Vray stranger things

[firstsoul]

Ok we got something we can't understand. Maybe it's me who does not understand well. Watch carefully my setting and results. The whole thing was done in Maya and I got the same problem in 3sdmax.

[vlado]

So what is the problem? I can't understand anything from the image.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Komposer]

this is more a riddle - wow...need some more explanation...hmm...
What I see is:
1. Domelight row: when You use domelight with hdri, I think the distance will not work her, because all is more than infinity far away - !?
Try to add a rect light and some other spheres or objects with different distances from the sphere...than you will see clear effects!
2. IOR: Vlado, in all 4 cases he didn´t change the reflection IOR, let it stay at 1.6, unlocked from refraction IOR
...and it is very clear to see, that the render result changes heavy, when he only change the refract IOR - but there is no transparency in the shader!!!
refraction IOR changes the result while refraction is not in use???????
For me an interresting question too.
3. Trace reflection: I think it´s the same case than in first theme - with HDRI there is no range in the depth...perhaps I´m wrong!?
Try the same than at theme 1
btw, your sphere has no transparence, so you need no backside ON, you can´t see the backside faces.

[svetlozar.draganov]

1. Domelight row: when You use domelight with hdri, I think the distance will not work her, because all is more than infinity far away - !?
Try to add a rect light and some other spheres or objects with different distances from the sphere...than you will see clear effects!

The Ray Distance parameter is only available for DomeLight, other lights types doesn't have such parameter.
There isn't a difference in the attached images between values of of 0 and 100 000 since there are no object which cast shadows onto another object.

Here is the same test with the same values but with a ground plane which receive shadows from the sphere:

[svetlozar.draganov]

The second issue where the Refraction IOR affects the reflections even when refraction layer is completely disabled(black color) is a bug which already exists into our bug-tracking system waiting to be resolved.

[svetlozar.draganov]

The scene used for the last issue about Trace Reflections and Dim Distance is also not very helpful to understand how these parameters work.
Here is another example similar to the first one I posted but this time the ground plane is reflective.

Here is now the render looks like when Dim distance is disabled:
Both VRayDomeLight and Sphere reflections are visible in the plane.

Here what's going on when Dim Distance is enabled with value of 5:
The reflections of the DomeLight are gone since their distance is greater than 5, and the sphere reflections are clipped after 5 units.

And one more example with Dim Fall off value of 0.2:
The trimmed reflection edge is now with gradual falloff.

[Komposer]

hi Svetlozar,
"The Ray Distance parameter is only available for DomeLight, other lights types doesn't have such parameter."
I didn´t saw, that "row one" spoke about the Dome light, I thought to see a shader...
The screenshots where realy tiny!

[Komposer]

"The second issue where the Refraction IOR affects the reflections even when refraction layer is completely disabled(black color) is a bug which already exists into our bug-tracking system waiting to be resolved."

I mean, that a vray user must be informed about such bigger bugs!
Did I miss something in the past?
The best example was the GI pre/"post" render bug - don´t know if it is fixed now...use nightly from Nov03
It navigate me into a critical deadline fail!!!
Only not to know about!!! grrrr...

[svetlozar.draganov]

hi Svetlozar,
"The Ray Distance parameter is only available for DomeLight, other lights types doesn't have such parameter."
I didn´t saw, that "row one" spoke about the Dome light, I thought to see a shader...
The screenshots where realy tiny!

Please excuse me if my answers seems like a correction of yours, I didn't mean to offend you but if I did please accept my sincere apology
The screenshots were indeed very tiny, I was also wondering a lot what of the parameters had been changed.

"The second issue where the Refraction IOR affects the reflections even when refraction layer is completely disabled(black color) is a bug which already exists into our bug-tracking system waiting to be resolved."

I mean, that a vray user must be informed about such bigger bugs!
Did I miss something in the past?
The best example was the GI pre/"post" render bug - don´t know if it is fixed now...use nightly from Nov03
It navigate me into a critical deadline fail!!!
Only not to know about!!! grrrr...

Would you please let us know a preferable way to inform V-Ray users about the current bugs with the software?
Our current workflow when we receive a bug report from email,forums,phone etc is to:
1.log it into our system.
2.to inform the reporter that the issue is added into the bug-tracking system
3.to provide updates about the status of the issue per client request
4.to provide updates about the status of the issue when it is partially of fully fixed

Do you think that we might improve that workflow and can you suggest how exactly?
I am not sure how useful would be to send notification about major bugs to all V-Ray users.

We are sorry to hear that a bug into the software leaded you to a deadline fail.
When you find yourself into such situation please contact us at our official support channel support@chaosgroup.com, very often there are ways to workaround the bug and complete the project on time.

[Dan Andersen]

Would you please let us know a preferable way to inform V-Ray users about the current bugs with the software?

Make (a filtered version of) your bug-tracker public/accessible to customers? Would be awesome to be able to search for already logged bugs and see what is/is not fixed.

[svetlozar.draganov]

A public version of the bug-tracker system is under discussion right now, we are in process of researching/evaluating different systems that would allow us to make the tracker public.

[Dan Andersen]

That's interesting. Would be something we, as a studio, would benefit from, for sure.