Vray crashes a lot

[ruby_vandeursen]

Hi there,

First of all, we're pretty late when it comes to updating to Vray6. Other 3D companies had to update their models too (like Design connected and Maxtree) and it's still not always compatible. Most of our library is useless now as converting to the new materials is too work intensive. We are not satisfied with the way Chaos updated from 3.6 to Vray 5/6. Older projects can't be read 1:1 as materials aren't 1:1 compatible. It's desastrous. Now that we have made the updates and the latest versions (Cinema 2024 and Vray 6 update 2.2 (v6., 20.02) it crashes all the time. Especially when changing materials with the VFB open and active but also just when replacing a texture map. It's just not workable which is a big shame. Anyone else experience the same problems? Any suggestions?

[sirio76]

Hi Ruby, in my experience beside a few exceptions most of the builds released by Chaos are very reliable.
If you are experiencing severe instability then you may have some issue with the hardware, software, or personal workflow. If that’s the case then you should open a ticket with the support and they’ll help you to understand where the problem is.
Vray 3.6 is so old and different that trying to convert old assets should not even be an option in my opinion, you should consider Vray 6 like a brand new engine produced by a different developer.
Is also possible that some stability issues are caused by the use of old scenes/shaders, so my suggestion is to rebuild everything from scratch and learn the new workflow, life will be easier in the end and you’ll have the chance to learn new stuff and improve your knowledge.
On our YouTube channel we have many videos about Vray 5/6 and Chaos have many video as well, for any question I’ll be happy to help.

[wolfgang_himmelfarb]

You have to be kidding about 3.7. I used non chaos vray in cinema for years and there was no ipr, no nodes, and loads of strange behaviors. It was workable at the time but was not good and competition wasn't particularly fierce during that time, as far a third party engines for cinema. This was pre redshift. Also like sirio said, you might as well be complaining about how an old version of arnold isn't 1.1 with vray6 because the the new vray is from the ground up - I believe chaos started completely from scratch. I will agree with you that there are major issues, such that I have a hard time recommending it for environment and asset heavy scenes I go back and forth as to whether it's more of a maxon problem or the render engine. Nodes are a beautiful thing but for some reason I have consistent problems when I get to a point of having 100s of materials and lots of proxies. I can power through but the viewport and material rendering previews slow things to a crawl. It has gotten better but I often feel like im on a knifes edge.Here is what works for me; I have resorted to having material manager preview rendering disabled during IPR and this saves me from all lockups during IPR use. Sometimes, or maybe quite often, when I have a very developed scene, cinema will lockup during material manager preview rendering and loading materials to the viewport. In that case I turn off preview materials in the viewport options menu until they are loaded in the mat manager. Ultimately I think there is a big issue with with how the nodes interact with the viewport because I find standard mats to be much more stable, and this could very well me a maxon issue. I personally don't think they ever sorted nodes but I havent used arnold in a white so stress test whether it also has the same issues. If you remember 3.7 in comparison is very stripped down, no nodes, old vfb etc. We're just dealing with a more complex set of interactions now.

[ruby_vandeursen]

I think you're right Sirio, One should consider VRay 6 as a brand new renderengine. That's exactly my point. Everything we bought in the past is now pretty much useless and has to be built from scratch. That's time consuming and a waist of money. Besided that we have to invest time to create a new workflow. My complaint is that when updates are being released it would be very usefull to keep the same workflow whatever the software. Thanks for the tips Wolfgang, I'll go ahead and try them!

One more question: Why isn't there a PSD output in the VFB?

[ruby_vandeursen]

Hi Wolfgang,

I'm not sure what you mean with: "I have resorted to having material manager preview rendering disabled during IPR and this saves me from all lockups during IPR use." Could you explain how to do this?

[sirio76]

Hi Wolfgang,

I'm not sure what you mean with: "I have resorted to having material manager preview rendering disabled during IPR and this saves me from all lockups during IPR use." Could you explain how to do this?

If for whatever reason you notice slowdown related to material updates, you can disable the preview form C4D preferences>renderer>Vray>materials

[sirio76]

Why isn't there a PSD output in the VFB?

You can save in .vrimg, instal the free ProEXR plugin and read the format natively in PS, including all the layer. This not only give you the best possible output in PS, it also gives you the chance to reload the .vrimg and perform all sort of tuning from the VFB.
Since you need to adapt to a new workflow, I strongly recommend to perform most of the post production from the VFB, by using cryptomatte and light mix you have a lot more power compared to PS. As said just look some video on Youtube to discover all the possibility that VFB offers to you.

[ruby_vandeursen]

Okay, so I installed Cinema and Vray fresh from start to make sure the setup is correct as it seemed to be wrong (something what looked like a color management issue). I have installed Cinema as administrator. Now when I open a project it takes ages to load. In the preferences tab I have added the folders that refer to my textures. When looking at the Mark missing textures all textures refer to C:\Users and are not found. I think this makes the loading of the project slow. Does anyone know how to fix this? I have a textures folder Y:

[sirio76]

If C4D doesn't find the textures it will go in a loop, try to disable material previews from the preference and check if this speedup the opening

[ruby_vandeursen]

Yes, that works. But I'm trying to achieve that theSuggested Path is Y: instead of C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop. I used to merge projects and the texture path would refer to the Y: Now it doesn't anymore? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I removed the Cinema 2024 map in the preferences folder before reinstalling? I don't know...

Got this fixed in the meantime with the project asset inspector. Great.

[ruby_vandeursen]

Okay, so here's my problem. I followed all the steps you suggest in your turorial. Camera is set to 100-16-100, higlight burn 0, filmic tonemap hable and LUT file from Kim Amland set to sRGB. The image is way too dark, shadows too hard. I thought it might be a color management thing, that's why I reinstalled everything. Results are exactly the same but far from expetations. What on earth am I missing as I don't seem to get it started?

[sirio76]

The image looks ok to me, I mean it's a good starting point. If you want less contrast you can lower the blending value of the LUT or the filmic tone mapping, or you can try my new default tone mapping that is less aggressive, here is the file:

3DRnB default.zip

For the last couple years I use this base setup, you can check a few example here, all made starting with the same tone mapping with only minor adjustments (media tab): https://forums.chaos.com/member/213686-sirio76/media
Of course post production is a very personal thing so it doesn't mean that it will fit your needs

[ruby_vandeursen]

Thanks for that Sirio, helpfull as always! I will try a few things here and there, it's getting there!