wasnt there an article a while back about blur buying some v-ray seats?
I think they have pretty much everything there, hmm except never heard them mention final render. I know they have done some work in VRay there. Maybe Serraph will add some detail.
they used some vray seats back before Brazil had 3d moblur.
We do have several licenses of Vray. I am one of few supervisors (if not the only one) who uses Vray on projects from time to time. When we choose to use it it is amost always on environment renders and only to fill specific needs. Usually to crunch through high poly environments or for scenes that would be a lot easier to build if we used displacement on it. It has been used to render at least some shots, if not all, on about 4 projects. Blurs pipeline is very centered around Brazil which can make it more trouble than its worth sometimes to try to mix passes being rendered from different renderers together. We have also started looking into Mental Ray more as well. Nearly every project in the studio renders at least one pass out of mental ray these days.
Tim J
interesting seraph, let me know if your looking for another vray guy 
need to out number these silly brazil people.
Seraph - any particular reason why you don’t use Vray in production more often? I’m curious to see what you think are it’s limitations.
Thanks for the info Tim, much appreciated 
-dave
In my opinion, Vray is currently superior to Brazil (in its 1.2 version). I have not yet used Brazil 2. I choose to use vray on a project or not for many other reasons besides what it can or can’t do. The biggest reasons are that we have a lot of people all working on a particular shots together. If I use 3d motion blur or displacement or something specific to Vray, then everyone else down the pipeline will have to use it, especially if they need to matte their FX with the environment. Another big reason is that Blur has been a Brazil studio for many years now and most of the tools are built around that. Brazil shaders and Vray shaders don’t work together. Character models are always done with brazil shaders, and a lot of FX are rendered with Scanline. So when deciding to use Vray or not I have to make sure that it doesn’t conflict with any other areas of the pipeline…OR…that all team members know up front that the project will be done with Vray and explain to them why.
Tim J
A side note for those who may not know this, at least one of the two guys who created Brazil worked at Blur when he began development the renderer that came to be known as Brazil. As such, I am sure it met a lot of their specific needs at the time and likely a good reason it is implemented so deep in their pipeline.
Tim, did you do much on Gentlemans duel?
Actually, I was one of a very small team of people who stayed on paying jobs while GD was in production. So while most people were on GD I was on the “Bioshock” trailer cinematic. It can be seen on Gametrailers.com if anyone is interested. Just a heads up about that one though…Its a bit violent, so careful if your watching it at work. To see GD you’ll have to wait until after the Oscars.
Tim J
Guys is there any ideas on using shader SDK Vlado gave us with 1.5 ? Just curious…
P.S. We’re all here from 2003 
is that the right place for that comment paul?
I thought smbd like the one, who works in Blur, can show me an examples of what can be done…
I don’t mind the hijack, was a legitimate question
now if he was asking about the colour of someones underwear then I would prob have a minor objection to it 
-dave
If your asking if anyone at blur has been using the shader SDK, then I’d have to say no. At least not that I’m aware of.
Tim J
Nice work on the Bioshock cinematic. I hear allan mckay did some sweet particles for it. Did his sequence get chopped from the cinematic?
Haha…kinda sounds like your implying his FX aren’t very good. j/k
Actually Allan did work with me once again for Bioshock. Craig Brown did the initial set up for the arm injection FX, and Brandon Riza set up a basic particle motion for the hornet swarm. Allan then took over and pretty much did all the FX work in the entire project after that. Its hard to see in the quicktime, but his FX work with the hornets bursting out of blisters on the arm and swarming is pretty sweet.
Tim J
yeah allans work is crap.
ha haa yeah right!
I wont bag him too much as he will probably hit me next time we meet up
wow, my curiosity got the better of me and I just viewed the Bioshock trailer. AWESOME loved it, good job to all that worked on it
-dave