V-Ray RT GPU Problems

Hello,

I think the SP3 is probably the best version of VFS until now, very stable and no annoying bugs (great job of the development team). But there's something I'd like to see working better, and it's V-Ray RT with GPU. It still need to be improved. I've been trying it this last days and I've been getting very weird lighting when using default sun and sky. The materials with BRDF layers or V-Ray materials always render black. Spherical and omni light's seem very weird too(the other ones work fine). It seems that some procedural textures are not suported and there's some issues with proxies whith alpha maps (need to do some further tests on those ones). In the other hand, it works fine with dome light's and HDRI's and standard materials without BRDF layer.
I believe that it will be hard to achieve the speed that GPU can provide using only the CPU, so getting RT with GPU working better would be amazing to get real fast feedback of the scene. I've seen some videos of V-Ray RT in 3ds max with some high end graphics card and it's just awesome. And there's the fact that it's not so expensive to get a good GPU and much more expensive to have more CPU's.
So my question is: When we'll be seeing these improvements happen?

[dkendig]

We are planning on tightening the gap between V-Ray for SketchUp and V-Ray for Max in our 3.0 release as much as possible. GPU rendering is certainly huge, and it's something we will be focusing on for our 3.0 release. I can't say exactly what will be implemented or not, but it is on our list. I'm glad to hear that the latest service release is working well for you, I hope you are taking advantage of SketchUp 2015 x64, it's a breath of fresh air.

[caecarvalho@hotmail.com]

Hi Devin,

Thanks for the fast answer. I red in sketchucation forums that you already started the new development cicle! Thats very exciting news! I believe that the 64bit version brought new possibilities. There are so many things in v-ray 3.0 that I'd like to see working in VFS!
Talking about more interactivity, I think something that deserves to be improved is the interface. Not the visuals but the way we interact with it. There are so many "ok" buttons to press before you actually see something happening on the RT render. For exemple, when you edit a color or a texture map or even a light, you don't immediately see the results, but you have to press that "ok" button (and close the dialog), and if you don't like the changes, you have to open the dialog again. Would be nice to see the changes in RT happen without having to press "ok" and close the dialog (This already happens with the options dialog).
I'd go even further with lights, adding a light editor, something like the material editor, that would list all the lights in the scene and be able to edit them. (Like a v-ray light lister with all editable light parameters).
Other thing that would be very welcome is the possibility to drag'n drop or copy and paste maps and colors, and to be able to slide up and down the values(Ex: in reflection glossines slot you have the up and down arrows that by clicking you can increase or decrease the values, but it's click by click.It would be nice to be able to click and drag up and down to increase or decrease the values!)
I think this changes would bring a lot more speed in the whole workflow!
Anyway, I believe other people already told this things, but as a new cicle begins it's never too much to remember!hehe...

Best

Caetano

[tedvitale]

While V-Ray RT GPU mode is available in the dialogue, it is still under development. We are aware of the issues you're facing and are working to resolve them, but until that time, treat RT GPU in SketchUp as a beta tool, not as a fully functioning feature.

[peerman]

For your light list, you can use the outliner dialog build in Sketchup. It's a list of every object in the scene. I know it's not ideal but maybe it can help for now?

Regards

[caecarvalho@hotmail.com]

For your light list, you can use the outliner dialog build in Sketchup. It's a list of every object in the scene. I know it's not ideal but maybe it can help for now?

Regards

Hi Peerman, thanks for the tip. Actualy I already do that and also to speed up things a bit more, I've assigned a keyboard shortcut to the edit light comand so I just need to select the light in the outliner or in the scene and hit shift '1' to bring up the light editor. But still not ideal. The problem is that you always have to hit the ok button (and it automatically closes the dialog) to see the changes in the RT rendering. So it's like, one have to open and close the editor lots of times to get the results wanted. And other problem is that you need to do this to every single light you want to edit, like always opening and closing the dialog. If there was a light editor, I mean just like the material editor but instead of a list of materials it would have a list of lights, and when clicking on them you'd have all the controls available. (It'd be more complete then the v-ray light lister in 3ds max, that has only a few controls). And no more ok buttons in any instance (not even inside the maps)to see the changes take place in the RT! That would be a dream!! hehe