New Features available?

[RobSteady]

Hi,
just wanted to know if some features will be available in the next VfR-Version.
Maybe you guys can put a "yes" or "no" behind them?

1. Ambient Occlusin (Dirt Material) (!)
2. Material ID Chanel
3. Adjustable IES-Lights
4. Normal Map support

And another thing; I don't know if i'm completely wrong. ???
But when comparing Renderings (no Postproduction!) from VfR with VRay for 3DS Max, I think VfR looks always a little bit more "flat" or washed out and has not the same level of realism...

Maybe someone thinks the same (?)


Rob

[dkendig]

Re: New Features available?

1. Ambient Occlusin (Dirt Material) (!) Yes
2. Material ID Chanel Yes
3. Adjustable IES-Lights Yes
4. Normal Map support No

And another thing; I don't know if i'm completely wrong.
But when comparing Renderings (no Postproduction!) from VfR with VRay for 3DS Max, I think VfR looks always a little bit more "flat" or washed out and has not the same level of realism...

It's the same exact render engine, all we do is hook it up to Rhino. There are some features that are lacking that others utilize in max perhaps?

[Micha_cg]

Re: New Features available?

Devin, could you tell more, why the normal map isn't supported? Is it a Vray core limit?

[dkendig]

Re: New Features available?

So far I haven't seen anything in the sdk that would allow normal maps to work. Haven't really looked in to it at all since it's not a bug, so that's all I know.

[ALTO]

Re: New Features available?

Devin, could you tell more, why the normal map isn't supported? Is it a Vray core limit?

There is a VRayNormalMap texture in the vray core (normal map are correctly supported in the sdk since 2009 i think)

@DKENDIG: Please, don't take this like an offense but i'm getting more and more worried about your answers, you must know everything and more about vray....

[thomthom]

Re: New Features available?

@DKENDIG: Please, don't take this like an offense but i'm getting more and more worried about your answers, you must know everything and more about vray....

ASGVis has not developed the V-Ray engine. ChaosGroup did that. ASGVis developed the plugin that bridge Rhino & SketchUp with V-Ray. They had to relate to the SDK ChaosGroup provided.

The person who probably has the most know-how about the V-Ray engine is Vlado - one of the core developers in ChaosGroup.

However, I'm not sure about their role now that ASGVis was bought up by ChaosGroup ...

[Micha_cg]

Re: New Features available?

General I don't understand, why it is so difficult to write a render plugin. I have the impression ASGvis must code a render engine. From the Renderman standard I know, that for a render plugin only some commands must be written to a RIB file, that will be read by the render engine. For example here, the plastic shader get some parameter and ready:

AttributeBegin
  Attribute "grouping" "string membership" "+Grundriss§62"
  Attribute "identifier" "name" ["Grundriss§62"]
  Surface "VPlastic" "float Diffuse" [1] "float Specular" [0] "float SpecularRoughness" [0.2] "float Reflection" [0] "float ReflectionBlur" [0] "float ReflectionSamples" [1] "string ReflectionName" ["raytrace"] "string ReflectionSpace" ["current"] "string ColorMapName" [""] "float ColorMapBlur" [0] "string SpecularMapName" [""] "float SpecularMapBlur" [0] "string OpacityMapName" [""] "float OpacityMapBlur" [0] "float BumpMax" [0] "string BumpMapName" [""] "float BumpMapBlur" [0] "float[2] TextureSizeXY" [1 1] "float[2] TextureOriginXY" [0 0] "float TextureAngle" [0] "string Projection" ["st"] "string ProjectionSpace" ["shader"] "float[16] ProjectionTransform" [1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1]
  Displacement "null"
  Color [ 0.611765 0.764706 1 ]
  Opacity [ 0.5 0.5 0.5 ]
  PointsPolygons [ 4 ] [0 1 2 3 ]
  "P" [ 3860.24 -11793.5 2400 3860.24 -11793.5 0 4858.24 -11793.5 0 4858.24 -11793.5 2400 ] "N" [ 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 0 -1 0 ] "st" [ 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 ]
 AttributeEnd

or the since a long time missed visibility options for objects would be per Renderman language only some short lines of code:

  Attribute "visibility" "integer camera" 0
  Attribute "visibility" "integer trace" 0
  Attribute "visibility" "integer indirect" 0
  Attribute "visibility" "integer transmission" 0
  Attribute "indirect" "integer prepass" 0

So I suppose so the Vray SDK is much to complex, maybe the Chaosgroup should spend more developing power on it so that the plugin developer need less time.

Back to the normal map. Maybe it's a little bit work to implement normal maps only. Maybe only a line code must be added like

Surface "VrayNormalMap" ....

[dkendig]

Re: New Features available?

I just checked the sdk again, nope, nothing called VrayNormalMap in there, sorry. UI and the sdk don't go hand in hand Alto, what you see in V-Ray for Max, or the V-Ray for Max documentation, doesn't 100% reflect the underlaying code. It's likely that we will need to do some sort of work with the displacement plugin in order to get normal maps to work, but like I said, it's not a bug, it's a feature request, so we haven't really looked in to it.

[ALTO]

Re: New Features available?

Maybe this particular Texture is not included, but i'm sure that support for Normal Map was rewritten in Vray SDK 1.7 (more than 2 years ago)

[dkendig]

Re: New Features available?

Yeah, it's possible that there's a way to do it with the current sdk that we have. Again, that is a feature request, not a bug, so we haven't really tried to get it to work yet.