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Optimized render serttings cheat sheet


philvanderloo
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I disagree and agree at the same time about solid rocks. Yes it is quick and easy to use, but some of the settings really baffle me, and cause stupidly, over the top, render settings.

 

I control the quality of my renders using the color threshold, and GI presets, that's it. Occasionally I'll turn off AA when doing real fast renders.

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You're going to hear me say just about the same thing that you can find in every other "vray settings" thread...

 

1 - Every scene is different, be it interior, exterior, high end or test. Heck, even the light cache is resolution dependant.

 

2 - Solid Rocks, whilst I've heard good things about it as mentioned by Dean, it has been known to not get it right every time, which brings me on to my third and most important point...

 

3 - Learn the software. If you don't learn it, how can you possibly fix it when things go wrong? How can you know how to optimise your render settings? Honestly just sit and read through the VRay manual, it's not that arduous a read to be honest, and you'll be enlightened by the end of it and will be able to create your own setups that best suit your scenes. Yeah, you might have to read it a couple of times, and still to this day I refer back to it every once in a while just to make sure I'm on the right track but it is absolutely the best investment of time when it comes to learning a render package, otherwise you're just shooting in the dark.

 

 

It's not that I don't think render presets have a place, but I feel that place is when it comes to test renders/default setups and as starting points for tweaking.

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Chris is correct you really need to understand the settings if you’re going to depend on Vray to produce professional work. If you don't understand the relationships between what you’re seeing and how the settings can affect it you’re just playing with fire and it will burn you. The best thing you can do is look through the Vray manual and experiment, it will take time but you’ll be better off in the long run.

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I refuse to follow setting default guides. I am currently in the stage of trial and error and I love doing and learning Vray/3D max slowly as I really enjoy the process.

 

I want to be an Interior Designer after my degree through my own learning not some CHEAT SHEET. (Though it will be useful when we r rushing deadlines) haha.

 

 

Cheers

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3 - Learn the software. If you don't learn it, how can you possibly fix it when things go wrong? How can you know how to optimise your render settings? Honestly just sit and read through the VRay manual, it's not that arduous a read to be honest, and you'll be enlightened by the end of it and will be able to create your own setups that best suit your scenes. Yeah, you might have to read it a couple of times, and still to this day I refer back to it every once in a while just to make sure I'm on the right track but it is absolutely the best investment of time when it comes to learning a render package, otherwise you're just shooting in the dark.

.......

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I refuse to follow setting default guides. I am currently in the stage of trial and error and I love doing and learning Vray/3D max slowly as I really enjoy the process.

 

I want to be an Interior Designer after my degree through my own learning not some CHEAT SHEET. (Though it will be useful when we r rushing deadlines) haha.

 

 

Cheers

 

This is kind of of a wasteful idea. Defaults, cheat sheets, and guidelines exist for a reason. They give you a starting point that then you can go and tweak as needed. But if you really don't know vray, and you just start fiddling with settings, then you are just looking like a chimp trying to fly a spaceship. You waste incredible amounts of time trying to make the wheel a bit more rounder. Vray has been around for many many years now and great guidelines exist, so be smart and use them. That's a much better employable trait than some lone wolf who learned really bad rendering habits.

 

Should you just blindly use the Universal settings? No, that's wasteful on the other end. It's not about tweaking and fiddling, but understanding why you are tweaking and fiddling.

 

One of the better guidelines out there is this one; http://www.cggallery.com/tutorials/vray_optimization/

 

For tests, use the lowest possible settings. Do you really need AA and anything more than a fixed rate of 1 to see lighting? An old animation supervisor once said that if you spend more then 30 seconds for a test render you are wasting your time and the company's time.

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Just get SolidRocks, there's no shame in it. The "wrong" settings in it are vastly overstated.

 

All the preaching about "learning teh softz properly" is super tiring. It's what I read daily at ChaosForum from people who still fail at making single good looking image, it's absurdly funny if not offending. Yes there's truth in it but it does apply under circumstances, not to everyone who just wants nice picture.

 

Or get easier renderer, there are quite too many now to choose from. Also very valid option these days.

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Just get SolidRocks, there's no shame in it. The "wrong" settings in it are vastly overstated.

 

All the preaching about "learning teh softz properly" is super tiring. It's what I read daily at ChaosForum from people who still fail at making single good looking image, it's absurdly funny if not offending. Yes there's truth in it but it does apply under circumstances, not to everyone who just wants nice picture.

 

I think it's fine to freestyle it and not learn the settings if you aren't in a production environment, but the reality is that when shit hits the fan and you're getting unfathomable error messages you need to know where to be looking to sort them out. I really don't think there is room for freestyling it in a production environment, because whilst you may get away with it for quite a while it will at some point catch you out and potentially be very costly.

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People always looking for the easy way out..........please dont call your self an artist then as well.

 

Thats the human civilization, thats way we have all those devices...and artcrafts.

Solidrock is the bad way for beginers, I agree, as they will have no image about whats goin on.

But if you are expirienced user, I do not see any reason, why should not use it.

At the end, its everyone's own choice...

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I think it's fine to freestyle it and not learn the settings if you aren't in a production environment, but the reality is that when shit hits the fan and you're getting unfathomable error messages you need to know where to be looking to sort them out. I really don't think there is room for freestyling it in a production environment, because whilst you may get away with it for quite a while it will at some point catch you out and potentially be very costly.

 

And this is something you are telling to me or what ? Because I've spent around 1000 +/- hours figuring out every quirk of Vray. And it's absolutely not something I am proud of or what.

 

I am answering to the original poster, who, by any means, from all previous threads, doesn't seem like "production" (amazing word) "artist", seems like he just wants some picture for whatever it is his bussiness.

 

Telling him to spend 10s of hours reading all conflicting blogs about proper sampling techniques seem downright out of way. Seems like it works amazingly for whole ChaosForum where every second day someone comes crying back to Vlado why his scene renders for 2 days when he just did everything Akin and Grant (nice guys though, I am talking about the use though) told him.

 

It's like pre-2006, where everyone who would use god forbid "stock models", would be pointed finger at for "cheating".

 

Vray 3.0 already has slider for presets. If he doesn't own it though, then get SolidRocks. There are more imporant stuff than listening and pleasing forum's bandwagon.

 

 

People always looking for the easy way out..........please dont call your self an artist then as well.

 

I am glad people need conform to certain ridiculous stone-set dogma to get forum acknowledgment. Hard=Art, I get it.

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Telling him to spend 10s of hours reading all conflicting blogs about proper sampling techniques seem downright out of way.

 

On the contrary, I said to read the manual/documentation. As you said, too many of the blogs provide completely conflicting views on rendering setups and will only confuse matters more. By reading the documentation and seeing how things work you can better evaluate which blogs to trust/take advice from, and which not to.

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On the contrary, I said to read the manual/documentation. As you said, too many of the blogs provide completely conflicting views on rendering setups and will only confuse matters more. By reading the documentation and seeing how things work you can better evaluate which blogs to trust/take advice from, and which not to.

 

Alright, I can agree with that. The manual is quite short, with good examples.

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Sure everything has a use, I dont use vray so dont know the product but its not a good way to start IMO. Thats the way I feel about it as some feel different bout it. Support that kind of stuff and the industry will be useless in due course, then the preset market grows and anybody will be able to do your job with the push of a button, and the work becomes cheap..

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It's really simple in my mind. Solidrocks is a tool, but it won't make your render great so don't expect it to. Sure you can get a good preset, but if you use shoddy models, lighting, textures, and camera composition then that perfectly noiseless render doesn't mean much. There is so much more out there for you to concern your production time with, so if you can offload it to a pre-built preset, then go for it. I am in no way worried about Solid Rocks taking my jerb.

 

Solid Rocks took my job!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80D7RRquPww

 

The people who use it effectively have a much better grasp on what makes a great render than what Solid Rocks actually did for that. It's what you put into Solid Rocks, not what comes out.

 

Should you learn every nook and cranny of Vray? No, there is about a handful of very critical things to know that can affect your render time and are the source of noise/blotchies. Those settings you should known by memory. The rest of it is what I call book knowledge, which means as long as you know where to look to find it then you really don't need to commit it to memory.

 

The reason why there is so much conflicting information, keeping to the blogs that are from people who have proven to know what they are doing, out there is that with rendering, THERE IS NO 100% RIGHT ANSWER. Shocking I know, so shocking I made it in caps and bold. I even underlined it for extra impact. You have to take those blogs with a grain of salt (and most of the good ones say that right at the top that there is no perfect solution) and using your own knowledge of Vray, and your own personal needs and preferences for what you consider to be your target render, and distill all of that information down.

 

With all of the fight shows on TV, I want to see a season of the UFC Ultimate Fighter: Team How to Vray versus Team Learn Vray ya Noob.

Edited by VelvetElvis
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anybody will be able to do your job with the push of a button, and the work becomes cheap..

 

This is the most pointless sentiment that ever existed, I think it exists for 150 years now ?!

 

It builds upon the premise that value of work is created purely through distiction of how many people can master it through technological means, some sort of twisted mercantilistic theory.

Did digital photography phased out the whole market of photography ? Did Magnum Agency gone bankrupt ?

 

If anyone's bussiness exists for sole reason that person learned to "push buttons" and not through his creative endeavor, he deserves to bankrupt anyway, that's just market cleansing, or evolution.

 

If ever (and I do believe it will eventually happen, just not that soon), we get a software, where not only do we not need to push single "win/awesome button", but we can purely just use imagination, than that will be beyond all means only good thing.

 

I do really hope everyone who fears he will loose job to technological advancement to loose that job so he can collect the remaining parts of his critical thinking and start something else with fresh outlook on life.

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This is the most pointless sentiment that ever existed, I think it exists for 150 years now ?!

 

It builds upon the premise that value of work is created purely through distiction of how many people can master it through technological means, some sort of twisted mercantilistic theory.

Did digital photography phased out the whole market of photography ? Did Magnum Agency gone bankrupt ?

 

If anyone's bussiness exists for sole reason that person learned to "push buttons" and not through his creative endeavor, he deserves to bankrupt anyway, that's just market cleansing, or evolution.

 

If ever (and I do believe it will eventually happen, just not that soon), we get a software, where not only do we not need to push single "win/awesome button", but we can purely just use imagination, than that will be beyond all means only good thing.

 

I do really hope everyone who fears he will loose job to technological advancement to loose that job so he can collect the remaining parts of his critical thinking and start something else with fresh outlook on life.

 

That is a fair opinion on it and has a lot of truth in it.

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Hey guys,

About Solid Rocks: Does it have a some sort of batch render built-in?

This is the only reason I might actually get it. (I use bercon preview render which does the work great for quick renders, so fast most time VrayDR doesnt even load before full image render ends)

 

I looked for a lot of batch renders on the web and none of them is simple as 3ds max built in.

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is kinds of interesting where this thread end up :)

my straight answer for the initial question would be, there is none Optimized render settings in vary because it depend of the scene, in reality the sliders of VRay are pretty useful in this seance to help you to get good results. There is an universal setting that will give you very nice results at cost of rendering time, this is not a secret and Vlado always give that option to anybody that had hard time to understand or just does not want to dig in to VRay settings. Other option as mentioned here is SolidRock, that will help you a lot, and or Buy VRay 3 that come with an slider for different settings interiors or exteriors.

I think the problem (if we can call it this way, is not problem to me) this forum or any forum a like is always visited for 3 type or people, in general. First a professional artist, that work and eat and sleep CG, a Professional Architect or Engineer that just want to get the job done, and Hobbyist that just use these tools to create something else or just enjoy the workflow.

The first professional has the willing to spend X amount of hours learning his tool just because he know that some day in some situation he will need as much knowledge as he can to finish his or her task on time and in budget.

The second professional, Rendering is just a small part of his overall work, so when faster it can be done, the better. He wants to know enough so he can do it him self but not spend too much time either because his business is not this craft but something else.

So of course this second professional will ask for short ways to finish his work, cheat sheets, easy software what ever, it does not matter. I am not saying this is bad or good it is just the way it works, we all like to drive cars, and even better, fancy cars, but none of us want to learn all the engineering and physics and mathematics behind that machine, it does not matter for us.

 

When somebody ask, what is the best settings to render quick and better the first professional know that the answer is not that easy, and sadly for this software there is not a solution that will cover each and all of the needs.

Also when they ask how can I make this image photo real or great for that matter, the answer is not hidden in VRay settings, so this also can not be answer in a short way. We can give advice and maybe guide to get a good result, but those answer are not the only solution, besides we all have different approach because the software has many options too so at the end, for somebody new to this, or somebody that just heard that VRay is "the best rendering solution" the first question will be, what are those settings that everybody is using to get those incredible images and then the battle begins :p

 

Is like when you take a great photo and they ask you, What camera did you use?

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