A question for the beta testers

[joe_b]

I just want to get a general idea of where you all feel that the current plugin stands. To do so I am going to set up a little poll to ask you all what you feel VRay for Rhino is lacking and in what areas our main focus should be directed. Thanks, and please feel free to elaborate as much as possible.

[Paul Oblomov]

A question for the beta testers

I think materials and UI - smth ASAP need to be done right!

Really want mat. preview (or .mat import from 3dsmax (if it's not possible - tell me plz why!)) and UI as close, as in VR f Max. 'Bout bugfixes - looks like they'll be eliminated closer to release

[joe_b]

A question for the beta testers

none of the material stuff is impossible by any means. But there are things coming soon from Rhino that will help us in this area. So if it seems like we are avoiding that area, its mainly to avoid reworking things that will soon be provided to us. I definately think the material importer is a good idea. Thanks for the feedback!

[flipside]

A question for the beta testers

I think that material preview etc can be seen as user interface improvements. As now only people who know vray for max are testing, I don't think it is so important because these people know what they're doing so they can do with a lesser interface (for now).

That's why I ticked vray features. If vray for rhino wants to replace vray for max for rhino users, it is important that all things from max are available in rhino. Problem is that lots of max function where vray can benefit from will never be in rhino... (like all modifiers etc...)

I think in the future, I would render things in rhino if they are more or less 'basic', and if more complex stuff is needed I will still go to max (also animation for example). Since I always model in rhino, I would also do wip renders there and for finals maybe go to max.

[Gijs]

A question for the beta testers

I think for testing purposes, the material interface is VERY important, and I suspect that this is not an easy task, so better start early with it

[flipside]

A question for the beta testers

But what can you see in the preview? There's no GI or anything, nothing in the preview matches the actual scene. In max I work a lot with manual update of the preview, so in other words no almost no preview. Especially when using fog color, the preview is really useless.

I agree it is important and should be tackeled as early as possible But same goes for stuff like DOF, object properties, material wrapper etc... I can imagine that's also lot of work (and needs lots of bug hunting).

[Gijs]

A question for the beta testers

Unless of course they are not copying max but try to improve it. I would prefer a more advanced approach to material building. The limited amout of materials in max for example, is quite old-fashioned. And I don't like the fact that I have to make several copies of materials to create different colored plastics. I'd like to see some sort of shader tree, with parent-child relations. And the ability to make your own basic parents.

Take the example of different colored plastics. Wouldn't it be just awesome to make you basic material with fresnel reflections, the proper IOR, the right glossy settings etc. and save that as a new material type, with the ability to unlink the color from this material? Then you assign the basic material to the object (or by layer) and assign it -separately- a color and eventualy a surface texture. This is more how designers think IMO. Otherwise you end up with a material database with black plastic, black plastic smooth, black plastic rough, black plastic textured heavy etc. if you catch my drift.

Now that would make a revolution in material / rendering workflow for designers. And I want to emphasize the word designers here, because that's what Rhino is all about in the first place.

I have given several Flamingo rendering courses at Philips Design as you know, and their main problem with Flamingo is the material library and material workflow (besides lighting, but that's a different story). For large companies, having a solid central material database can save lots of time. If I take the plastics example again, it would mean just one geek has to fiddle making the parent materials and many other people can benefit from it.

O.K. what do you think

[flipside]

A question for the beta testers

I agree completely. I didn't dare to think vray for rhino ending up better than vray for max My main concern about materials is not the preview, but indeed the library aspect.

[Gijs]

A question for the beta testers

It should become better than Vray for Max

Certainly now Vray is going to be ported to other systems (Vray4Maya beta has just been announced) Vray4Rhino needs to blow away all others in industrial design visualization

[Paul Oblomov]

A question for the beta testers

Maybe there's need to implement all the features (at least for materials and override options) for Rhino v3 and continue developing process for Rhino v4, as it more progressive.

P.S. Really want .mat import from max

[Eric Klein]

A question for the beta testers

material ui bugs the crap out of me. Some sort of global view of what materials I have in the scene, what objects are assigned to them, and a way to select and add/remove objects from those materials is a must at minimum. The improvements you guys are adding sound good too-

[PGolay]

A question for the beta testers

I agree completely. I didn't dare to think vray for rhino ending up better than vray for max My main concern about materials is not the preview, but indeed the library aspect.

The lack of a material library, is the single biggest problem for me. Apart from that, as far s I can see the materials are not even slighlty stable- numbers are constantly being reset in the materials editor for a given object between renders. I am sure there are masses of things I do not know about Vray, so my settings may not always be appropriate... but I do want to se what they do as is not have them changed to something else between sessions or even between renderings.

-Pascal

[joe_b]

A question for the beta testers

The lack of a material library, is the single biggest problem for me. Apart from that, as far s I can see the materials are not even slighlty stable- numbers are constantly being reset in the materials editor for a given object between renders. I am sure there are masses of things I do not know about Vray, so my settings may not always be appropriate... but I do want to se what they do as is not have them changed to something else between sessions or even between renderings.

-Pascal

Our materials are created by making a layered BRDF. The layers include a reflection layer (either a mirror or a glossy BRDF), a diffuse layer, and a refraction layer. Depending on your settings some of these layers may not exist. When these layers are turned off (by turning their respective colors black) then whatever settings were previously in there are not going to remain once you hit "OK". So when you go to edit the next time all the default settings are in those places.

I apologize if this is confusing. We are in the process of reworking this. But I assure you there is no instability in them. If anything, it is a weakness in my UI. If you are messing around with a setting that is in fact actually being used and stored on the object it will remain there.

If you have any specific questions about any of the material settings please let me know, perhaps I can clear this up further for you. Once again, we are in the process of making the UI more user friendly so it gives more feedback to people (i.e, graying out fields that are not being used..)

[flipside]

A question for the beta testers

Our materials are created by making a layered BRDF. The layers include a reflection layer (either a mirror or a glossy BRDF), a diffuse layer, and a refraction layer. Depending on your settings some of these layers may not exist. When these layers are turned off (by turning their respective colors black) then whatever settings were previously in there are not going to remain once you hit "OK". So when you go to edit the next time all the default settings are in those places.

Or in other words with some examples:
- if reflection color is black, this means no reflection ---> all other reflection options will have no effect, and they will reset if you try to change them. (glossy, subdivs, ...).
- if glossy=1.0 this means no blurry reflections, so setting the subdivs has no effect
- same for refraction etc...

[PGolay]

A question for the beta testers

[quote="joeb"]

The lack of a material library, is the single biggest problem for me. Apart from that, as far s I can see the materials are not even slighlty stable- numbers are constantly being reset in the materials editor for a given object between renders. I am sure there are masses of things I do not know about Vray, so my settings may not always be appropriate... but I do want to se what they do as is not have them changed to something else between sessions or even between renderings.

-Pascal

I apologize if this is confusing. We are in the process of reworking this. But I assure you there is no instability in them.

Hi Joe- I did not mean unstable in the crashy sense but rather that they seem to my novice eye unpredictable- my settings for reflective and highlight glossiness seem (though not in thre latest build so far) to constanly reset to 1 behind my back, and things like color in fog(I guess this is the way to get color in glass?) was reset to white all the time- again I have not noticed it in the newest build since I have been playing today. I realize I need to get more familiar with the settings. But this also is more the reason to be able to have a material library- it will make testing and learning the capabilities and tweaks infinitely easier.


Anyway, thanks for your comments- I'll try to sort out my woes and make proper reports oif things don't work.

-Pascal