Overall bummed about VRay for SketchUp

[ValeroStudio]

I've been a fan for many years. I remember the version 1.3 days and I have seen the software develop so much into a great engine... but... I really struggle using it on large SketchUp projects and I find that it runs laggy and creates more problems than it is worth sometimes. I find that once I start using V-Ray I get sticky performance and crashes where my file will hang up. I find that the performance boost in SketchUp 2024 is lost in the loss of performance using VRay. Opening legacy files or importing models from the Warehouse creates a lot of issues with materials and rendering performance. V-Ray for SketchUp is powerful but maybe too much for its own good inside of SketchUp. The render quality cant be beat but I do find myself using other faster engines because I just don't want the deal with the headaches and slow render times. Venting my frustrations I guess. I am at a crossroads.

[ValeroStudio]

Crashes when importing textures, Exception Errors when saving, very slow when pasting items into my file ... I will keep posting all of my gripes as I encounter them.

[ValeroStudio]

Chaos Cloud used to be a very fast upload... now it takes 10x longer than it used to.

[ValeroStudio]

SketchUp 'hanging on' to a file and not able to close after using VRay.
SketchUp VFB becoming weird and displaying as a window that looks like something from 1995 Windows 3.1

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi ValeroStudio,

Thank you for the feedback.
You are correct in the sense that most of the time we focus on adding new features instead of boosting the performance of the existing workflows.
However, refactoring our code is also something we invest time in and if we identify something which slows down your SketchUp-side work significantly, it'll become a top priority to fix/change.

I really struggle using it on large SketchUp projects and I find that it runs laggy and creates more problems than it is worth sometimes.
I find that once I start using V-Ray I get sticky performance and crashes where my file will hang up.

Does this happen only during interactive or production rendering or also while editing the model?
Note that it is expected for the rendering process to slow down your system and there is not much we can do about this without slowing down the raytracing.

I find that the performance boost in SketchUp 2024 is lost in the loss of performance using VRay.

The performance of the SU viewport shouldn't be at all affected by V-Ray.
By the way here's a reliable way to test if something is caused by V-Ray or not:
- Open your project and test the performance without activating V-Ray (if you don't open the V-Ray windows and don't click in the menu or toolbar V-Ray remain inactive)
- Activate V-Ray by opening the Asset Editor and test for comparison
If there is a noticeable difference in SketchUp's performance after activation, this is a problem.

Opening legacy files or importing models from the Warehouse creates a lot of issues with materials and rendering performance.

We are doing our best to address all such issues.
If you have specific examples, please share them.
With that said, we should maybe consider ignoring all the V-Ray data when importing something from the warehouse.
I'll have to think about that a little more and consult with the devs but still, thanks for bringing it up.

Crashes when importing textures, Exception Errors when saving, very slow when pasting items into my file ... I will keep posting all of my gripes as I encounter them.

Can you please share how you import textures to make V-Ray crash?
Also would it be possible to share a file that crashes when saving?
The paste slowness is something we are aware of but I'm not sure if there is a solution for it.

Chaos Cloud used to be a very fast upload... now it takes 10x longer than it used to.

This is something I'll talk to the Cloud team about.

SketchUp 'hanging on' to a file and not able to close after using VRay.

Again, I haven't experienced that.
Are you sure that V-Ray is involved in this.
To test it you can disable V-Ray by going to Extensions > V-Ray > Help > License > Release License and then try closing the file.
I've noticed that SU is itself quite slow closing large files.

SketchUp VFB becoming weird and displaying as a window that looks like something from 1995 Windows 3.1

This is unfortunately a VFB bug which is still there (not easy to track).
I'll revisit the topic with the Core dev team.

V-Ray for SketchUp is powerful but maybe too much for its own good inside of SketchUp. The render quality cant be beat but I do find myself using other faster engines because I just don't want the deal with the headaches and slow render times. Venting my frustrations I guess. I am at a crossroads.

If we intentionally take away V-Ray features it will take away its strength.
Realism and quality are relative terms.
At the end of the day it's up to the artist to use the tools in a way that leads to the high quality.
If we limit the tools you'll have hard time reaching this quality.
The rendering performance is another topic. V-Ray is among the best performing ray-tracers on the market.
Comparing it to a rasterizer is not fair even though I understand that is specific situations the visuals can be similar.
Can you please share which rendering tools are you using as an alternative to V-Ray? There is most probably something useful we can learn from them moving forward.

Regards,
Konstantin

[ValeroStudio]

Does this happen only during interactive or production rendering or also while editing the model?
Note that it is expected for the rendering process to slow down your system and there is not much we can do about this without slowing down the raytracing.

I am not running interactive of production rendering at the time. It feels like something is 'holding' on to resources after I have cancelled a rendering. It's hard to explain, but the performance before starting V-Ray is good and then after starting and cancelling a render, it seems to be slowed down until I close SketchUp and restart it. Not all the time, only in some cases.

Can you please share how you import textures to make V-Ray crash?
Also would it be possible to share a file that crashes when saving?
The paste slowness is something we are aware of but I'm not sure if there is a solution for it.

It's a very isolated thing that happens every now and then. I get a hard crash. It is hard to replicate and may not be related to V-Ray. I also had a hard crash the other day when I clicked Hide V-Ray Widgets, isolated, but it was a hard crash.

As far as the hanging thing, again, it feels like VRay is holding on to something and I can't close SketchUp with getting a crash with a BugSplat - this has lingered for a long time and I have submitted many many BugSplat reports, even in SU2023.

If we intentionally take away V-Ray features it will take away its strength.
Realism and quality are relative terms.
At the end of the day it's up to the artist to use the tools in a way that leads to the high quality.
If we limit the tools you'll have hard time reaching this quality.
The rendering performance is another topic. V-Ray is among the best performing ray-tracers on the market.
Comparing it to a rasterizer is not fair even though I understand that is specific situations the visuals can be similar.
Can you please share which rendering tools are you using as an alternative to V-Ray? There is most probably something useful we can learn from them moving forward.

I 100% agree with you that V-Ray is the best. Some of my best work has been accomplished with VRay. When speed is more important that quality, Enscape is my Forum I get less crashes, can work while the engine is running, and seems to easier to fake things. I have been trying to implement Vantage is my workflow but there are some issues with using Vantage as an engine that you can run while modeling. First issue is that you can't save your SketchUp model with it running. That's a big one.

I will try to replicate and send along anything I can to help in the bug hunt process. As always, Thanks for your thoughtful response Konstantin.

[konstantin_chaos]

I am not running interactive of production rendering at the time. It feels like something is 'holding' on to resources after I have cancelled a rendering. It's hard to explain, but the performance before starting V-Ray is good and then after starting and cancelling a render, it seems to be slowed down until I close SketchUp and restart it. Not all the time, only in some cases.

We will have to reproduce this to investigate.
As I explained in my previous post activating V-Ray, not rendering, is expected to slow things down to some extent.
This is due to the observers we register.
They monitor material and scene changes, ensuring that new V-Ray items are properly synced.
This synchronisation can surely be optimised but can never be 100% removed (it is the only way we can integrate some of our features).
To test this, the next time this happens try releasing the V-Ray license instead of restarting SketchUp.
If that fixes the slowdown, I would suspect the observers.

I 100% agree with you that V-Ray is the best. Some of my best work has been accomplished with VRay. When speed is more important that quality, Enscape is my Forum I get less crashes, can work while the engine is running, and seems to easier to fake things. I have been trying to implement Vantage is my workflow but there are some issues with using Vantage as an engine that you can run while modeling. First issue is that you can't save your SketchUp model with it running. That's a big one.

The Save issue with Vantage is actually caused by a SketchUp limitation that we have reported and is related to the fact we parent the Vantage window to SketchUp.
A workaround for this would be to start Vantage separately and establish a custom Live Link with it (the Customize Live Link port has to match the Vantage port configuration, which I believe it does by default).

[ValeroStudio]

Another question I had was about the V-Ray purge tool. What is this purging exactly? Is it only VRay items such as VRay Materials and VRay Lights not being used? I was refraining from using SketchUp purge with VRay projects and only using the VRay one but recently realized that the VRay purgewas not removing components not being used in a model and I was suffering from major file bloat.

[ValeroStudio]

A workaround for this would be to start Vantage separately and establish a custom Live Link with it (the Customize Live Link port has to match the Vantage port configuration, which I believe it does by default).

This is a godsend !!!! Why not just make this the default way Vantage links through SketchUp via the plugin? This is great! Thanks for this tip!