First impressions / problems

[yog]

Hi.
Great to see the support of Modo finally happening.

Due to the current lack of documentation these might well be user error instead of problems, but just in case...

Installation
During the installation of Vray for Modo a pop up box appeared asking for the licence number (to be obtained from the Chaos Group), as the online documentation seemed to indicate that this could be entered later (after the service was registered), I closed the pop up. However when I tried to enter the licence number later it kept telling me that it could not write to the file VRFLServer2.xml. I tried shutting down all the Vray services in the task master, but no luck. In the end I had to uninstall Vray and re-install again, this time entering the licence number at the installation stage, which worked.

Vray Physical Camera
The physical camera works on the "Final Color" render output as expected. However the exposure compensation from the physical camera doesn't get applied to the other render outputs (i.e Diffuse Shader (Direct) and Diffuse Shader (Indirect)), which means they are extremely blown out when using the Vray Sun and Sky. I know the Mental Ray render passes in MAX don't apply the exposure compensation, but the Vray render passes in MAX do, so I was a little surprised to find they don't in Modo.

Vray Sun and Sky
I was going to comment that when using the Vray sun and sky, that the sky element was contributing practically nothing to the lighting, but then I found I had "Clamp" switched on in the Modo Environmental tab. Douh !!
Completely user error, but easy enough to make when switching over to completely physical correct lighting values.
Perhaps a function that if physical sun and sky and physical camera is selcted for Vray rendering, all lighting clamps are automatically switched off ?

Thanks again for getting this project started and letting us partake.

Regards.

[vlado]

During the installation of Vray for Modo a pop up box appeared asking for the licence number (to be obtained from the Chaos Group), as the online documentation seemed to indicate that this could be entered later (after the service was registered), I closed the pop up. However when I tried to enter the licence number later it kept telling me that it could not write to the file VRFLServer2.xml. I tried shutting down all the Vray services in the task master, but no luck. In the end I had to uninstall Vray and re-install again, this time entering the licence number at the installation stage, which worked.

I will let Vladimir Nedev comment on the last two items, but for the first - the difference is that the installation runs with Administrative rights and can create the .xml file, but if you directly run the license server, it runs with user privileges, which may not be enough to create the .xml file. Right-clicking the license server and selecting "Run as Administrator" will make it work; this is very non-obvious of course and we need to improve it for the next beta versions.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vladimir.nedev]

Vray Physical Camera
I had forgotten to tell V-Ray to apply the color mapping to render elements. The physical camera exposure is considered color mapping. This is fixed for future builds. You will be able to control
whether color mapping is applied to render elements or not, using modo's own "image processing" channel of the render output item.

Vray Sun and Sky
For future builds, V-Ray for modo will ignore the "clamp sky brightness" option in the "Environment material" when using a V-Ray physical camera. You are right it makes no sense to let the
user control this and it only creates a pitfall.

Thank you for feedback,
Vladimir Nedev

[yog]

Thanks Vlado and Vladimir.