Vray Common Mistakes: A Guide (Do we need one) ?

[abhaysingh]

Hi All,

I need your opinions on this, if it is effective to make Vray Common error/mistakes guide ??

Through out my professional career, i've fixed countless files, some of which had common repeated mistakes.All the time we see on forums, people asks same common errors/mistakes.We can all benefit, not even Cgarchitect users but all vray community.

 

For eg. one common mistake that I fixed countless times is the that "Vray is taking forever to calculate light cache" which is mostly because of error "scene bounding box is too large" (a small object is left undeleted in your max file which is lying miles away from your main scene).

 

Just an old idea of mine.let me know your opinions.

 

Thanks,

 

Abhay

Edited October 3, 2012 by abhaysingh

[etche]

Please share everything you can in this matter. I think it would be very helpful to a lot of us. I didn't know that simple tip you just gave.

Thanks

[abhaysingh]

Thanks for replying Javier.Yeah i've lot of things to share(need to list them out)

Actually I am talking about making a small ebook(a guide), so that everyone can download it to see and contribute as well.

[etche]

No problem!

I guess that with other users experience and feedback you can sort and order all your tips and start working on that ebook.

[salvador]

It took me years of reading to find out how to troubleshoot many many things and some still appear. I'm guessing that if I'd had such a guide, the time I used in searching and reading would've been put to enhancing and improving.

 

I for one, support the idea.

[Ismael]

This link is about tips to speed Vray:

http://www.cgpinoy.org/t15926-ways-to-speed-up-your-vray-rendering

 

Here is one mistake (problem) and a solution,

Problem:

Sunlight not passing through glass window or door.

Solution:

Check Affect Shadows in the Glass Material Refraction Section.

Edited October 3, 2012 by Ismael

[aaronmolina]

I think this is a great idea. You can even have a thread where people list problems and solutions and you could pick and choose what you want to add in the e-book

 

I could definitely benefit from this.

[abhaysingh]

Thanks Salvador & Aaron for supporting.

 

Ismael, I must say it is a great resource for vray users.But those are more like precautions which should be taken in the very first place.This can be added though.My idea is more towards troubleshooting.

 

For eg. sometime you press render button and suddenly 3ds max shuts off without giving an error.The user will have no idea what went wrong.This is mostly because unsupported materials in the recently added 3d model(like raytrace in cars).He should have checked his models in the first place but now scenario is different for him as doesn't know what went wrong.

[abhaysingh]

I've created a survey and posted the survey link in "Polls" section.You can also complete the survey here

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

Abhay.

[etche]

I think that little to none users would say we don't need a guide. There's no harm to it. Wouldn't it be better to start listing issues and solutions here and when a handful of tips have been posted we can start talking about the ebook?

 

One problem I recently had which I couldn't solve was a small scene I was trying to render and max crashed due to no memory available. The scene was quite simple and I wasn't using any fancy models nor materials. The output image wasn't huge either, but it seems 2GB of RAM is not enough in some cases. I googled a lot and couldn't solve it by changing output image dimensions, vray settings or increasing windows pagefile. Had to switch to a pc with 4GB of RAM. Any tips on this?

[abhaysingh]

Hi Javier,

Yes we should better start listing all the issues and solutions here.Then we'll see.

 

To your problem,

how did you came to know that it crashed due to unsuffient memory? did max gave you any error like "UNHANDLED EXCEPTION: Memory allocation failure" ?? If this is the case then there is only little scope lefts to do anything but there are some options we can try.

 

2gb is very less memory.Even a small scene can take upto 1 gb or so(after texturing and lighting) and then there is your system which uses some.You can see in the bottom of your rendering window that how much is your 3ds max is using memory for a scene.If you can tell me that memory then we can see what we can do about it further.Considering your scene was simple then there could be other issues as well like node issue.

3ds max 2009-2011 had issues of making node.It was like 3ds max virus.It spreads from one file to other and even if you delete everything in file, then also empty file uses 5-6gbs of system memory instead of 1-2 gb of memory.There is script, you can find it here (but generally in this case there some symtoms by which you can tell if there are nodes or not).Also it could be because of bad geometry.Bad geometry either takes very long to render or crashes the scene sometimes.

Try these solution and also let me know memory usage of your scene

If i can see file then i might be able to tell you exact problem.

 

Sorry for the long reply...

 

Abhay.

[etche]

I can't remember exactly how I came to know the problem was memory related but i'm almost certain that max displayed the error message you just described or something similar. I also can't remember if max crashed or if just rendering couldn't be done (with an error message displayed).

I checked how much memory 3ds max was using and it was almost 2GB. With the rest being used by system, it wasn't enough.

I'll have to check on the same pc this weekend because it's in my parents house. As soon as I have some more info I'll let you know and maybe another issue can be added to the list.

Thanks!

[komyali]

Yes we do! At firs post I learnd something new like light cache and object far away from rendering one So yes we need guide but not just tell us "remove unwanted object on your scene" but describe us why we need to remove these object like in first post because of light cache, scene bounding box is too large and so on

[mikebart]

This is a great idea, being new to Vray myself i've had to suffer through a fair bit of trial and error to figure some pretty basic things out.

 

http://stackideas.com/easydiscuss.html

 

This could be a better solution for a FAQ guide than putting it all on a forum initially, and then perhaps an ebook could be compiled from it later on.

[Mario De Achadinha]

Great Idea. I Think that everyone should share something on the forum that can be complied into an ebook. Can have categories such as render setup issues, modelling, shader creation... etc.. Maybe cg architect could compile the guide and call it Cg Architect Vray for dummies? I think everyone would also pay a small fee for it if someone like Jeff put it together?

[passionatajaloszynska]

But that's why we use search on forum, right?

[komyali]

But that's why we use search on forum, right?

is it easier to search forum or to have book in pdf with chapters?

also forum is not just about mistakes

[salvador]

Book of course. I have developed some "checklists" over some time precisely to avoid common mistakes and overlooks. It's part of the workflow. This book could include some standardized checklists for the various stages of the production.

[alekseyilchenko]

I have developed some "checklists"

Can you share it with us ?

[Umesh Raut]

is it easier to search forum or to have book in pdf with chapters?

also forum is not just about mistakes

what the earlier poster says is right in many cases, like I would want to be guided straight to the point in question at that moment; rather than flipping many pages of the book to arrive at the needed section. And forums do just that .

[salvador]

Can you share it with us ?

 

Certainly, but I'd take some time because they (I must have no more than three) are mere notebook drafts that need editing and translating. It's a good idea to submit something like this to be commented on.