vrmesh from realflow .bin doesn't render reflections

[ALFRED_ST_MEDIA]

realflow 2013
maya 2014 sp1
vray 2.4 nightly build and vray 3.0 nightly

if I bring the .bin files into maya via RF plugin, render with dome light containing HDR texture, I get reflection. If I convert .bin files to vrmesh and bring them in, as I have for ever now, as proxies, there are no reflections. I don't know what changed, since we've rendered water splashes out of RF 2013 on a commercial a month ago, but using the same process, it's not working now in either 2.4 or 3.0.

Suggestions on where to start looking?

Thanks,

-ctj

[vlado]

Is it possible that the proxy comes in with those particular render stats off? Also, are the normals pointing in the right direction?

Best regards,
Vlado

[ALFRED_ST_MEDIA]

thought of that, but if I assign a straight VrMtl to the mesh, it renders fine. As soon as I change reflective color, not fine, but I have an alpha.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...Reflection.zip

[t.petrov]

As far as I can see the normals of the mesh are reversed.
If you place the camera inside the object you'll see that it renders fine (you have to disable the dome light).

In 2.4 you can still render this if you enable the option reflect on back side.
Unfortunately in 3.0 this is broken and it won't render at all. We've it on our ToDo list and we hope we'll fix it soon.

If you don't have a particular reason to use reversed normals it would be better to just reverse them.

Hope it helps...

[pechart]

Just to be sure that this issue is high on your TODO list: please try to fix this as soon as possible

[vlado]

I added an option to revert the normals from Alembic files; needs a little testing and I'll push it to the nightly builds. We will fix the "reflect on back side" thing, but if you plan to do water, the normals need to be corrected anyways.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ALFRED_ST_MEDIA]

good to know. I tested our previous files; using the flipNormals option when using ply2vrmesh with the RF .bin files as well as the .abc file out of RF, flipping normals in Maya. Both work.

BTW, as a general note to all, I hadn't been using alembic out of RF until now because we just switched to RF 2013. The .abc files are much smaller than the .bin files, and we skip the conversion of .bin to .vrmesh, which on this job was about 20 min/frame due to the size of the splashes. Very happy with alembic. We just cut 5hrs off our turnaround time for RF shots on this job not converting the .bins to .vrmesh and going just with .abc from RF.