.vrscene import command

[WilleViz]

Hi!

Thank you for the images! I see the option enabled in the second screenshot - in the Options rollout for map #4832 "Use Color Map". If you disable it and export the .vrscene then the map should be there in the Shader tree on import in Modo. If not, we'll be happy to get this scene for further investigation.

Hi Margarita...

That did the trick, thanks! The bitmap is now loaded correctly and the opacity effect render correctly.

Anyway, this is something we need to fix. I logged it in our bug tracking system already thanks to you.


Best regards,
Margarita

Is this an issue with all bitmaps that have Enable Color Map or only with those that should work as a opacity effect? Oh, and is the bug in the 3ds Max Vray exporter or the Vray MODO importer?

I'm asking so I know whether to look for this bug on other scenes that I will be testing soon.


Take care, Nils Wille Christoffersen

[Margarita.Stoeva]

Hi!

Is this an issue with all bitmaps that have Enable Color Map or only with those that should work as a opacity effect? Oh, and is the bug in the 3ds Max Vray exporter or the Vray MODO importer?

In my tests it happened when the Bitmap is placed in the Bump slot as well. I guess this will happen regardless of the slot used.
It must be the import function that does not read the .vrscene properly because it renders correctly with V-Ray Standalone.

Will we be able to export a vrscene from Modo to use in Max? I'd love to be able to do that at the office.

We have the export from Modo feature going already, as for importing .vrscene in 3ds Max -we're thinking about it

Best regards,
Margarita

[WilleViz]

Hi!

In my tests it happened when the Bitmap is placed in the Bump slot as well. I guess this will happen regardless of the slot used.
It must be the import function that does not read the .vrscene properly because it renders correctly with V-Ray Standalone.


Best regards,
Margarita

Thanks, I'll keep a eye out for that bug when I get around to my next test.

Best regards, Nils

[vladimir.nedev]

1. If the object in max have a multi sub material with vray materials linked to it, the materials does not export. I assume that is because max default materials are not supported. Will you be able to add the vray materials if they are in a sub object?

The Multi/Sub-object material should work (as long as the sub-materials are V-Ray materials, not 3ds Max standard materials).
The way materials are imported, each imported material creates a material tag with the same name as the material.
This material tag is then assigned to the relevant polygons (can be across multiple separate mesh items).
This way, if one material is used in many Multi/Sub-object materials, it will get imported only once.

Can you give me the vrscene that doesn't import correctly ? A .max scene is ok too, as long as it is for 3ds Max 2014 as that's the version that I have installed.

2. the x and z axes are flipped. Not a big issue....just convenience

I will fix this when I fix the scene scale.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

Will we be able to export a vrscene from Modo to use in Max? I'd love to be able to do that at the office.

You can export a .vrscene from V-Ray for MODO by going to File -> Export As... and selecting VRay (*.vrscene) as the file type.
I will eventually add a separate command for this in the V-Ray menu.

Writing an importer for .vrscene files for V-Ray for 3ds Max will be a lot of work (read many lines of code), as it wasn't part of the initial design of the .vrscene export in V-Ray for 3ds Max.
For V-Ray for MODO the export/import processes are linked (meaning V-Ray for MODO knows the relationship between a MODO channel and a V-Ray parameter), although there is still a lot of a manual work for special vrscene parameters/nodes.

It might be a lot easier to add .vrmat export in V-Ray for MODO, and then use the .vrmat files in V-Ray for 3ds Max, but I haven't looked into that and how easy it might be to do.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

Is this an issue with all bitmaps that have Enable Color Map or only with those that should work as a opacity effect? Oh, and is the bug in the 3ds Max Vray exporter or the Vray MODO importer?
I'm asking so I know whether to look for this bug on other scenes that I will be testing soon.

Yes, it is a bug in the importer in V-Ray for MODO. It doesn't know how to import the Bezier curve that gets exported when "Enable color map" is on.
Initially I will only skip the curves (meaning rendering the imported material won't match the result in V-Ray for 3ds Max).
I need to decide whether to add this feature in all V-Ray for MODO textures, i.e. add MODO gradient channel that is used to re-map the output of the texture (similar to the "Output" roll-out in 3ds Max).

Other notable problems that you will run into when importing Evermotion scenes are:
- Composite texture is not supported - I will probably add an equivalent in V-Ray for MODO as it was requested previously (although the Composite texture can (for the most part) be replaced with multiple "Color blend" textures or by stacking the textures in the Shader Tree)
- Gradient ramp texture is not supported as well

If you are importing single assets (as opposed to whole scenes), it might be useful to look in the "Event log" for warnings.
The warnings might be a little cryptic though, for the "Enable color map" option, it will tell you "Unsupported texture "..." (Float3ToAColor) connected to ...".

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[jonmoore]

Vladimir, am I correct in thinking that the .vrscene importer for for Modo is the first of it's kind on any V-Ray platform (other than the standalone - and am I correct in assuming that the .vrscene file format was originally designed for the standalone, not the transfer of V-Ray assets between platforms)?

[vladimir.nedev]

am I correct in thinking that the .vrscene importer for for Modo is the first of it's kind on any V-Ray platform (other than the standalone

The V-Ray for Maya importer is a bit similar, and even more powerful in some cases, as when it reaches a .vrscene node that it doesn't recognize specifically, it will create a VRayPluginNode* node and dump the parameters in there.
There is no equivalent to the VRayPluginNode* nodes in V-Ray for MODO. But it is very easy to add MODO items based on V-Ray plug-ins and have them be auto imported/exported (as long as they don't have special parameters, like lists).
But the V-Ray Maya exporter/importer are not linked for a lot of stuff, so adding a new parameter to a recognized material (for example the main V-Ray material, SSS2, Skin) needs to be separately added to the exporter and importer code.
Render settings are not imported as well, as each render setting (there are around 200 of them) need to be listed in the importer manually.
In V-Ray for MODO this happens automatically, and all render settings are imported/exported with one line of code.

and am I correct in assuming that the .vrscene file format was originally designed for the standalone, not the transfer of V-Ray assets between platforms)?

Yes, for example the .vrscene format doesn't have stuff like
- transformation pivots
- item hierarchy
- names can be very cryptic in some cases, as they are constructed, so they are unique across all nodes in the .vrscene, not user readable
All of these are not needed when rendering, so they are not included in the .vrscene files.

Also, each application has its own way of doing certain things, so moving shaders/textures between applications, and using the native way of doing things can never be done easily/automatically.
For example the options in MODO's "Texture locator"/ Maya's place2dTexture node / 3ds Max Coordinates roll-out are different or work slightly differently, so they always need to be manually handled.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[WilleViz]

Yes, it is a bug in the importer in V-Ray for MODO. It doesn't know how to import the Bezier curve that gets exported when "Enable color map" is on.
Initially I will only skip the curves (meaning rendering the imported material won't match the result in V-Ray for 3ds Max).
I need to decide whether to add this feature in all V-Ray for MODO textures, i.e. add MODO gradient channel that is used to re-map the output of the texture (similar to the "Output" roll-out in 3ds Max).

Hi Vladimir...

Your initial solution sounds good for now. The most important thing is to get the bitmaps imported correctly.

Other notable problems that you will run into when importing Evermotion scenes are:
- Composite texture is not supported - I will probably add an equivalent in V-Ray for MODO as it was requested previously (although the Composite texture can (for the most part) be replaced with multiple "Color blend" textures or by stacking the textures in the Shader Tree)
- Gradient ramp texture is not supported as well

I will try and keep an eye out for Composite textures, but I think I will wait to test further until the bug for Enable color map is eventually fixed. I'm no master of Vray, so one thing at a time for me.

[vladimir.nedev]

For tomorrow's nightly build ( 2015-09-24 ), turning on the "Enable color map" option in the Output roll-out in 3ds Max will no longer cause the V-Ray for MODO importer to skip the texture altogether.
Still the "Color map" curve will be ignored for now.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[WilleViz]

For tomorrow's nightly build ( 2015-09-24 ), turning on the "Enable color map" option in the Output roll-out in 3ds Max will no longer cause the V-Ray for MODO importer to skip the texture altogether.
Still the "Color map" curve will be ignored for now.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

Thanks, Vladimir...

I have attached an Evermotion scene that I just imported and rendered in MODO + Vray. Looks good to me.

I didn't use much time to set up the render and GI perfectly, so don't pay attention to the noise and GI. I think it took around 16 min, so good quality for that amount of time.

[vladimir.nedev]

Looks nice, here is one from me.



It is from Archinteriors 37, scene 10, the most obvious differences compared to the original render are:
- the lamp in the top right is all black, this is because the scene scale is wrong and the lamp uses the "fog color" property of the V-Ray material, I am working on fixing that
- the globe's image map colors are quite different, this is because it uses the "Color map" from the Output roll-out in 3ds Max
- the Fur is missing

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[WilleViz]

Looks nice, here is one from me.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]26158[/ATTACH]

It is from Archinteriors 37, scene 10, the most obvious differences compared to the original render are:
- the lamp in the top right is all black, this is because the scene scale is wrong and the lamp uses the "fog color" property of the V-Ray material, I am working on fixing that
- the globe's image map colors are quite different, this is because it uses the "Color map" from the Output roll-out in 3ds Max
- the Fur is missing

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

Cool. It is very nice to see all this progress.

I have a big problem with Scene 2 from the Archinteriors Vol 30 archinteriors_vol_30.pdf, but I think that has something to do with to the lighting through the windows. I will have to check whether they use portals, but something is setup differently with this scene.

I can send you the vrscene per email, as I'm pretty sure that I cannot share the scene in public even though I have bought it.

[vladimir.nedev]

Cool. It is very nice to see all this progress.

I have a big problem with Scene 2 from the Archinteriors Vol 30 archinteriors_vol_30.pdf, but I think that has something to do with to the lighting through the windows. I will have to check whether they use portals, but something is setup differently with this scene.

I can send you the vrscene per email, as I'm pretty sure that I cannot share the scene in public even though I have bought it.

If no light is coming from the windows, it might be because they are using a fog color different from all white.
With the scene scale being wrong, this will make the windows fully opaque.
I actually have a scene like this that I tried yesterday, so no need to send me a vrscene for now. Sending a vrscene might be violating the license as well though.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

This bug turned out to be an issue in both the V-Ray for 3ds Max RT/vrscene export, as well as the V-Ray for MODO import.
The strange polygons are actually hidden faces in 3ds Max. You need nightly builds for V-Ray for 3ds Max and MODO from 2015-09-26 to have this fix.
Here is the scene rendered without the bug.


Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev