MODO 901 support

[vladimir.nedev]

The nightly build folder from 2015-05-27 contains a build with support for MODO 901.
The archive is called "vray_beta_30007_modo_x64_DONGLE_LIC_25837.rar ".
The software license version will be there shortly, unless something happens to the build machine.
Look for the archive that is >100MB.

!!! I had to change the internal product name for this build, so if you install it and then decide to go
back to an earlier build, you have to manually uninstall the new build, as the automatic uninstaller of the older builds won't find the new one.

Some info for features of MODO 901 :

- You can render mesh fusions items, without baking them first, but you need to enable "Use Render Cache" from the V-Ray Preferences.
They won't update in RT though.

- The new "Physically Based" shading model, that the MODO material has, is not supported yet. I am working on the export and will write back here when it is done.

- The V-Ray Proxy item has a new preview type called "Voxel bounding boxes", which is somewhat similar to MODO's "Direct Surfaces as Boxes" from their "Deferred mesh".
It can be very useful for previewing very high density meshes, which didn't have a sub-division cage when exported to a .vrmesh file.

- I've noticed some crashes in the MODO API when a ".svg" file is imported as a mesh, and then "Render curves" is enabled on that mesh.
It seems the import process doesn't set the "radius gradient" channel properly and when V-Ray tries to access it, MODO crashes.
I have seen this crash before in some of the sample MODO scenes as well.
If you want to render curves from SVG files, you can manually copy them to another mesh item, which you manually created with Geometry -> New Mesh Item.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

Awesome! I'll give it a shot this evening!

[vandigital]

I get unknown command vray.start no options are present in 901 vray.

Edit:

Downloaded 27.05.2015 build as instructed in this thread, seems that one no longer functions in 901. However the latest build from 29.05.2015 works.

[1funk]

I'm grabbing it too, but I'm getting very slow speed (20KB/s)

[vladimir.nedev]

I'm grabbing it too, but I'm getting very slow speed (20KB/s)

Hopefully it's because of too many people downloading it now, and hopefully the problem will go away in the future.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

I get unknown command vray.start no options are present in 901 vray.

Edit:

Downloaded 27.05.2015 build as instructed in this thread, seems that one no longer functions in 901. However the latest build from 29.05.2015 works.

I can reproduce this only if I install the older "vray_beta_30007_modo_x64_SOFTWARE_LIC_25833.r ar" build without 901 support,
the other one from 27.05.2015 called "vray_beta_30007_modo_x64_SOFTWARE_LIC_25837.r ar" seems to work fine.

Anyway, hopefully this issue doesn't show up again.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

The nightly build from 2015-06-03 will have a somewhat finished support for the Physically Based Shading Model of MODO's Advanced material.
This is of course for MODO 901 only.

The nice thing about this model is that it uses the same(or maybe a very similar) BRDF function, as our GGX BRDF, since they are both based on the same Disney paper.
This means that the highlight shape will match between V-Ray Production/V-Ray RT/V-Ray RT GPU/MODO Production,Preview/MODO Advanced OpenGL viewport(as far as I can tell).
Which might be useful.

Anisotropy and clear-coat roughness/bump don't work, but if somebody really wants them, I can try to export them.
I would prefer to look at other things for the moment.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[swizzelz]

I'll offer my subjective opinion. I'd much rather other important features of Vray be worked on. I feel like users should be able to separate vray materials and modo materials for the sake of using a different renderer. Just my 2 cents!

I was only asking about the material conversion earlier out of curiosity.

[vandigital]

Id rather have focus on vray specific areas, rather than air tight modo to vray material conversion from the onset.

[vkasap]

Hi, is vray for modo 901 mac version available?

Thank you.

[vladimir.nedev]

Hi, is vray for modo 901 mac version available?

Thank you.

Not yet, I will try to make the builds today, and if it doesn't have any big issues, we will upload them to the nightly builds folder.
You still need access to the nightly builds, see this thread how to request it : http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...ith-no-dongles

I will write back here when the builds are uploaded or if I run into some serious problems.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vkasap]

Thank you

v

[Steffen Dünner]

Just a quick reply.
The 901 nightlies work very nicely so far. I had some crashes when starting a V-Ray render from the button (sometimes it takes 10 re-renderings, sometimes MODO crashes after the 2nd try) but I haven't figured out a reproducible case so far. If I start the same scene from the V-Ray Framebuffer window in the upper right, I can start renders as many as I want without a problem.

Oh, and MODO crashes every single time AFTER I quit it, but just if I rendered a frame with V-Ray in the session before. Not a big deal but kind of annoying.

The rest feels and works absolutely rock solid.

[John_Do]

Oh, and MODO crashes every single time AFTER I quit it, but just if I rendered a frame with V-Ray in the session before. Not a big deal but kind of annoying.

I have this bug too, I thought it was Modo's fault until I see your message and test by myself, it crashed only after a session using v-ray.

[vladimir.nedev]

Hi, is vray for modo 901 mac version available?

Thank you.

We have uploaded Mac OS X builds with MODO 901 support.
You can find them under "V-Ray 3.0 for Modo nightly"/mac_build in the nightly builds.
The build names start with "vray_beta_30007_modo_mavericks_x64".

I haven't had much time to test them manually, but at least the internal unit tests run as good as the Windows version.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev