Moving from Arnold to V-Ray - Utility Nodes

[jonathan_musso]

I am exploring V-Ray as a replacement to Arnold. So far I have test basic displacement and sub surface scattering on one of my characters. While I have only done very basic tests, they look promising and much faster than Arnold. I am curious about default utility nodes in Maya and if I can use them the same way with V-Ray.

For example, when layering multiple displacement maps for cloth materials I will use the Plus Minus Average Node to essentially merge and blend them all together. Additionally, I will use Multiply Divide to control intensities of maps. Can I do something similar in V-Ray, as I see the displacement is slightly different to setup.

Thank you.

[oglu]

Those nodes should work.

[Morbid Angel]

You can use those nodes no problem. However vray also offers its own layered texture which does much of the same and more.

[jonathan_musso]

You can use those nodes no problem. However vray also offers its own layered texture which does much of the same and more.

Thank you! I will take a look at the layered texture node. It looks great. I just need to see about getting the displacement node in Hypershade as I've only utilized it through the attribute editor so far.

[Morbid Angel]

You actually don't need to use displacement node. Vray has a powerful vrayDisplacement node, which is a set to where you add your objects. It can both subdivide and displace objects. It is much better to use that node, rather then the legacy displacement node from hypershade. Once you have created it, you have to add user attributes to it, like displacement and subdivision and displacement control options. Then you can drive your displacement settings with this node. You can connect your displacement output to the displacement texture of that node.
O

[jonathan_musso]

You actually don't need to use displacement node. Vray has a powerful vrayDisplacement node, which is a set to where you add your objects. It can both subdivide and displace objects. It is much better to use that node, rather then the legacy displacement node from hypershade. Once you have created it, you have to add user attributes to it, like displacement and subdivision and displacement control options. Then you can drive your displacement settings with this node. You can connect your displacement output to the displacement texture of that node.
O

Thank you very much. I made a simple test on a sphere with everything you advised. I'm surprised how fast this renders, even with this early test. Next, I will recreate this on one of my real models using fabric textures. It appears that the VrayLayeredTex also removes the need for using a Multiply Divide node. I've attached a screenshot of how I set things up.

Some follow up questions. Is it possible to get the Vray Displacement node actually inside the Hypershade graph? Or do we essentially have to drag everything from the Hypershade and into the Attribute Editor? That's one concept I noticed with Ray that is different. Also, it looks like not all the attributes of the VrayMtl are available in the Hypershade? There are more settings exposed in the Attribute Editor, is this a bug or just how things are designed?

Lastly, how do snapshots work with the Vray Frame Buffer? I was reading the docs and it said the save the image, which I have attempted, but they don't appear in the History in the VFB.

Thank you again for your assistance!

[Morbid Angel]

Glad it worked.

vrayDisplacement node is a selection set, so you have to disable the filtering that is enabled in maya hypershade by default.


For the options, the built in material view is limited in maya, it does not display all settings for many nodes not just vray as far as I remember. You better off using real attributes editor instead.

You are on a mac so it might be different, but you have to enable vray vfb history in settings and set the path to where you want the images to be saved. Once you do that press here.

[jonathan_musso]

Glad it worked.

vrayDisplacement node is a selection set, so you have to disable the filtering that is enabled in maya hypershade by default.


For the options, the built in material view is limited in maya, it does not display all settings for many nodes not just vray as far as I remember. You better off using real attributes editor instead.

You are on a mac so it might be different, but you have to enable vray vfb history in settings and set the path to where you want the images to be saved. Once you do that press here.

Thank you! I got the history working. Will look into the selection set next. Just wanted to let you know that I tested displacement on cloth from one of my Arnold projects, and I am absolutely blown away. A quick test with displacement, a simple shader with sheen and an XGEN fuzz pass was blazing fast. The displacement lookdev alone at 2k x 2k was 1 minute. The whole shader I can render the full fabric mesh in minutes. This is a massive gain in time. I cannot express to you how much time I spent with Arnold even at the most primitive shader setups using displacement and sss.

I really look forward to using VRAY for my next character portrait.