A couple of things I love about *cough*maxwell*cough* are the physical sky / sun and the simplicity of the mat presets.
I find it very hard personally to get the same “quality and feel” of natural light using VRay but it’s probably more me than the limits of the renderer.
The predefined mats would be a bonus if implemented
VRay is far superior in every other aspect and will always be my first weapon of choice. If the physical sky / sun was introduced then I would drop the toy in a flash.
Well, with the new dome light additions, you can drop a good HDRI environment and get very natural results.
Other than that, there is a VRaySky environment map in the works, but it will never be as good as a photo-captured sky (a point that is valid for Maxwell as well).
hmm… i’m not sure if a hdr enviroment is the best solution over a parametric skylightsystem for two reasons:
1a. A parametric skylightsystem can be animated ..this is definetly a big advantage.
1b. you can change the mood of the scene by changing the sky and suncolor.
1c. you could add athmospheric effect like fog, dust …
2. The output quality of a paramametric system is always the same and is not dependent to the quality of the hdr. ..i know what i’m talking about
i would like to see a basic skylightsystem included in vray. The maxwell images with daylight are so beautifull, i’m not sure if vray can be setup that easy with this quality of output.
vlado, if you are even going to build a vray sun system with a visible sun,
please implement an option to get local solar time,
instead of only standard meridian times, like the max sunsystem does.
forgive me if i misundestand but, if nextlimit has patent on its invension and its features physical sky being one of them, showing this same feature in a cometitive render is imho stealing from original creator.
Maybe I dont get the whole license issue…
They probably have a copyright on their system not the actual concept of a physical sky. After all, you could call the sky system that is built into max a 'physical" sky as well, right? Vray’s method of doing it would be on their own system.
I dont think Next Limit has a patent on the idea of a physical sky setup. How would that be any different then photon mapping for irradiance mapping? Or maybe even skylight for that matter.
If their code is copyrighted, then cebas can’t use their code without permission.
I doubt cebas is copying their code.
If they patented their process of calculating a skylight system, then cebas could be in trouble, IF cebas used the same process for calculating a skylight system. If they use a different process (just like there are different ways of calculating GI) then they are in the clear.
If they have a patent on the idea of a real skylight system, then cebas and everyone who implements a real skylight system would be in trouble. But, software patents are not legal in the EU (yet) and so there’s ways around this issue.
If maxwell is taking someone’s public siggraph papers on how to create a real skylight setup, and coding their implentation of it, then its perfectly ok for cebas to do the same thing off the same set of papers (or different ones). Just like both max and maya have loft tools.
Make more sense? Remember, patent and copyright are different things.
I believe both Maxwell and finalRender are using the same approach. I’m almost sure for Maxwell, since many of the parameters (turbidity, ozone etc) coincide with those in the paper; for finalRender, I can only guess by the images, but they look close enough.
Further on, the “physical sky” idea goes back well before Maxwell appeared - for example, Radiance has a sort of a daylight system.
well, I don’t care about copyrights…
the main thing is that vray has a sun and sky system!!! yeahhh
great news, vlado your the best! can’t wait to test this.
Vlado, I cant wait to test this out!
Have almost been considering making the shift to maxwell, but with this being implimented for vray i wont waste my time!
Marko Dabrovic had a wonderfull collection of usefull links about rendertheory: http://www.rna.hr/links-sky.htm
I know this linkpage since 1998 and i guess it’s only the top of an eisberg.
anyway, vlado what i ever wanted to ask you :
How much did the Radiance technology influenced the first betaversions of vray? .. i always wonder how similar vray performed the i-maps.
nice