Grasshopper Animation, Render in Project

[skdeisher]

I'm using V-Ray Next and having a hard time understanding the relationship between animated geometry in Grasshopper and the Rhino animation function in V-Ray. For reference, I'm looking at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp71E3dlCwQ and am not sure what is happening at 0:24, since I see no input for the water and rock geometry on the Grasshopper side and there is no Render in Project component being used in the definition.

I'd like to do an animated Render in Project, but the output option to Render Animation is within the Render component, which is sequenced before the Render in Project component. I can connect my Render component to Render in Project, but the only output options in that node are to output a camera animation or a sun animation. How do I render a Grasshopper definition within a scene?

[Peter.Chaushev]

Good catch! Some parts of this video were edited as the original GH node network appeared too complex for just a quick glimpse.
We'll soon have some tutorials on this topic publicly available.

As for rendering animation from Grasshopper in Rhino, Object animation in Grasshopper can only be rendered in Grasshopper.
Using the "V-Ray Render in Project" component can only transfer animation data for Sun or Camera animation (but not both).

To transfer an object animated in Grasshopper in a Rhino project, the only currently possible way is to export the animation from Grasshopper as a .vrscene file. Here's a step-by-step description:
EDIT: The workflow described below will be available in the upcoming v4.1! The only valid workflow for now would be to bring the Rhino project in Grasshopper by exporting it as a .vrscene file, then importing it in Grasshopper via the V-Ray Proxy Scene component and rendering the animation in Grasshopper.
(1. Export your animation from Grasshopper via the "V-Ray Scene Exporter" component. For convenience, add the number of frames in name of the resulting file, e.g. "animated_design_480_frames.vrscene".
2. Set up animation in Rhino, either by importing Sun/Camera animation from Grasshopper or using Rhino's own _recordAnimation.
3. Import the .vrscene file as a V-Ray Proxy via the V-Ray toolbar or using the command _vrayProxyImport.
4. Open the Proxy's settings in the V-Ray Asset Editor. Turn off its "Lights" toggle (unless you have animated light sources) and set the Animation Length to the number of frames it contains (this is the reason for including the frame count in the file name).
5. Render the animation directly in Rhino and the Proxy scene will play its own accordingly.)

Our dev team is actively working on improving this workflow and reducing the amount of time needed for such setups. Some of these changes will make it in the upcoming Update 1 of V-Ray Next.
In the meantime, should you have any further questions or suggestions, please post them here!

Kind regards,
Peter

[skdeisher]

Thanks for the quick and detailed response, this makes a lot of sense and seems like a workable option for now. However, I tested this out just now and when I export a .vrscene from the V-Ray Scene Exporter component, I get the same amount of .vrscenes as I do frames. It sounds like I just want a single .vrscene file that has the animation contained within it; what am I doing wrong here?

[Peter.Chaushev]

Apologies, I have misled you with my previous post! The described workflow is actually doable with a version of V-Ray not yet publicly available (lost track when these changes were introduced). All this and more will be part of the upcoming update we are currently working on.
The only valid workflow for now would be to bring the Rhino project in Grasshopper by exporting it as a .vrscene file, then importing it in Grasshopper via the V-Ray Proxy Scene component and rendering the animation in Grasshopper.
I'll edit my previous post accordingly.

Let me know if this solution will suffice!
Additionally, if you have any feature requests related to V-Ray for Grasshopper, now is a very good time to share them with us.

Kind regards,
Peter

[skdeisher]

Bumping my own old thread; I've been using Vantage and am now in need of this functionality again in Grasshopper in the hopes that I can animate some geometry as a .vrmesh and then add it to the Vantage timeline for animation. I've built a very simple rotating geometry script to test this but cannot figure out why I'm getting this error: "1. Exporting animated proxies having alternating faces per frame is not supported"

Is there any updated documentation on how to get animated geometry out of Grasshopper as a VRay mesh and into Vantage?

[ryan_howell]

@Peter.Chaushev

Bumping this thread as I had questions about the same topic but related towards the animation side of things.

I've been playing around with vray for grasshopper trying to figure out how to get object motion blur to work and I just seem to find one road block after another. Is there just no way to do it currently? I successfully got a simple turn table animation setup as a test and got that part figured out, object rotates fine and renders fine, but without motion blur which I expected because via vray documentation stating only camera motion is supported.

However, In the camera motion blur section of the documentation it states " Camera Motion Blur – When enabled, it considers the camera movement when calculating the motion blur effect. Otherwise, only objects in motion are blurred. Note that only proxy scene or mesh references can introduce object animation."

What does it mean by "only objects in motion are blurred" to me that means if there is any motion introduced via object moving from original position or orientation or camera movement, blur will be calculated. It also says that only vrmeshes can introduce animation which to me means if I animated a vrmesh in some way that introduces motion, it will blur. However, when attempting this by connecting my axis rotation component the vrmesh component it will not work. Also the vrmesh component lacks a geometry input that the regular vray geometry component has that I use to connect the axis rotation component to. Hopefully I'm just doing it wrong and its possible to do as I rarely use grasshopper.

With all that being said, is it possible to get object motion blur to work in grasshopper currently or is it going to continue to have the same limitation as just rendering animation directly with rhino?

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi ryan_howell,

What does it mean by "only objects in motion are blurred" to me that means if there is any motion introduced via object moving from original position or orientation or camera movement, blur will be calculated.

There is no native way to animate objects in Rhino.
However, if you animate something in say 3ds Max and export it as a Proxy, you can import it as a Proxy Mesh in Rhino and render it.
To then initiate the animation rendering process, you'll have to manually introduce a camera animation in the project (which is commonly associated with camera movement).

After you do all that, and if you keep the "Camera Motion Blur" toggle disabled, only the objects will be blurred.

Enable the toggle and both moving objects and the rest of the environment will be blurred since the camera is also moving.

I hope that clarifies the option behaviour to some extent.

It also says that only vrmeshes can introduce animation which to me means if I animated a vrmesh in some way that introduces motion, it will blur.

Yes, it will blur, but you have to export a vrmesh that contains an animation.

However, when attempting this by connecting my axis rotation component the vrmesh component it will not work. Also the vrmesh component lacks a geometry input that the regular vray geometry component has that I use to connect the axis rotation component to. Hopefully I'm just doing it wrong and its possible to do as I rarely use grasshopper.

You have to basically animate a regular Grasshopper object and export it as an animated vrmesh.
It is done in the following way:


The animation render in Rhino looks like that:


And last but not least - we will introduce Motion Blur in Grasshopper too.
I'll log it as a feature request.

[konstantin_chaos]

The GH definition - GH_Animated_Proxy_01.zip
The Rhino project - Animation_01.zip