Attention Vray Users: The Plugin of your dreams has arrived!!!

[Brian Smith]

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?

 

sure...if you use interpolation (which becomes more viable the lower your glossy value), then getting smooth results is quick and easy

[Devin Johnston]

I purchased it a few weeks ago, at the time it was only $24 so I figured if it didn't work it wasn't a big deal. Initially I was very impressed as it did tweak my scene and helped to remove noise and splotches that I wouldn’t have been able to remove without cranking up my settings and increasing my render time. I've been reluctant to use it on a real project yet because it seems a little unstable especially when dealing with large resolutions. I'm working with a scene right now that is 6000x4000 pixels, using my settings I can render it out on a machine with 4 gigs of ram, if I use SR on the Medium setting which is minimum for this scene Max will crash because it runs out of ram.

 

I think the plugin has lots of potential especially for nubes who don't know much about Vray, for those Vets who've been using it a while it probably isn't going to do much for you. Still it's and easy one button setup for many different levels of GI from preview to production, and once you know what it's changing it's kind of nice not to have to go through all the different Vray settings to change the GI.

[Logitek]

sure...if you use interpolation (which becomes more viable the lower your glossy value), then getting smooth results is quick and easy

interpolation has always given me bad results so I never use it (if you're talking about the one inside the material).

[Brian Smith]

interpolation has always given me bad results so I never use it (if you're talking about the one inside the material).

 

because you HAVE to set your Min/Max rate in the interpolation rollout to exactly what you use in the irradiance map rollout. if you do, i guarantee you will get good results on low glossies.

[Sawyer]

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?

 

 

Use adaptive QMC

 

untick Use DMC sampler

 

Raise values to clean the image.

 

For this I used 2 -18 with color threshold of .006

 

And my glossy subs was set to 1.

Now I was able to get the glossy's to clear but I had to up the subs to 50!

 

Really its just a different work flow.

[Sawyer]

Now there is something weird here that I am not sure about maybe someone who knows vray under the hood better can clear this up.

 

On the Solid Rocks version there is this huge highlight that is not present with my version.

 

Any ideas?

[Brian Smith]

Now there is something weird here that I am not sure about maybe someone who knows vray under the hood better can clear this up.

 

On the Solid Rocks version there is this huge highlight that is not present with my version.

 

Any ideas?

 

maybe the Trace Reflections option was involved

[Logitek]

Now I was able to get the glossy's to clear but I had to up the subs to 50!

 

Really its just a different work flow.

Yep, a really different one indeed

Just a question (maybe a stupid one!)... why use interpolation? I thought it was doing fake reflection/unrealistic results. Did I misunderstand something??

[Sawyer]

maybe the Trace Reflections option was involved

 

 

Hmm I don't know. My material has it checked and I think that the plug-in wasn't modifying my materials but I don't know.

 

edit fyi I don't use interpolation at all. I just have the AA set high. This was based off of Chris Nichols gnomology video..

Edited June 19, 2008 by Sawyer

[Sawyer]

The main confusion I had with this I think was not being able to update the glossy's but now that I know its just the little button I think its a good plug in (I did have some bugs) and a great deal.

[AJLynn]

Now there is something weird here that I am not sure about maybe someone who knows vray under the hood better can clear this up.

 

On the Solid Rocks version there is this huge highlight that is not present with my version.

 

Any ideas?

 

GI caustics?

[Ky Lane]

I guess that'll teach you for trying to be helpful!

[Brian Smith]

Yep, a really different one indeed

Just a question (maybe a stupid one!)... why use interpolation? I thought it was doing fake reflection/unrealistic results. Did I misunderstand something??

 

interpolation saves a tremendous amount of time. you can typical render low glossies in a fraction of the time...as low as 1/20th or so. it's not practical for high glossies, such as anything above .75 or so because it blurs too much. but the lower your glossiness value, the more time it saves and the more it appears to look the same as a non-interpolated result. but you have to use a min/max value that matches your irradiance map so that you can feed off the irradiance map info.

[agatsuma]

+ this shines on complex scenes and is great if you need to do a still from a DVD

[subburb]

hello, all !

This is my very first post here..

First of all, thanks all to give positive/negative comments about this plug, it's essential to raise its global quality...

 

SR was first started initially for my coworkers (45zero group) and... for myself.

the goal was to simplify/automate all things we are all redoing each time we start a new work in terms of Vray settings. More than that, not really easy to switch easily between different resolutions and/or preview/medium or prod settings... That's why Sr is "born".

 

This plug is under developpment, and its evolution is governed mostly by two things : try to maintain a very simple interface in one hand, and users requests/wishes in the other hand.

Goals for V1.0 are

- full user customisation of settings

- animation handling (walkthrough + full anim) (works no so bad in tests, but it's really hard to create a simple wizard for that..)

 

First, I must say that Logitek have no benefits on this product , but thanks to him for initiate this discuss.. interesting crits here..

 

to nicnic :

=========

You're right, SR website is pretty shit, big update is planned in summer..

 

to Brian Smith :

============

you said "HSph decreasing with an increasing quality preset"

You're right , but in other hand global multiplier is raising and Noise thr decreases when you raise quality:

- at medium, irrmap hsph = 29*1.5 = 43.5 with noise thr = 0.005, adapt=0.833

- at verygood, irrmap hsph = 24*3.5 = 84 with noise thr = 0.003 and adapt = 0.75

 

- concerning interpolation :

wow !! you're right ! missed this important workflow..

if you're ok, i can integrate it with a thresold value (defaut 0.75) to speedup and cleanup things better and quickly

 

to Brianzajac :

===========

you're right, 'Low Thread Priority' option was here to avoid max9 freezes.. it have no intereset today. i'll gave a user option to decide if on or off.

 

to Sawyer :

=========

you said :"I have found the plug in pretty buggy"..

i've published a new0.52 version on 30/06/08, heay debugged. If you've downloaded your 0.52 before this date, please update. i think i'll be better, especially on gamma stuff.

 

-we have to try /test your AA glossy tip !

 

-The hudge hilight in your test renders (ty for that tests !) is, i think, provided by the use of DE in irrmap. DE is for instance ON from very good to ultra, off in other cases. This is, too, i think, why the render take sooo long time compared to you settings. DE is hard to manage and gives somtimes unexpected results... some users like it, other no, and it really depends of scene.. In next versions, users will have choice to use it or not for each quality level.

 

-you said : "I just have the AA set high".. i've read somwhere in this website an opposite AA information : AA is here only to do the AA job.. image sampling have to be made by the image sampler. i've already tested the 2 methods on test scene. results gives little speedup for the image sampler Vs AA sampler, at equal subdivs of course. But i can be wrong

In SR settings, i prefer separate things (Gi, Image sampling and AA) for a better newbies understanding of Vray. Of course powerusers have their own tips'n'tricks

 

to Maxer :

========

you said:"if I use SR on the Medium setting which is minimum for this scene Max will crash because it runs out of ram."

we're working on this point. LC subdivs still have pretty big values when resolution raise up. Actually SR mutliply LC subdivs approx by 1.5 factor when image size double (Vlado said : when image size is twice, LC subdivs needs to be doubled, too, to keep same LC quality). But it seems that many users never uses a LC subdivs > 4000, even in very large renders. Needs to be modified as it takes some times, and crunch lot of ram.

another thing that need to be improved to save RAM is the "Render to memory frame buffer" wich have to be set to OFF when using VFB. This is not the case actually. will be done in next build.

 

To AJlynn :

========

Gi caustics, and more globally caustics are not handled by SR for instance, but it's planned - and the displace, too.

i'll try to implent Vlado's direct caustics method, too..

(see post in Vray Forums : "Just for fun" by Vlado)

Sorry, as it is my forst post here, ican't use links..

 

Well, of course next build(s) will take account of all that have been discussed here, especially ram save, and interpolated glossies.

 

We're working actually on a complete user tweak module :

User will have possibility to give, at 640*480, its personnal settings (irrmap values, dmc sampler values, LC subdivs, AA) for each quality Level.

More than that, user will specify to SR how they have to be managed when resolution double, i.e : when image size double, then Lc subdivs = lcsubdivs*1.5, irrmap min=irrmap min -1, AA min= Aa min -1, and so on.

 

Like this, SR will became a pure Vray settings robot, folowing your rules when quality is changed and when resolution is changed.

 

Of course, these settings will be saved in a file, and users will have possibility to share them, compare their settings and skills, etc..

 

Hope you like the way it goes !

 

don't hesit to continue critics, this is the best way to make things better..

 

Thanks for reading, and thanks to have taked some time do discuss around SR.

 

Cheers,

Edited July 4, 2008 by subburb

[JonRashid]

Cool. It's really good to catch a developer in the formative days when they are still prepared to take on board advice from potential users. Having been in the industry for over 20yrs i have seen and partaken in the putting down of many such one-stop shop buttons. Being older and wiser I realise that this resentment often came down to the fact my hard earned experience was being diminished by software solutions. Almost all of the buttons in current software are an amalgamation of many routines that once had to be performed individually. To be creative one does not have to necessarily understand the mechanics of what they are doing, surely the end result is all that matters. It is an inevitability that interfaces will always be "dumbed down". The only comfort to be gleaned by all us old timers is that this occurs because of our input and research. Also the creative aspect that you put into an image can't be wrapped up in a macro. I think any developer willing to listen should be encouraged. Any software that facilitates the job should be encouraged. More time on artistic presentation and less time tweaking settings can only be good.

[subburb]

Thanks, JonRashid

Nothing is perfect, and the best way to evolve is to listen vraymaster crits and suggestions

 

Just to say, actually next build is under intensive dev, taking account of all remarks in this forum (including update of the p-o-s website )

Thanks to all !

[JonRashid]

That's great. I look forward to it.

[Koper]

cool cool, i think you'll easely be able to find testers here

[cundyscott]

Awesome find

[subburb]

Hi, All !

 

this is not an advert of any kind, just to say that i've taken in account all crits made here and tried to answer them as best as i could in the new build (0.75). let's start a second round of crits ??

 

Thanks again for all your comments here, was extremely useful.