Vray for Grasshopper - Render animation in project

[J@R]

Hi there, i've just downloaded the new vray update for Rhino and was excited to test out the new 'Animation Capabilities' in Grasshopper.
Unfortunately it still doesn't look like there's the ability to render in grasshopper with the rhino scene included as was promised here: https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...-now-available

is this ever going to be implemented? it seems a shame to create all these timeline components etc. when we still can't even render it in our rhino scene.

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi J@R,

We actually did a significant amount of work in that regard but only small portion made it in the update.
Some technical limitations became apparent and prevented us from implementing the complete workflow.

We have basically reworked our animation manager which resulted in the new Animation Source option in the Asset Editor.
Our plan was to let you send object animations to Rhino the same way you can currently do it with the Sun or Camera.
Unfortunately objects being created in the middle of the animation for example (quite common in GH) can't be handled in an elegant way.
This will require quite a bit of additional work on our side and we decided to delay it.

Regards,
Konstantin

[J@R]

konstantin_chaos That's great to hear and I appreciate that a lot of work has been done, but seeming as though we already had the capability to create simple camera paths within Rhino's own animation tools I don't really see it as any more useful for what i'm looking to do.

Currently the only way to render a GH animation with my existing rhino scene is to export it as a VRscene and then reimport in Grasshopper, with the reworking of the animation manager will this be streamlined in the next update?
Sorry to be persistent it just feels like such an integral feature in order to fully take advantage of Vray within grasshopper.

p.s. Is there any plans to support video textures in grasshopper in the future? I always thought this was a long shot but now maybe with the timeline component it could be possible to do something with frame sequences?

Cheers

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi J@R,

After a discussion with the lead developer yesterday we realized that there is a relatively simple way to render object animations together with the Rhino scene even in the current build.

There is the 'Render in Project' component that I'm sure you're familiar with.
It has an option to render the current definition in the Rhino project - 'Render in Rhino' .
The component itself is sending the definition to Rhino so the only thing this function does is initiate the render process in Rhino.
The issue is that if the definition is animated only the current frame is rendered.
Based on that I had the following idea - Lets add a 'Render Animation in Rhino' function that evaluates the definition for every frame and renders in Rhino...
Then my colleague Nikolay Bakalov was able to put together a script component that does exactly that.
Here's an example project using the script:
GH_RenderAnimationInRhino.zip

To test it:
- Open base_scene.3dm
- Load GH_RenderAnimInRhino.gh in Grasshopper
- Enable the Render in Project component
- Set a proper output path in the Asset Editor - the sequence images will be saved there
- Click on the 'Start' button connected to the C# Script component
- To interrupt the process you can use the 'Stop' button. Note that the current frame will finish before the process stops.

Usefully tips:
- Keep only one instance of the Render in Project component in the project
- Do not modify the Rhino scene while the render process is ongoing
- Do not modify the definition during rendering
- Disable Animation in Rhino if there is such already active
- Disable the Interactive toggle - use Production rendering mode

If you like this behavior we can include it in the next version we put out.
It has some shortcomings (example - the entire definition as well as the Rhino scene is reexported for every frame) and that's why we'll continue working on the 'complete' solution that I was talking about in the past.

As for the video textures:
Can you describe an example workflow for this?
I believe that you can switch the Bitmap file during animation even now.
I'll test it and get back to you...

Regards,
Konstantin

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi J@R,

Here's an animated texture setup that you can explore and fit to your needs.
GH_AnimatedTextureRendering.zip

The only requirement is that you use an image sequence as a 'video texture'.

Regards,
Konstantin

[J@R]

konstantin_chaos this is awesome, thanks so much for this!
i've had a play around with both files now and they work great

cheers,
J