VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

[joe_b]

I've been asked a lot recently on whats going on with these two - I understand most people put little faith in "...a couple weeks" since we've pushed back SR1 for the last several months. So I'm going to let you all have a little peek into whats happening here as far as development goes.

V-Ray for Rhino 4 is actively being developed. At the moment I am hooking in distributed rendering. When I am done with that I need to move on to hooking into the new way mapping channels are handled. After that I think VfR4 should be in a good spot to start a private beta - and shortly after that it will be placed into public beta. The service release for VfR3 will be created by back-porting our VfR4 build. Since I am working it like that we should be able to run concurrent beta periods for both VfR4 and VfR3 SR1. At least that is my goal.

Definite new additions for these two builds[*]Distributed rendering[*]Displacement[*]Per-object environments[*]Infinite Plane[*]Physical Camera[*]Physical Sky / Sun[*]Some extra gamma control[*]Detail enhancement for Irradiance Map

I may edit this later to add other things I've forgotten about

So the big question is - when is this coming? I want to send out a private tester build by late this week / early next week. If the private tests go over well then we could see public beta beginning within two weeks of today ( 13 Feb 2007 ).

Please do not send correspondence asking to be admitted to the private tests - we are not accepting any applications. Thank you.

[caje]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Nice!

[craiggorton]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

It all sounds very good!

I've never used distributed rendering. In order to use a second machine's CPU would that machine need its own Vray license?

[Matt_cg]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Very cool!! Looking forward to it.

Thanks for the per object environments!!

[joe_b]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

It all sounds very good!

I've never used distributed rendering. In order to use a second machine's CPU would that machine need its own Vray license?

No we're following the V-Ray for 3dsmax standard. Which is unlimited distributed rendering. We're going to distribute a spawner package that will be a render slave that can be run on any machine you like. The only part that requires the license is the client ( the one that runs natively in Rhinoceros )

[virtualv_cg]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Hi, I'm really looking forward to the latest version of Rhino and Vray. Will VfR4 cost any more and is there a release date?
Cheers

[joe_b]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Hi, I'm really looking forward to the latest version of Rhino and Vray. Will VfR4 cost any more and is there a release date?
Cheers

If you own a seat of VfR3 it will transfer to VfR4 at no cost. As for new customers - I don't believe there will be a price increase. There is no solid release date. As I believe I said in the first post - we should be entering a beta cycle in the next couple of weeks though.

[ALTO]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

I may edit this later to add other things I've forgotten about

Please don't forget my list!
Especially VFB Channels (Mat ID, Obj ID), Vray-Proxy, and what about to replace current Fresnel Map with an advanced Falloff Map?

Thanks

[dalomar_cg]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

The advanced falloff would be nice. That would allow some of the old flamingo users to create a nice angular blend type material that they've been missing.

[joe_b]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Especially VFB Channels (Mat ID, Obj ID), Vray-Proxy, and what about to replace current Fresnel Map with an advanced Falloff Map?

[*]I've written two quick falloff textures a few weeks ago. A straight-up falloff based on view direction and a blend falloff based on view direction. I haven't tested them further though.[*]I do plan on adding V-Ray proxies as well - I've begun but been side-tracked by other items.[*] The render channels are not up to me, unfortunately, those are things that need to be addressed by the V-Ray Core. I can put in a word for them with Vlado though

[merlik585]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

So the big question is - when is this coming? I want to send out a private tester build by late this week / early next week. If the private tests go over well then we could see public beta beginning within two weeks of today ( 13 Feb 2007 ).

Please do not send correspondence asking to be admitted to the private tests - we are not accepting any applications. Thank you.

So when is it coming ? March is here

[joe_b]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Yep - we have a private beta in the hands of a few testers. I'm currently pawing through the RDK so I can setup our sunlight for the V-Ray Sun/Sky to utilize the RDK's sun. There are a couple other things in there I need check out with the RDK( formerly RCM ) as well. Then I need to fix a crash bug with our distributed rendering and change the way I'm dealing with the mapping channels and I think that will be about enough to go into the public beta stage. I'll keep you guys posted with developments as they occur.

[ALTO]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Hi Joe, could you tell me something about displacement in Rhino?
I've tried displacement in VfSU but i don't think this is the best way to use it in Rhino, what i mean is that displacement works better if it's an object properties not a material properties. ( > per object panel! < )

Does it have Keep Continuity option? link

What other parameters are available in Rhino? link

Thanks

[dalomar_cg]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

Right now the Keep Continuity option is not available. This is a must for doing displacemnt on almost anything other than a plane, so its something that we'll get when its released

Here's an image (sorry for it being crap)

[joe_b]

Re: VfR4 / VfR3 SR1

These are the options that the current SDK displacement plugin can use
[*]Edge length - this determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is subdivided into a number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement, slower rendering times and more RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends on the View-dependent parameter below.[*]View-dependent - when this is on, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle edge, in pixels. A value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each subtriangle will be about one pixel long when projected on the screen. When View-dependent is off, Edge length is the maximum subtriangle edge length in world units.[*]Max. subdivs - this controls the maximum subtriangles generated from any triangle of the original mesh. The value is in fact the square root of the maximum number of subtriangles. For example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 = 65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tesselate the original mesh itself into smaller triangles instead. From build 1.45.20 onward, the actual subdivisions for a triangle are rounded up to the nearest power of two (this makes it easier to avoid gaps because of different tesselation on[*]Shift - this specifies a constant, which will be added to the displacement map values, effectively shifting the displaced surface up and down along the normals. This can be either positive or negative.