Hi there !
first sorry for my bad english 
When you use Displacement in Vray ( Shader or operator) disable the filtering of the bitmap. The gain is really good !
sorry if this tips has already been posted
thx
Zak
Interesting. Massive rendertime saving, there.
I do this on all bitmaps too, the difference in quality is significant - especially at glancing angles.
disable filtering in the actual bitmap texture slot, Or in vraydisplacement settings filter bitmap?
looking at his image there id assume in the material slot
O yes sorry I didnt expand the thumbnail
Is that just for displacements?
Ive read a few posts where people are suggesting that they disable filtering on all of their textures but am not sure why.
I do it on all these days for a few reasons;
-it speeds up displacement,
-it massively speeds up rendering of opacity maps on things such as leaves,
-it massively improves texture quality at glancing angles because the vray AA filters take care of sampling any noise produced by the texture map,
-it’s easier to use a script to turn off all filtering in your bitmapss than go through trying to work out which ones you do/don’t want to have filtering on.
I also disable it on pretty much all textures.
Now and again in animations i’ll go back in and turn it on for a couple of problem areas, but that’s minimal. Usually from using very contrasted maps in reflection/glossy slots and using normal maps at the same time. The AA cant quite get it smooth enough, but in that case pyrimidal with a blur of 0.2 works and keeps it nice & sharp.
Are there any decent books available that explain a little how things work in vray ‘under the hood’?
I was always refering to Boaz Livnys mental ray book if I needed some more understanding of how things work in MR and why. I also have T Driemeyers - ‘rendering with mental ray’ which I dipped into now and then.
Disabling the filtering may not be the best idea always; you can try turning off the 3ds Max Bitmap pager (always keep this off) or using VRayHDRI - it may handle things a little better.
Best regards,
Vlado
Do you know of any books that cover this? Id love to gain a better understanding of vray. I admit I’m kind of winging it a bit at the moment.
There is this - http://www.francescolegrenzi.com/blog/static.php?page=vray\_guide\_eng
Although you can get by with spot 3d - not as easy to take in start to finish, but easier to jump around to double check which direction a number is supposed to move in. they really do cover everything you need to know about vray.
Do you have the script that turns off the Bitmap Pager? My understanding is, after release 2013, you can’t directly turn it off/on in the UI. [quote=“ghiom3d, post:7, topic:41353, username:ghiom3d”]
Disabling the filtering may not be the best idea always; you can try turning off the 3ds Max Bitmap pager (always keep this off) or using VRayHDRI - it may handle things a little better.
Best regards,
Vlado
[/quote]
Thanks for the suggestion - I would have bought it but its only available as an ebook, the book looks good, and ill probably buy it. It shows lots of examples but does it explain why things work in a particular way? For example “here is a conceptual diagram of how this shadow algorithm works compared to this, here you can see why this one doesnt work for volumetrics, here is why you get self shadowing artifacts” blah blah…
I can’t rate Boaz’s book enough for mr.
I really liked the book and I got a LOT out of it. I’m the kind of person that loves to read about theory even thought I rarely understand what I am reading. He has lots of images that illustrate the topic well and the effects many of the settings. Everyday, I am learning more and more about the inner workings and hope to someday have the level of understanding that many users here have.
It gave me a great base of knowledge to work from and is a great reference tool. That being said, with all of the changes coming down the line with VRay 3, I don’t know how much of the book will still be relevant. I was unable to attend Siggraph this year so I missed out on most of the new information about VRay 3.
As a side note, I wish I could get a version of the ebook. Would be a lot easier to transport than the book! 
Hehe fair enough, i like to write notes and stick post-it notes in important parts. I also emailed the guy a while ago - the book is rasterized so searching won’t be possible either. That was kind of what deterred me. But then I guess you can’t really go wrong for 25 euro.
Read it in order, and then use spot3d as a supplement when you remember something from it a week later but not the exact details. When you get to the spot3d page it will remind you of the details about what you read in the book.