Vray 6 has again Irradiance map?

[Witt3D]

Hi, we moved on to Vray 5 some months ago, and we are really struggeling with animation since we do not longer have Irradiance map solver. Is it again in Vray 6?

Really doesnt understand new Chaos policy. We pay same price for different pieces of software and, in all of the cases, Maya users get less than 3dsmax. Im talking about Irradiance map that again 3Ds max have, im talking about Vray scatter system in Vray 6 that 3dsmax user have,... .
They pay exactly the same price but they get much more than us.

Right now, we are trying to render an animation for a client and we have realice that is impossible for us to keep with this service with vray 5, where we did it before with vray 3.6
Rendering with brute force and light cache, we do have no other option, takes render frames too long, and now we cannot pay the renderfarm services with the same price we would do in the past. Its really incredible.

We really though, new version where here to improve last ones, but i really dont understan again Chaos policy.
Which option do VRay 5 Maya users (or Vray 6 Maya users if they dont have irradiance map) with animations right now?

[stezza]

Quite an interesting viewpoint. I for one am glad the irradiance map workflow has gone, always had issues with distributed rendering. It's now so simple to render animations even on default settings will give a good enough result. (in most cases).
Scatter will be coming to Maya users, just need to wait a little.

[sirio76]

I agree with stezza about the Irradiance Map, in my experience BR coupled with Intel denoiser is as fast or even faster than IM, especially considering that it needs no time for the setup.

[vlado]

Technically the irradiance map code is still there and if you load an old scene using the irradiance map, the option will appear; you can also set it with a script. But like others suggested, using brute force plus denoising might do the job as well and is simpler to set up.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Witt3D]

Wow, not here. Have to disagree with both. For animation IM worked like a charm!!!

And yes, renders are much better and have higher quality with brute force rather than IM, no doubt about it. But trying to achieve decent results with brute force and denoiser make frames render too long here.
IM is about 3x times faster than brute force in most of the cases.

I have to render 4.000 frames on a renderfarm and i will spend with vray 5.2 and brute force around 1.800 euros just to render this frames. How much do i have to ask for an animation if 1.800 euros are just to click render on a renderfarm? It´s not assumable.
3 times cheaper with IM would be around 600 euros, that is what we were used to pay to render this frames on a renderfarm with vray 3.6 .

Again is not a matter about times for setup, which method is faster to configure it out, which ones gives as default better results, is a matter about rendertimes, specially on animations. We can asume that for still renders we can cook the render 3 hours more to get better and cleaner results, but in animations we have to deal with a budget and we have to render thousands of images, so times matters.
I think 3Dsmax is a stronger community than us, if i`m not wrong they quit also IM on 3Dsmax in earlier versions of Vray (dont know if it was on vray next or vray 5.0), but they put it back on play as a lot of the users complain about that issue.

I guess that right now, professional animations cannot be done for Maya users and Vray unless you ask for a tremendous budget and your client accept it.
If i´m wrong i would love to know which method can we try to move on with our animation and Vray 5, please.
Thank you.

[Witt3D]

Technically the irradiance map code is still there and if you load an old scene using the irradiance map, the option will appear; you can also set it with a script.

Yesss, just let me know how we can deal with it. We already have a lot of own scripts in Maya for vray, just put some light how can we com back with IM via scripting. Then we can post here the results if is interesting for someone else.
Thank you Vlado.

[piotrus3333]

considering IM quality is totally acceptable in your case I would assume scenes are relatively simple. have you tried them on GPU?

[waaazoo]

I kind of understand what Witt says. Overall I agree that new settings made everything much easier to set up, but, on the other hand, I very often think that I could render out animations much faster before. Considering Renderfarm budget, I can definitely state that I spend much more money there as before.
I have better hardware than before, but still struggle to spit out the animations. That said, I do more stills than animation.
It would have been clever to keep the "old" setup alive and available in the render settings.

[Witt3D]

Just in case:

setAttr "vraySettings.giOn" 1;

setAttr "vraySettings.primaryEngine" 0;

and if you open up your render settings IM is there with all the options.
I will come back with rendertimes benchmarks.

[piotrus3333]

I kind of understand what Witt says. Overall I agree that new settings made everything much easier to set up, but, on the other hand, I very often think that I could render out animations much faster before. Considering Renderfarm budget, I can definitely state that I spend much more money there as before.
I have better hardware than before, but still struggle to spit out the animations. That said, I do more stills than animation.
It would have been clever to keep the "old" setup alive and available in the render settings.

I guess it would not be efficient to maintain compatibility of all the new tricks with old gi solution. simple costs&benefits analysis. it's not too far from catering to horse and carriage users on highways.

[Witt3D]

Hi again, quick benchmarks, i dont have time enough to render everything out.


Irradiance Map
around 14 min.

Brute Force
around 55 min


And still brute force is too way more noisy. Yes you have denoiser but you will loose detail, in fact in this render the ceil is micro concrete, after denoiser in brute force is just a plain color. So in this case i got that brute force is almost 4 times slower and still worse result.
Again i prefer for still renders Brute Force, is more accurate is more solid and you get better results in almost any scenario, but when we talk about animatios and thousands of renders time counts alot.

In fact budget just to render on a common renderfarm with this specs for 4.000 frames (2 minutes and 45 seconds of animation), still some tunning needed but just quick test:

Irradiance Map
1.066 euros - (Irradiance map calculations time, cause we will compute it local and then send to renderfarm without this extra time)

Brute Force
4.190 euros

Hope it helps other users.
Thanks Vlado for the quick solution.