Wish: Rhino Scene in Grasshopper

[seltzdesign]

We have been using the Render in Rhino component for Grasshopper a lot, since its an easy way to add something from Grasshopper into Rhino. It get's much harder if you want to add things from Rhino into Grasshopper, so that you can rely on using the Render Image or Render Animation in Grasshopper functionality.

Basically, you have to export everything in Rhino as a .vrscene file and then load that in Grasshopper. But that is actually quite a buggy process where it can happen that it actually doesn't want to export a vrscene file at all without any warning, or it includes geometry on hidden layers in your .vrscene file or it just refuses to load the vrscene file in Grasshopper on another machine.

So either we need a simple way of adding the Rhino Scene into Grasshopper by having a "Rhino Scene" component for Grasshopper or we need ways of changing certain things programmatically in V-Ray for Rhino (mainly the file path and name).

But it definitely needs some better ways of adding things from Rhino to Grasshopper.

Thanks for considering.

[Peter.Chaushev]

It get's much harder if you want to add things from Rhino into Grasshopper, so that you can rely on using the Render Image or Render Animation in Grasshopper functionality.

Have you tried the V-Ray Render in Project component's 'Render Animation in Rhino' context menu action?
If it doesn't suit your needs, could you please go into more detail (or share a scene as an example) of exactly you find limiting?

Kind regards,
Peter

[nikolay.bakalov]

So either we need a simple way of adding the Rhino Scene into Grasshopper by having a "Rhino Scene" component for Grasshopper

This reminds me the time when we started designing our components in a first place. I totally agree with you, and I think I understand the problems that people try to solve.
We were particularly upset with the fact that you cannot pick lights and blocks from Rhino. Lights - especially. That's why we have the LightRigs and the Lights as separate components (all light types will be available soon).

It was decided that we shall focus on the V-Ray functionality that is actually an added value to Grasshopper. Widening the options for picking Rhino objects in Grasshopper is simply not our job to do.
From our perspective it is a McNeel plugin for McNeel software and extending its capabilities outside the V-Ray context is simply waste of effort. If McNeel has decided they don't want such a feature - they might have good reasons for that. I cannot blame them on this decision.

We were considering allowing picking block instances for a while. However possible complications, and the continuous support we would have needed to provide for such a non V-Ray context looks terrible from PM point of view.

Furthermore

But that is actually quite a buggy process where it can happen that it actually doesn't want to export a vrscene file at all without any warning, or it includes geometry on hidden layers in your .vrscene file or it just refuses to load the vrscene file in Grasshopper on another machine.

There are way to improve the process. An option for hidden geometry is a great idea. For file paths problems, I suggest using "strip paths" option.

As Peter mentioned, I also will be glad to see what exact workflows you have the most problems with. If .vrscene does not do the trick, we could try other ways (heavy scripting probably involved).

Thanks