Vray 3.6 General Questions

[Bendbox]

Hello,

I haven?t used Vray for production work since an earlier version. I am considering purchasing the new Version for Rhino and have some questions.

The recently released 3.6 looks amazing and has brought features into Rhino that I?m unable to do with our other rendering packages (Octane and Thea). Namely, animated proxies, and the Vray Fur. Plus, the UI looks very nice and approachable.

I have been able to answer most of my questions through reading and looking at tutorials, however there are still a few unanswered and I was hoping that I could get the answers here.

My questions are:

1. I would be using the GPU render in Vray exclusively. From what I can tell, it looks production ready with only a few missing features from Vray CPU. Is this a correct assumption?
2. Animation is important for me ? I use Bongo because it never fails that a client will ask for something like a door opening or a cabinet drawer slide out, etc. So, the basic Rhino Animation functions don?t work for my workflow. Does Vray for Rhino work with Bongo?
3. I?m a bit confused on how some of the new animation features work with Vray, like the animated proxies ? it looks like Vray for Rhino has its own animation settings and that it has to record an animation? If so, this concerns me because this would imply that those features, like the animated proxies, would not work within a Bongo animation since a Bongo animation is run via a ?Render Animation? in the Bongo tab. Can you explain this further please? I?d basically like to be able to set up an animation via Bongo with both camera and object animation, but ALSO have animated proxies as well. So, can Vray ?record? a Bongo animation?
4. If Vray will work with Bongo, will it take advantage of the ?single scene load? mentioned in the promotional video? Or is that ONLY for Rhino animation and not Bongo?
5. It looks like there is some functionality between Grasshopper and Vray, which is terrific. Are there plans to continue developing this relationship? Maybe even be able to animate changes in Grasshopper with Vray?
6. I read this article on your blog regarding Vray Next : https://www.chaosgroup.com/blog/next-level-gpu-rendering-in-v-ray-next I was wondering if some of these features/enhancements would also be making their way into Rhino? Is the goal with Vray to continue to make each plugin as feature rich as possible so that each software package has similar or exact features? I ask because, often, packages like 3D Max will get more features that other packages (I realize you probably make more money off of the Max plugin due to more users).
7. It sounds like the Vray clipping plane is a Rhino Clipping Plane that gets converted at render time. If so, does that mean that the Clipping plane can be animated? This, I think comes back to Bongo again, which will animate clipping planes.
8. Can the denoiser be used with animation? Or is it not recommended due to creating artifacts between frames?
9. Do the Rhino Render Effects work? Edge Softening specifically, we use this quite often.
10. Does a single workstation license cover all hardware on a single machine? (Most of our workstations have several graphics cards which is why I ask)
11. I heard there was a dongle required to run Vray, but I don?t see any mention of that on the ?Buy? page of your website. Is it still required?

Thank you for your time.

[Peter.Chaushev]

Hello,

1. V-Ray GPU already supports most features previously available only on CPU. For further info, see:
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...orted+Features
Expect more supported features and performance optimizations with each update.
(https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/.../Release+Notes)

2. V-Ray is compatible with Bongo. You simply need to choose V-Ray from the Bongo renderer dropdown.

3 & 4. V-Ray currently supports camera animation in Rhino.
In Bongo, V-Ray treats each frame as a separate scene, therefore, features which require info about the whole animation sequence do not work - e.g. Motion Blur and Animated proxies.
Our developers will be exploring possible solutions for improved compatibility with Bongo.

5. As with all other aspects of V-Ray for Rhino, our Grasshopper integration is under continued development. Let me know if you have feedback or requests related to it!

6. Our goal is to bring the same V-Ray functionality to all of our products. Some features may be partially or not implemented at all due to host app limitations but the V-Ray core itself is mostly identical. The improvements you see promoted in V-Ray Next will eventually make their way into V-Ray for Rhino as well.

7. There should be no problems with animating clipping planes in Bongo, beside what I already stated in points 3 and 4.

8. Each animation frame will be processed if the Denoiser is enabled. However, this will only denoise the current frame without regards to the whole animation. To avoid any possible flickering or similar inconsistencies, it is recommended to save the rendered frame sequence in multichannel .exr or .vrimg files and then use the standalone Denoiser tool and its option frameBlend (https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...dvancedOptions).
The V-Ray for Rhino Denoiser interface currently does not offer the option to avoid denoising each frame right after being rendered. This will be amended in the next update.
As a workaround, you can currently set up your animation ready for rendering, then open the Asset Editor's Settings panel and save the settings as a .vropt file. Next, open the file with a text editor, find RenderChannelDenoiser and below it the following:
<parameter handler="ComboBoxHandler" listType="none" type="integer" name="mode" label="mode">
<value>2</value>"
Change the value to 0, save the .vropt file, then load it back in your project and this way each frame will only generate the render elements needed by the Denoiser tool without actually denoising, thus saving you some time by denoising only once through vdenoise.exe.

9. The Rhino Render Effects work in V-Ray as they are object attributes and not tied to the render engine itself.

10. One workstation license can be engaged by one single machine at a time, no matter what its hardware composition is. Furthermore, running multiple render processes on a single machine still engage only one license.

11. V-Ray 3 for Rhino comes with Online Licensing. For more details, visit https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/LIC5

Kind regards,
Peter

[Bendbox]

Hi Peter,

Thank you VERY MUCH for taking the time to answer all of my questions, I sincerely appreciate it. The latest Vray for Rhino looks terrific.

I plan on downloading and testing the latest version once I have a break from the deadlines we are trying to fulfill right now. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have a chance to spend some time with Vray and do a solid evaluation. I'm sure I'll be asking more questions at that point.

Best regards,
Ryan