Unknown Light Source in V-Ray for Rhino Trial

[Mandrake Sterling]

I've been working with the 30-day trial and have been stumped by what appears to be a phantom sun light source. When I open a new file there seems to be default lights that I can't get rid of. If I add a sun direct light source, objects cast two shadows- the stronger of the two comes from this phantom sun. There are also many glare spots on glass materials as though there are a bunch of point lights present. I have tried turning off all of the lights in the option dialog and that has no effect. When I have worked with V-ray in the past, I was able to switch on the GI only option to defeat these default lights (which also turned off any sun that I added) but now I can't even get that option to work.
What am I missing??
Also, I have been having trouble V-Ray crashing from memory allocation failures with certain files when the demand approaches 1.7 G. I have 4 G's of memory, nothing else is running, so it should not be a problem. Any thoughts on this problem would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

Paul Harman

[Micha_cg]

Re: Unknown Light Source in V-Ray for Rhino Trial

default light - disable it at the global switches and if you use a physical sky, than go to the sky settings and change the sun from "default" to the name of your sun light (you see it at a list)

memory crash - it's a general Rhino limit of your 32bit OS. You can try to enable the 3GB switch (->google), use some tricks to keep the memory usage low (->forum search) or/and jump to a 64bit OS (I use XP64).

Do you use Rhino 3 or 4?

[Mandrake Sterling]

Re: Unknown Light Source in V-Ray for Rhino Trial

Thanks for responding to my post. I discovered that I had received a reply to a similar post I had created awhile back that referenced a download of an older version of the default render settings. I have been playing with this and things are going better. Switching on and off lights actually has a noticeable response and I can do GI only renderings now. When I do add a sun, areas in direct sunlight appear bleached out. I am using the standard camera and not the physical camera. Do I adjust the gamma to correct this? If so which one? Input or output?
Regarding the crashing, I have been looking into the 32 vs. 64-bit issue. The computer is new and I can probably get the OS exchanged to XP64 if I act quickly. How will this help (beyond allowing me to add more memory in the future)? Rhino's website says that version 4 runs as a 32 bit application on a 64 bit OS. Is there any compatibility issues? With Rhino, or V-Ray? I also use Photoshop CS2 and AutoCAD 2006 and I am not sure if they are supported on a 64 bit OS.
Thanks again for your help.
Paul

[Micha_cg]

Re: Unknown Light Source in V-Ray for Rhino Trial

bright sun light - I use color mapping "reinhard" burn 0.8 allways and if the sun is to bright, than I set the multiplier at a low value. Don't use the gamma correction (should be 2.2).

I like XP64 - works stable without problems. At XP64 Rhino 4 should allow to use 3.2..3.6GB. My test show me, that 5GB RAM allow to use 3.6GB for Rhino, at 4GB RAM you should get 3.2GB RAM usage.
If you use Rhino 3, there is a tool allow Rhino 3 to use the same RAM. Last I posted the link somewhere here.

Photoshop CS works fine at XP64, about AutoCad I don't know anything. Some firewalls don't work with 64bit - I use AVG. Also I had a problem with no 64bit support with a new external hdd MyBook from WD. I changed it back and bought a Iomega drive.