Rendering Maya Fluids with VRay - Any tried and tested methods?

[sleepingbeagle]

Hey guys,

I'm working on a scene with some slow-moving Maya fluid fog and I have a huge light panel (Rect light) that's just offscreen, but close to the subject. I'm trying to get some haze to show up in the fog.

I added VRay attributes to the fluid and tried a test render using IR + LC for GI, but the render took over 20 minutes to render a small patch. The fluid and the light are in a separate render layer. VRay fluid attributes at default settings, Adaptive subdivision at 0 and 1, Fluid resolution is at 80.

I also tried a 3D texture on a VRayEnvFog node but I couldn't get it to look like a fog. The main reason of trying to render this fluid with VRay is to achieve the scatter effect, any alternatives or solutions to this problem?

Thanks!

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Well, basically, if you want good looking GI in fluids, you must wait a lot... Even with a simple light. Many subdivs will slow down normal scene, but with volumetrics, they will make it unrenderable. You can send the scene to the support if they can increase the rendering speed somehow.

[vlado]

Which V-Ray version are you using by the way? The 2.x builds do not include the Phoenix shaders, but with the 3.x builds you can get things working a lot faster.

Best regards,
Vlado

[sleepingbeagle]

Thanks Vlado. I'm currently using a student license of 2.4, but I'll see if I have permissions to upgrade to 3.0.

[sleepingbeagle]

Thanks Ivaylo, the subdivs for the lights are at a default setting of 8. I was also using a Dome light for the fill, disabling this made the render relatively much quicker, but still slow overall.
I will probably seek the support's help eventually, but I'm going to give 3.0 a shot first.