have a separate render setting set to "Current Frame" and turn off "Save". Reason being is the "Render" button in the vfb will start rendering starting at the first frame. It's a little clunky and cumbersome and can lead to pitfalls of forgetting to update your final animation sequence to the adjustments you made on your still frame's render settings. (maybe this exists somewhere and i missed it.)

5.) Float arithmetic node can’t be fed into a maxon noise’s scale parameter in the shader graph. Here I was trying to take a value node and link it to 2 different maxon noises, but have 1 of them multiplied by a different number for variation and link up their scales to stay proportional. Here's an image this time to simply illustrate. It's giving me an error when I want to simply just add to the global scale.

These suggestions above I just copy pasted from before! Still think they're pretty important!

6.) Vray Particles -- Probably on your list but be great to expand on V-Ray Particles. I wish I could make primitive spheres, cubes, etc. (Maybe you can already i just don't understand how other than making clear bubbles... pure diffuse would be nice too!) Furthermore - being able to add a custom object/geometryt to generate would be amazing too. I'm unsure if this would be best done wtih the Vray Particles object - but perhaps it is. Vray Particles could also be nice to be able to receive a Matrix object as a particle source. You can currently circumvent this by making it a part of TP group and adding the TP group to the V-Ray Particles - but it's pretty cumbersome and relies on cinema refreshing. I'm also generally unsure how to use Particle Sampler shader - no documentation.

7.) Extra Tex is unable to parse out a series of nodes connected together. Hard to explain without a visual - but view below. Here I'm using a Sampler Info node, then grabbing the y channel, then placing it through a ramp to use as a mask. If I wanted to use this as a pass in nuke I wouldn't be able to other than by rebuilding this to match all of my values exactly through a stacked layers approach. This is probably just a limitation with c4d right now. But maybe a way around this is done through the node graph itself creating a "extra tex node" to pipe this through? Again - I hate to call on other render engines - but arnold / redshift come to mind. Their solve is by having an aov node in the shader graph that you would name and designate there by simply piping that portion of the node graph into the aov node.

8.) Render Elements are not tied to specific render settings. In the example below, Render setting "1" and "2" will always have these render elements. "2" can't have a separate set of render elements enabled. This can't even be solved through Takes system to override certain Render Elements on or off per Take. It would be great if the Render Elements were associated uniquely with one render setting.

9.) Right click and selecting Help to get to documentation is amazing. It only works on stacked materials however and not node materials.

10.) A green check mark UI in the Object Manager to turn on and off V-Ray fur.

The following aren't as important - but are simply thoughts I've had.

11.) a Vray Bake shader node could be helpful - only because i was trying out vray vantage and I couldn't use a maxon noise with a node graph material.

12.) Do the nodes grouped under "Utility" do anything special outside of "wire rerouter? and Group/Group with ports?

13.) On that note - And I admit this is a TOTAL long shot... any of the nodes found in standard render's node graph would be amazing to add/support. Especially under Material Generator (below). It's a treasure trove of some really nice procedurals. Im sure Vray already has a bunch of their own that haven't been implemented yet. - again... a long shot ask here.

I think I've run out of gas! So sorry again for the long winded message!

I should end saying that vray6 has been amazing to use this past week or so. Enmesh is maybe the most fun I've had in years. So impressive!

**shaio** · 08-09-2022, 02:02 AM

Hey chris_phillips ,
thank you for you feedback it's much appretiated. I'll read the post and will answer to your suggestions as soon as possible. I can already tell you that 1,2,3 and 4 are in our to-do list. We will prioritise them for sure.

**chris_phillips** · 08-09-2022, 07:12 AM

Awesome and look forward to it! And again I know it's a lot so take your time. It's borderline abuse of a forum haha. I'm unsure if it's better or worse that everything I wrote is in one post or if they should have been multiple posts to better track on your end. I just didn't want to create 10+ posts for each item.

But I have another request!

14) A reference node would be nice - Essentially a node that can pull in another shader graph or even simply a simple color, maxon noise, ramp etc. to be referenced across multiple materials. So when you update the original shader i.e. a color swatch - it would update to the rest of the materials that referenced that shader via a reference node.

**chris_phillips** · 15-09-2022, 05:02 PM

Sorry to press on a response to this - just didn't want this one to get forgotten. I know it's a lot to read through and respond to. So apologies if this comes off impatient - but promise that's not the case!

Thanks!

**shaio** · 28-09-2022, 02:36 PM

Hey chris_phillips,
I'm back on the forum again, thanks for the kind reminder. Of course, we won't get your message as impatience, in fact I'm happy to see that you're engaging with all of this and helping us shape V-Ray with such valuable suggestions. And before I continue answering to your post I want to let you know that we've released V-Ray 6 today and I'm going to mention it a few times and all my answers are applicable to V-Ray 6 official version.

1.) Solo texture to view in the VFB to view how a texture is mapping onto geometry. Use this feature all the time in all of the other render engines I use and it’s absolutely imperative to have asap.

This is in our to-do list from quite some time, and it will be in our priority list for hotfixes after the release of V-Ray 6.

2.) VFB render size - The ability that other dcc’s have to simply change the resolution only for lookdev in the vfb to a percentage of c4d’s render setting’s set resolution.

With V-Ray 6 we added some of the functionality that the other V-Ray integrations have inside the VFB like the ability to select objects, materials and the focus point directly from the VFB by using the right mouse button menu in interactive rendering. So adding the percentage is also in the to-do and will be prioritized.

3.) Any nodes we can get to have better access to mograph attributes / color / etc. Maybe my most important feature request. Already been discussed in other posts I know - but simply put the ability to pull in mograph user data.

Custom User Data attributes are also in our to-do list for implementing after the release of V-Ray 6. We're going to need this for V-Ray particles as well.

6.) Vray Particles -- Probably on your list but be great to expand on V-Ray Particles. I wish I could make primitive spheres, cubes, etc. (Maybe you can already i just don't understand how other than making clear bubbles... pure diffuse would be nice too!) Furthermore - being able to add a custom object/geometryt to generate would be amazing too. I'm unsure if this would be best done wtih the Vray Particles object - but perhaps it is. Vray Particles could also be nice to be able to receive a Matrix object as a particle source. You can currently circumvent this by making it a part of TP group and adding the TP group to the V-Ray Particles - but it's pretty cumbersome and relies on cinema refreshing. I'm also generally unsure how to use Particle Sampler shader - no documentation.

We've added some more improvements to the V-Ray Particles in the official release of V-Ray 6 and now V-Ray can render particles by using the PhoenixFD particles and V-Ray Particles, both with their pros and cons. We still need to add particle instancing to be able to scatter objects with particles, and the documentation is still something we're working on.

4.) It would be great to have an option in the VFB to ignore the Cinema4d Render settings frame sequence. If I have an animation, I have to have a separate render setting set to "Current Frame" and turn off "Save". Reason being is the "Render" button in the vfb will start rendering starting at the first frame. It's a little clunky and cumbersome and can lead to pitfalls of forgetting to update your final animation sequence to the adjustments you made on your still frame's render settings. (maybe this exists somewhere and i missed it.)

I'll add this to our feature requests list. Currently, as a workaround, you can use Interactive rendering that will give you the rendering for just the current frame while keeping the Production rendering for animations. We've added support for having Light Cache in interactive rendering (it has to be enabled in the Interactive tab in Render Settings) and you will get the exact same result as in production. I hope this works for you for now.

5.) Float arithmetic node can’t be fed into a maxon noise’s scale parameter in the shader graph. Here I was trying to take a value node and link it to 2 different maxon noises, but have 1 of them multiplied by a different number for variation and link up their scales to stay proportional. Here's an image, this time to simply illustrate. It's giving me an error when I want to simply just add to the global scale.

I've forwarded this to our dev team and will look in to it. In the latest V-Ray 6 version, the node was renamed from Float to Float to Color to make more sense of what it does. Here is a screenshot of how it looks now. I'll keep you updated about this one.

7.) Extra Tex is unable to parse out a series of nodes connected together. Hard to explain without a visual - but view below. Here I'm using a Sampler Info node, then grabbing the y channel, then placing it through a ramp to use as a mask. If I wanted to use this as a pass in nuke I wouldn't be able to other than by rebuilding this to match all of my values exactly through a stacked layers approach. This is probably just a limitation with c4d right now. But maybe a way around this is done through the node graph itself creating a "extra tex node" to pipe this through? Again - I hate to call on other render engines - but arnold / redshift come to mind. Their solve is by having an aov node in the shader graph that you would name and designate there by simply piping that portion of the node graph into the aov node.

I've noted that as well. We definitely need a way to connect node based textures to the Render Elements (currently we don't do this for lights and displacement as well)

8.) Render Elements are not tied to specific render settings. In the example below, Render setting "1" and "2" will always have these render elements. "2" can't have a separate set of render elements enabled. This can't even be solved through Takes system to override certain Render Elements on or off per Take. It would be great if the Render Elements were associated uniquely with one render setting.

Added to the feature requests as well. Thank you!

9.) Right click and selecting Help to get to documentation is amazing. It only works on stacked materials however, and not node materials.

We have this in the to-do list from quite some time, we just need to prioritize it.

10.) A green check mark UI in the Object Manager to turn on and off V-Ray fur.

There was a technical reason why there isn't a checkmark for the V-Ray fur. I'll check this with the devs and will get back to you.

12.) Do the nodes grouped under "Utility" do anything special outside of "wire rerouter? and Group/Group with ports?

No, they don't do anything. Cinema 4D decides what to be shown in the current node space (that being V-Ray in your case), we're not able to hide them as well.

13.) On that note - And I admit this is a TOTAL long shot... any of the nodes found in standard render's node graph would be amazing to add/support. Especially under Material Generator (below). It's a treasure trove of some really nice procedurals. Im sure Vray already has a bunch of their own that haven't been implemented yet. - again... a long shot ask here.

Yes, It's quite a long shot. I do like them as well, but in order to support them, we need to write a similar V-Ray alternative for each node even then, we cannot guarantee that they will render the same as the Maxon ones. The best way to do this is to have their source code from Maxon and add support for rendering them in V-ray. We can make them render only with V-Ray in Cinema 4D, but then they won't work with V-Ray GPU, Chaos Cloud, Vantage, Distributed Rendering and V-Ray Standalone and any interoperability with the other V-Ray integrations will be broken.

14) A reference node would be nice - Essentially a node that can pull in another shader graph or even simply a simple color, maxon noise, ramp etc. to be referenced across multiple materials. So when you update the original shader i.e. a color swatch - it would update to the rest of the materials that referenced that shader via a reference node.

We have this one in our list for quite some time, I'll talk to the devs and see if we can do something about this since the last time we tried to do something about this we were very technically limited and had to look for workarounds that if we use would cause more issues than solve the problem.

Thank you for the feedback, it's much appreciated, and I'll make sure that we get some of the suggestions prioritized. Let me know if you have more questions or anything else I can assist you with.

**chris_phillips** · 29-09-2022, 02:42 PM

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to all of these! Very appreciated. My only quick thought I can say in response is for item 13 (supporting maxon's procedural nodes) -- If it's a cascading effort that isn't supported by vantage / gpu etc - then I would already say not worth the effort! Especially if it doesn't work on Gpu.

Most c4d artists (it seems) have adopted GPU rendering - so the more effort put there to get to feature parity with CPU and making it blazing fast is probably the best strategy.

Although I put myself in that category of GPU user... it has been nice rendering CPU and not worrying about a graphics driver haha.

**shaio** · 30-09-2022, 03:26 AM

If it's a cascading effort that isn't supported by vantage / gpu etc - then I would already say not worth the effort! Especially if it doesn't work on Gpu.

Yes unfortunately, that is exactly the case.

Most c4d artists (it seems) have adopted GPU rendering - so the more effort put there to get to feature parity with CPU and making it blazing fast is probably the best strategy.

True, our efforts are focused on V-Ray GPU as well.
Here is some more information on some of your questions (the quotes include my previous answers as well)

10.) A green check mark UI in the Object Manager to turn on and off V-Ray fur.
There was a technical reason why there isn't a checkmark for the V-Ray fur. I'll check this with the devs and will get back to you.

I talked with the devs, and one of the main issues we have is that if we have a checkmark and of you add V-Ray fur in a generator object (like cloner) we would export another copy of V-Ray fur and will take additional memory alongside having another copy in the rendering to deal wiht. Making the V-Ray fur object editable (with the C key) also causes some troubles and for now the easiest solution is to not have a checkmark until we find a good way of fixing it, since it's not as trivial as it sounds.

5.) Float arithmetic node can’t be fed into a maxon noise’s scale parameter in the shader graph. Here I was trying to take a value node and link it to 2 different maxon noises, but have 1 of them multiplied by a different number for variation and link up their scales to stay proportional. Here's an image, this time to simply illustrate. It's giving me an error when I want to simply just add to the global scale.
I've forwarded this to our dev team and will look in to it. In the latest V-Ray 6 version, the node was renamed from Float to Float to Color to make more sense of what it does. Here is a screenshot of how it looks now. I'll keep you updated about this one.

Apparently we can't use nodes that use a node with type "Value" (like in your Float node) which is a constant in another node that ends up being a V-Ray plugin (this is the easiest way to describe it). I did check and it seems that the Cinema 4D Node material somehow handles it and we will look into the API a bit more in-depth to see if we can somehow make it work.

8.) Render Elements are not tied to specific render settings. In the example below, Render setting "1" and "2" will always have these render elements. "2" can't have a separate set of render elements enabled. This can't even be solved through Takes system to override certain Render Elements on or off per Take. It would be great if the Render Elements were associated uniquely with one render setting.
Added to the feature requests as well. Thank you!

Apparently the devs thought about this when we were implementing the render elements, but there were some technical difficulties involved that prevented us from integrating it. It will be in our to-do list until we find a good solution to do it. We're also planning on adding presets in the Render Elements manager, so that could be a somewhat temporary solution if we haven't done it until then.

**chris_phillips** · 11-10-2022, 09:22 AM

I'm finally back. I would say a green check mark isn't necessary for vrayfur really as long as it's not calculating any fur when it is hidden - which i think is how it is operating now. It merely a request for continuity of c4d objects like this - but it's a small thing not worthy to focus on.

Thanks again for all of these responses. Very appreciated.

**chris_phillips** · 20-04-2024, 07:18 PM

It has been a while since I've used Vray, but I forsee possibly using this in the near future and was able to get a 30 day trial and boy can I just say it's nice to see nearly ALL of these issues / wishlist items have been addressed! AMAZING JOB! I'm pretty psyched to get back into this!

I was curious however if you ever were able to address this one:

7.) Extra Tex is unable to parse out a series of nodes connected together. Hard to explain without a visual - but view below. Here I'm using a Sampler Info node, then grabbing the y channel, then placing it through a ramp to use as a mask. If I wanted to use this as a pass in nuke I wouldn't be able to other than by rebuilding this to match all of my values exactly through a stacked layers approach. This is probably just a limitation with c4d right now. But maybe a way around this is done through the node graph itself creating a "extra tex node" to pipe this through? Again - I hate to call on other render engines - but arnold / redshift come to mind. Their solve is by having an aov node in the shader graph that you would name and designate there by simply piping that portion of the node graph into the aov node.

Thanks!!

**chris_phillips** · 21-04-2024, 11:04 AM

I saw you can convert a nodal material to a classic material to then copy paste the stacked shaders into the extra tex to make this work. However this is a pretty unusual workaround. Hopefully a more streamlined and proper way of doing this exists I am missing.

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