FR Support for Hidden Objects Workflow

[Steffen Dünner]

Hi guys!

Is it possible for V-Ray for MODO to exactly behave like MODO's internal renderer when it comes to hiding / unhiding objects via the SHIFT + H shortcut for example?
I very very often isolate selected objects to get faster feedback when shading and or lighting specific objects. It's very comfortable in MODO to just item select your objects (and maybe lights) and press SHIFT + H to only have these in the OpenGL viewports and in the render preview window (and even the "final" render). You then can quickly work in heavier scenes without having to wait each time you start a render and afterwards just press U to unhide everything to its previous state.
Of course I could awkwardly use the "eye" icon to manually switch off the view and render display of undesired objects BUT afterwards I have to remember to switch them back on. And even worse, if there's an animation on the visibility of an object it's very easy to accidentally set a keyframe and mess up your scene.
The SHIFT + H workflow just temporarily switches the view and render display and even if you forget to unhide your objects before saving, they get properly restored after reloading the scene.

This is a must have at least for me to get much quicker results.

Cheers
Steffen

[vladimir.nedev]

The only way to get the SHIFT+H state is if we switch completely to the Render Cache API. I haven't tested it much, but it seems the Render Cache won't include
hidden geometry at all (including items hidden with SHIFT+H).
Some stuff is not accessible through the render cache though, like polygon connectivity, which is required for V-Ray subdivision to work properly.
The render cache always gives us the geometry in disconnected "segments", which consist of only triangles.

Have you tried the "Render only selected geometry" mode in RT ? I've added it back in April.
In this mode, only the selected geometry will be rendered. Lights are not affected by the selection. All of them render all the time.
In this mode you don't even need to hit Shift+H to hide/unhide geometry (unless you want to hide it in MODO's viewport too).

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Steffen Dünner]

Thanks for the quick response!

Yes, I know the special mode in RT, which is very nice. I just asked because the cool thing about the SHIFT + H stuff is that it doesn't export any hidden geometry which is very welcome in heavy scenes.
Sometimes I also just forget that V-Ray behaves differently than the MODO renderer and then after clicking render I notice that I'll have to wait some time until all of the geometry is exported etc.

BTW V-Ray for MODO 901 is looking and feeling very solid so far.

[vladimir.nedev]

I just asked because the cool thing about the SHIFT + H stuff is that it doesn't export any hidden geometry which is very welcome in heavy scenes.
Sometimes I also just forget that V-Ray behaves differently than the MODO renderer and then after clicking render I notice that I'll have to wait some time until all of the geometry is exported etc.

In the nightly build from 2016.02.23, when you first start RT CPU/GPU, it will only export geometry that is not hidden.
(either by the MODO render visibility or because the "Render only selected geometry" option is enabled and the geometry is not selected).
The "Render only selected geometry" can now be enabled before starting RT CPU/GPU.
When you make geometry visible, it will be exported at this stage and for heavy meshes this can take some time, and since it needs to happen in the main MODO thread, the MODO UI will freeze during the export.
There is no progress bar like the initial export, so have this in mind.

Once geometry is exported, hiding it will leave it in the V-Ray scene, so making it visible for a second time will be much faster.

These changes should help when working on big scenes and you need to isolate a specific object to work on its materials.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev