Maya Fluid DBR rendering

[kristianturner85]

Hi,

I'm doing a job that requires me to render a floor covered with fog at high resolution (4k+) but I'm having issues with Vray distributed rendering. The buckets rendered by my network machines ignore the maya fluid, my local workstation is the only machine that is able to render the fog. Is this a common problem? Seems to work with mental-ray.

A little research has told me I should install PhoenixFD onto the render nodes but I don't have a license.

Thanks guys,

-K

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

U dont need FD license just install it as demo :X

[kristianturner85]

Thanks D,

In order to get the nodes rendering I needed to install the Full version of Phoenix rather than the standalone only and then use the Phoenix texture on the fluid in maya.

Unfortunately I'm not out of the woods yet. There seems to be some discrepancies between the nodes resulting in bucket patch issues (see attached). I'm still trying a few things but any input would be great.

thanks,

-K

[vlado]

Is your fluid cached? If not, it might be a good idea to cache it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[kristianturner85]

Hi Vlado,

Yes it's cached, and I'm not using GI, single RectLight setup. Have you seen anything like it before?

Running Stable Vray 2.40.01 on all machines and now the most recant Phoenix DEMO version thanks to D.

-K

[tashko.zashev]

Hi,

Managed to replicate the same bucket difference in my tests. It seem that there is a bug when "Use light cache" option is used, so I will forward it to our dev's .

Meanwhile you could try to disable the LC option or set V-ray Environment Fog shader to be used instead.
You can do it from the Fluidshape V-ray attributes > Volume shader option.

Thank you very much for all the details you have shared.

[tashko.zashev]

Another workaround to try is to increase the fluid resolution a lot.

[kristianturner85]

Hi Tashko,

Thanks for the reply, I've been trying a lot of different methods to fix this problem. as soon as I add the extra Vray attributes to the fluidshape I get a totally different render result, as if the fluid's primary visibility is off. Really strange. I've found that Changing the Sample method under Shading quality in the fluid shape to Adaptive reduces the effect a lot, doesn't fix it altogether though.

The resolution of my fluid is pretty massive already so that isn't really an option.

Thanks for the help.

-K

[tashko.zashev]

as soon as I add the extra Vray attributes to the fluidshape I get a totally different render result, as if the fluid's primary visibility is off.

It's very odd, could you post an example scene to test with?

[kristianturner85]

Hi Tashko,

I've attached the renders that I am getting and a simplified scene. You'll need to cache the fluid and renders from frame 55 to get the same result. I hope I'm not doing anything stupid.

I'm using Maya 2013, Vray 2.4 and the demo of Phoenix HD. If you need to know anything else let me know.

Try adding the Vray attributes to the fluid, Phoenix mode basically doesn't render and Vray env fog looks really weird.

-K

[kristianturner85]

Hey,

With a little help from DADAL I've found the main problem with using PhoenixFD extra Vray attribute on the fluid. My step size was far too small for the scene which made it pretty much unrenderable. It also renders without the bucket issues when running distributes which is cool. Still the same weirdness when switching from Phoenix to Vray env fog though.

-K

[tashko.zashev]

Hey,

With a little help from DADAL I've found the main problem with using PhoenixFD extra Vray attribute on the fluid. My step size was far too small for the scene which made it pretty much unrenderable. It also renders without the bucket issues when running distributes which is cool. Still the same weirdness when switching from Phoenix to Vray env fog though.

-K

Glad to hear that you figured it out. I will check the issue with ENV. Fog setup.

[kristianturner85]

Thanks for all the help Tashko.

[tashko.zashev]

Hi again,

In order to get similar render results using the V-ray environment fog shader in your scene, you need to adjust few parameters.
*) Step size to 10
*) Max steps to 50000
*) Diffuse color multiplier to 4

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Hi again,

In order to get similar render results using the V-ray environment fog shader in your scene, you need to adjust few parameters.
*) Step size to 10
*) Max steps to 50000
*) Diffuse color multiplier to 4

What does the Max Steps do ? I tried 1-100000 and I never saw any difference in render or speed. I think I saw the difference in tutorial on spot3d but I find it very hard to actually see what it does... am I doing something wrong? I assume it dont work for PhoenixFD engine and its only for EnviFog right?