Auto-saving of irradiance maps through backburner DOES NOT WORK in 3dsmax 7. The problem seems to be in the backburner plugin for 3dsmax 7 which terminates the 3dsmax 7 before VRay can write the maps to disk. We have notified the discreet for the problem and are waiting for a response.
In the meantime, we are thinking of a way to patch VRay to work around this problem (saving the map after each frame, instead of at the end of the rendering or something like that).
This problem is fixed in service pack 1 for 3dsmax 7.
As you sugested the solution I would say - make this an option in future releases - to be able to let Vray save IR map after each frame with number of the frame( like irmap_0001.vmap, irmap_0002.vmap, etc )
. It will be very helpful for us who use ONE animated camera for still shots instead of tons of differerent cameras.
An update: here is what the discreet support team replied:
“This appears to be related to another problem already logged with the backburner system. The rendering team are looking at ways to resolve this currently.”
Take a look at this script for saving out the irmaps every frame.. then i guess you could just set your lightcalcs to render an extra frame at the end and end up with the origional?
I have just been doing some testing and bug fixes for my Imap Control script it works with Max7 and Backburner 2.3 , To render a imap for a fly thru with every nth frame just use the incremental add option, enable network rendering and send it to one machine on the farm . It will save a imap for every frame rendered but it will keep adding as it goes so the last imap saved will be the one you want to use for the fly thru. Then just load it in the “from file” dialogue in V-Ray as normal.
A question for Vlado, is there any problem with merging several imaps together in the viewer? I noticed a lot of coplanar samples when merging 6 maps together, Seemed to render ok but I was wondering if there would be a slowdown from the overlaping samples. Also have you considered adding command line access to the viewer to automate meging of Maps? It would really speed things up to be able to send calc’s to several machines on the farm at the same time to be merged together after.
A question for Vlado, is there any problem with merging several imaps together in the viewer? I noticed a lot of coplanar samples when merging 6 maps together, Seemed to render ok but I was wondering if there would be a slowdown from the overlaping samples.Not really, it should render ok.
Also have you considered adding command line access to the viewer to automate meging of Maps? It would really speed things up to be able to send calc’s to several machines on the farm at the same time to be merged together after.There is command-line access for the most recent version of the viewer on our site.
There is a small update of VRay on the site, 1.46.08, which specifically has an option to save the GI maps (irradiance map, photon map, light map, caustics map) at the end of each frame, instead of at the end of the rendering. That should take care of the problem for now.
How do we get the imap viewer? ive looked through the help pages but cant find anywhere to download this.
reason i ask is ive precalced 5 sections of an animation over the weekend but cant remember if i had the correct layers on for each section (was in a rush)
Check out the Announcements section, it contains a recent topic with a link to the imap viewer; basically this is in the Docs section on the download page on our site.
In really plain and simple terms (I’m a really plain and simple person), could someone please explain exactly how to install the script and make a button? I’ve dragged it into a viewport and nowt seems to happen. I think it says ‘installation complete’, but then what do you do?
:roll: