Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Hello All, I came across an unbelievably great plugin that will save many Vray user that face a tight deadline, a noisy image problem, or who simply have no idea what setting to change and when to change it... This dream plugin is called SOLIDROCKS. The full licensed version is available for a ridiculous 34.90Euros. It is also available for trial (only restriction for this version is the image size limited to a maximum 800x600). http://solidrocks.subburb.com/ The developers are eager to make the plugin even more powerful, handling animations in the very near future. They listen to all the comments users make to improve the product. Jeff, I think it could be nice to put this on the news's headers one of these days... Have fun with this! Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 That looks useful for people starting out, but I think most people here are already going to know enough to do all that stuff very quickly... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest percydaman Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 looks cool enough. wouldn't pay any money for it though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Trust me, I've been working with Vray for almost 3 years, and I thought I had some pretty nice and fast final render settings. This plugin proved me wrong. It can achieve much better quality in the same amount of time, or better yet, same quality for over 3 times faster!!! I wouldn't "promote" this plugin if it wasn't worth it. cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
louis.cho Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Bonjour Mathieu I think you can acheive the same with a average/good knowledge of Vray. It's just render receipes. You can make your own with the save presets button. Even without any presets, you can make basics settings in 5 minutes. The fine tuning if longer but I ma sure you will need some with the plugin too. Also it's useful to play with the settings of vray to understand your scene and get a better comprehension of Vray. Having these presets you will probably get similar result each time So I don't think that it's the begining of the 'good looking render button era' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
louis.cho Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 just read your reply: I'll try the demo version and give you news Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Trust me, I've been working with Vray for almost 3 years, and I thought I had some pretty nice and fast final render settings. This plugin proved me wrong. It can achieve much better quality in the same amount of time, or better yet, same quality for over 3 times faster!!! I wouldn't "promote" this plugin if it wasn't worth it. cheers are you saying it knows better settings than you do....ergo much faster rendering..... or are you saying it manipulates the render engine and physically speeds up rendering somehow, no matter how much vray knowledge you might have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Ok, maybe I need to explain a little better what this plugin does. As you all know, Vray settings are also size dependent. Using preset will not look at your rendering size, and therfore, can give you pretty different results if you use them on a 800x600 image or a 3200x2400 one. What this plugin does is adjust many settings as the image size changes. It also changes settings that I'm pretty sure 95% of Vray users (myself included) never touch out of ignorance of what they do. As you change the render presets (8 available : FastDraft, Preview, Low, Medium, Good, Very Good which is almost as good as you'll even need, Production and Ultra), you can see Vray settings change on the fly. You can learn a lot from this, even if you consider yourself pretty good Maybe I need to say that I gain absolutely nothing from telling you guys about this plugin. I just think I will make many vray users happy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jophus14 Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 This plug-in has been aroound for awhile now. I'm not sure how will this will work for production purposes though since each scene is different and clients like different looks with the finished product. I thought about trying it out at home a few months ago, but I never got around to it. I would like to re-render an image that I did for a client and see how it compares to my personal settings (pre post-production of course) with time and overall look. The problem with a plug-in like this is that everyone is going to think they are a 3D artist just because they can produce an image with precalculated settings and then when the shite hits the fan they are going to be lost because they never actually learned the software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 (edited) looks quiet interesting (and cheap) i know vray pretty well, but id be interested for things like caustics if it has quick set ups for these so i can get my head around them better edit websit is pretty shit, doesnt really describe much about how it works. Edited June 18, 2008 by nicnic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 I can't remember how I came across this plugin and was really reluctant of trying it out (I barely ever use plugins). All I know is that I was curious to test this one. I tried it out with a past projet using my "old home-made greatest settings in the world" (or so I thought ), and tested all the render presets. Like I said previously, it rendered about 3 times faster for the same quality. I also got rid of some noisy areas because some parameters were adjusted in the process. Of course, each scene is different and there's no doubt you still need to know Vray to make a good rendering... By the way, this plugin can optimize your materials at rendertime (in case you use some stock furniture that use some crazy subdivs amounts for example!!), BUT, you still need to know how to setup your material, reflection, etc... There's also a small preview frame that can give you lighting and exposure feedback in a few seconds. Of course, you could wait for Vray's interactive viewport rendering thing, but in the meantime, this is very useful to have a quick feedback in one click. All I'm saying is for the price of it, I think it's a very good investment. It's been paid for in the very first job I use it on. It's basically the price of a book... an interactive book let's say Just take a few minutes to test it before you diss it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illegalalieninbeijing Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Is this something like "Make me a perfect render now" button? I could really use that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Is this something like "Make me a perfect render now" button? I could really use that. Hhmmm... Not exactly. It is more a "Make my already nice render even better and render it faster" button. ... on top of other cool things like the preview or the fact that all the settings that are changed by the plugin can either be applied permanently to the scene, or be flushed away (bringing back your old settings) when the plugin is closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 As you all know, Vray settings are also size dependent. Using preset will not look at your rendering size, and therfore, can give you pretty different results if you use them on a 800x600 image or a 3200x2400 one. If you're referring to the irradiance map, then this is not correct. The presets do look to the rendered image size to determine the irradiance map resolution. Just took a quick peek and find a few strange things, such as the HSph decreasing with an increasing quality preset. Also, the only thing changing on the material optimization for me is the Max depth. The one that really gets me though is using light cache for primary bounce in preview mode while at the same setting up adapt qmc as the image sampler. I admire the initiative, but frankly I think a better tool would be to implement what mental ray did recently, which is a small explanation when the cursor sits over a setting. At the very least something that teaches the user something instead of blindly setting up things for him or her. That will do nothing to teach the user. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianzajac Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Sorry, don't mean to be a spoiler, but I gotta mention what I think is a really bad mistake on the developer's part. Why in the world would using the plugin automatically enable the 'Low Thread Priority' option. That certainly won't help render times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 All settings are changed together "as a team" to bring a more efficient rendering. The IRmap subdivs are indeed lowered, but the DMC Min samples are raised for example, as well as many other settings (that you, Brian, surely know about ). The plugins works very well as it is, but I'm sure there's room for improvements (even Vray itself could improve, but people still buy it, don't they ). The programmers are very open to suggestions for improvements. Oh, and there's a mouse-over info thing in Solidrocks cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I have seen this mentioned at the chaos forum. I just installed the demo. I think its pretty swift. I just tried it on a scene that I was finishing up and I think the render times I had manually set up were good and the plugin didn't really change the times but it probably would have saved some time setting the scene up. Unfortunately I have found the plug in pretty buggy. I had one error that I had never seen before and I had to restart max and the other bug makes the original render setting impossible to access. I just have to go the the toobar to close the render settings open them again and they work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I tested the material glossy's and I found that the plug in couldn't sharpen the material glossy reflections enough. What I found is the even under the ultra setting the reflections were pretty spotty and adjusting the material subs didn't have any effect. The area in the box is the rendering done with Solid rocks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 adjusting the material subs didn't have any effect. If you leave the "optimize Materials" options ticked, it will automatically lower to 8 all subdivs that are above 8. If you know that your materials are setup properly (ie no subdivs at 50 for example!!), then you can uncheck this "optimize materials" option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I think this plugin could have potential but I cannot get it to get "there" for me. Here is a test. This is ultra setting for solid rocks and it came in at 12m 38s. my settings came in at 4m 52s. I had the optimize mat unchecked. Maybe there is something I am missing I don't know. I could keep upping the glossy's on the material but why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 I think this plugin could have potential but I cannot get it to get "there" for me. Here is a test. This is ultra setting for solid rocks and it came in at 12m 38s. my settings came in at 4m 52s. I had the optimize mat unchecked. Maybe there is something I am missing I don't know. I could keep upping the glossy's on the material but why? I always use Good or very good, and that's plenty enough. for your glossy problem, the only setting you need to change is the material reflect subdivs, BUT, as I said before, you can up the number all you want, if you leave the "optimize Materials at rendertime", this number will be brought back down to 8, therefore you will get noisy reflections. If you want to test the plugin, I suggest you render your scene with all 8 presets plus your "ideal" personal settings. Save the rendering time with the image. I'm pretty sure Very good will be close to your personal rendering, and the render time will be 3 times faster... Let me know if this simply doesn't work... I'd be curious to know why! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sawyer Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 If you want to test the plugin, I suggest you render your scene with all 8 presets plus your "ideal" personal settings. Save the rendering time with the image. I'm pretty sure Very good will be close to your personal rendering, and the render time will be 3 times faster... Let me know if this simply doesn't work... I'd be curious to know why! Well I did just try rendering most of the settings and I found the best to be a lot slower and worse quality that just standard office settings. I could up the subs but I already see that it will take 3x longer than what I have with my settings so why? Those images are with Ultra but very good didn't look any better. The why is I have my aa settings optimized to do the lifting on the glossy's not the material subs and its a lot faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 you're telling me that even if you set your material subdivs at 3, your AA settings will smooth the glossies of this material? What kind of AA trick do you do to achieve that? And as I said, I never use anything above "very good" or even "good" and that will be plenty enough for 95% of the case. My knowledge of Vray is still useful to workaround the remaining 5% problematic scenes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnvid Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I tried a beta version, and for a rendering that was taking 1hour or so went up to 24 hours or was it 24 days I can't remember... dissapointed as the idea of changing all the settings at once back & forth is a great idea...Hopefully the makers would chip in with some real test images...surely if they know vray inside out then they could prove it works with some decent scenes, or some of the benchmarks from the chaos forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logitek Posted June 18, 2008 Author Share Posted June 18, 2008 Hopefully the makers would chip in with some real test images... I'll definitely pass along the message. I'm sure this would help convince many of you... cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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