Does VfR use GPU or not?

[Iain]

I'm looking at ways to improve the performance of VfR and am considering an upgrade or a new machine. However, I'm slightly confused by a statement on the help page about the VRay RTEngine - "V-Ray RT in Rhino does not currently support rendering on the GPU" (http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VR2R/VRay+RTEngine). This tallies with my own experience as I haven't noticed any performance difference when switching from CPU to CUDA, although admittedly my current graphics card is a lowly Quadro K600 so perhaps I shouldn't expect much improvement.

If I invest in a high end card will I see a serious improvement in performance?

[fpedrogo]

Hi Iain
We do support RT GPU, however we have some GPU limitation. For example, we do not support:
- per material environment
- environment multiplier
- falloff on the diffuse layer
- infinite plane
- wrapper material
- some procedural maps (like cellular, marble, smoke, etc)

We update the documentation and remove that note.

[gzray]

This is exactly why I am struggling so much with Vray. These properties of RT are not documented anywhere as many other useful features of the software. Pls. Chaosgroup put this basic knowledge into a starters manual! There used to be a manual for an older version, why not update this?

regards,
Gerard

[Iain]

Thanks for your reply, Fernando. I appreciate you making that clear for me. My next task is to find out what the best hardware is - GeForce or Quadro. More confusion beckons!

[Iain]

This is exactly why I am struggling so much with Vray. These properties of RT are not documented anywhere as many other useful features of the software. Pls. Chaosgroup put this basic knowledge into a starters manual! There used to be a manual for an older version, why not update this?

regards,
Gerard

I totally agree Gerard. V-Ray is fantastic but learning how to use it is an absolute nightmare (perhaps not so much if you use Max or Maya). I see from my Forum join date, I've been using VfR for 8 years now and I have only scratched the surface. Admittedly I don't use it day in day out but really I should be much more accomplished than I am. Perhaps I'm just dim but I like to think that a lack of proper manual or training has had something to do with it. Hopefully things will improve with version 3.0, when it arrives.

[fpedrogo]

Hi Guys
I clearly understand your point and want to mention that we are in the process to update our V-Ray documentation. Most important, we are currently working in the new version of V-Ray for Rhino 3.0 and this build will have a completely new and easy to use interface. To give you an idea of what we are working on, the UI will have slider, material quick setting, material library, quality presets, quality quick settings, light quick setting and kind of a light lister and much more. With this new version of V-Ray we are going to have a better documentation and explanation. Right now we don't have information about when we are going to start the beta program.

[renee81]

This is great news,VfR Is a good renderer,I have been using it since the very beginning.While release 2 was an improvement over release 1,it looks like, at last version 3 will bring VfR closer to what is available to others...Max,Maya and the like.
Hopefully it will be sooner than later,because release 2 is showing it's age .

Renee

[Iain]

Sounds good - I look forward to V3. I really hope that the support materials are improved because learning v-ray has been an extremely frustrating process. A decent manual should be the bare minimum. I'll keep my fingers crossed.