Struggling to render VRAY 3ds Max - DEADLINE SOON, PLEASE HELP :)

[bethpenman]

Hi all,

 

So this is my first post and im desperate need of help. I left my interior renders to batch render overnight and it still hasn't finished the first one ( I have 13, 10 interior and 2 exterior camera views).

 

My scene has a lot of glass in it and casts shadows into the interior. In some places at the back of the scene, there is a bit of noise on walls and ceiling. At the moment i really need the interior views to be resolved.

 

I have attached my render setup below.

 

I really need 300dpi, A3 size (at least) renders. I really don't have a day per render, I would like them all to render in one day. I have a deadline at the end of the week for these views.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Hopefully i can resolve this issue.

 

[notamondayfan]

you have 2 options...

 

1 - adjust your settings / scene for faster render times.

 

2 - farm out the rendering to a render farm.

 

option 1 is the cheapest, but you could end up wasting more time, which isn't good on a tight deadline. option 2 is more expensive, but you won't loose as much hair. There are plenty of UK based render farms, just give them a call.

 

Dean

[bethpenman]

Thanks for your post Dean.

 

I think ill have to stick to playing about with the settings. I don't have the sort of money to send this job to a render farm. My computer was built only a few months ago with a spec high enough for the rendering i want. I think I'm just doing something wrong.

 

Is their any chance you have any suggestions as to what i should change.

[notamondayfan]

It's hard to tell as it depends on the scene too, as you say you have glass, so that's a time killer.

 

I would start with the vray universal settings (vray manual) and see if that helps.

[RyderSK]

 

I would start with the vray universal settings (vray manual) and see if that helps.

 

He's not gonna render a single hi-res interior if he will opt for outdated "universal settings" :- )

 

It's very oddly setup with BF multiplier being 15 instead of 1. This multiplies the GI to unrealistic proportions, so don't tick that. You neither need AO with BF at all (you don't want AO in Archviz in 2014 anyway ) Since you already did this I assume you don't really understand much about Vray so maybe install Solidrocks instead ? Will save you some time and nerves at this moment. Might as well save you completely.

 

Second, you might as well forget about BF completely if you need to rush 10 pictures in high-res under one day. You will push everything to extreme to achieve that, and that is interpolating everything just below the point where it gets ugly... so IR+LC, low/medium IR with higher HS subs, all the lights stored in Irradiance and probably some problematic materials as well.

 

It's not gonna look bomb but you're asking impossible.

 

At the moment, it's some sort of wrong setup BF+LC, which even he would have correct, you won't render 10 interiors under one day on single computer at high-resolution.

 

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So, on "super fast" settings with compromised quality but just so-so.

 

Global Settings/Reflection/refraction MaxDepth=4-5 , you might get away with this, but try.

AA Filter: None or blurry. If blurry 1920px

Color mapping: Subpixel ON, Clamp ON (1). Nothing to do here, it's either fast render of flexibility. I doubt you will need to do serious post-process if you need to render 13 pictures, so this should be fine.

IR+LC.

Lights/Store with Irradiance map. If this produces artifacts, tick it only for big area lights, like portals.

Some materials still noisy but rest is nice ? Interpolate even the material. Check under reflection inside material in material editor. Use with caution, it can look ugly often.

 

 

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Edit: I didn't want to correct your settings because almost everything is wrong, like...every single thing :- ) Hence my suggestion to just install Solidrocks.

But if you're interested in more:

 

LC: Adaptive tracing/only camera paths is really only there for the unbiased use of LC, not in secondary GI. It will give you long render times and very noisy GI.

Use LC for glossy surfaces: In 95perc. of conditions, this should be on. In interiors, it could just as well be on in 100perc. cases. Speeds up considerably rendering.

You should either not use prefilter (no need at all actually...) or pre-filter it with some reasonably high number (96 for example). It's mere seconds this takes.

 

MitchelNetravaly and his family of weird filters: This is really outdated thing from age when people rendered 800px wide and wanted to avoid too glaring AA. I am not sure why it's so stuck and people still use it. You don't want to use it at all at high resolution, in fact, no sharpening. You can get away with no filter just fine, but easy blurring filters like Area (1.5-2) are really the best choice once going hi-res. (I even use super-blurry Quadratic, in 4k and higher it starts to shine)

 

DMC threshold of 0.005 might be bit too "high" (mathematically low :- ) stupid potato values) for AA. You would get away with 0.01 for AA just fine, so since you're shaving render times, tick them separately.

 

There are indeed "fast" version of BF+LC (but even than, they don't reach the speed of IR), but in most cases, they only work at some conditions and it's mostly lotery. The interiors with glossy materials will stay noisy with even the best setup fast BF+LC, I have some doubts most clients would accept it even though the detail is of course superb.

But it yields numerous problems like loss of light bounce and highlights, which, if you want back, you need to tick "sub-pixel" off, which will again spiral your render times.

With IR+LC, if you keep enough subdivs in materials, it will force the energy back, so you will get nice highlights even without sub-pixel mapping, so you get the best of boths worlds, fast render times, nice highlights, and no speckle artifacts.

 

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I never write these wall of texts, but I've been for past months working on project where the ability to generate 20-30 mid-res images in day or two was crucial. So I understand the desperate need to do so, since I almost lost every ounce of nerves on that journey

Edited January 8, 2014 by RyderSK

[Lebrun]

For your setting:

 

-Decrease max subdivision a bit (14 is a lot I think)

-If you have like 12 gig of Ram, put up your ''Dynamic memory limit'' in ''V-Ray System'' to 10 000 for example.

-Glass material: If your Reflection/Refraction subdivision is high, decrease it (to 6 or 7 or less), it will save a lot of rendering time.

-You are using ''Brute force'' as Primary Bounces pass in ''Indirect illumination'', Brute force taking more time I think, try ''Irradiance map''

 

Hope it will help a bit.

[Simon Moir]

You have a whole bunch of odd settings there which suggest you might not know exactly what you're doing, if you don't mind me saying so... There's some great advice above, but consider resetting Vray back to its defaults (by switching to Default Scanline, and then back to Vray again) and seeing where that gets you. Good luck!

 

This is a great thread btw, it's good to see someone as accomplished as Juraj (and other posters of course) take the time to answer this question. Especially after the spate of worthless / joke threads recently asking absurd questions (I'm thinking of you Jersan Joomes or however you're misspelling your fake name today) which drag the forum down and test everyone’s patience.

[Zdravko Barisic]

If you can adopt what Juraj told you, great, but I am not so shore, as your settings are very strange, so it leads me to the point that you VR knowledge is low-level.

...

So, the best way is to put the file somewhere on the web, on some free share service, and I am shore that someone will help you and make some correct settings for some mid/high range render.

 

Good luck!

[RyderSK]

Hence why I wrote the settings only as after-interest, my main advice is simply to buy Solidrocks, or get the demo and just see what it does. It's intricate tool that can facilitate learning Vray in very intuitive way : You watch how the settings change as you slide the quality slider. It's excellent tool imho, and I always suggest it to beginners or people who don't need/want to be bothered with tinkering (architects and architecture students).

 

There are some well explained basic settings free on various blogs, some example as "MintViz", "Viscorbel" through form of articles and videos. It's possible to go through such resources under hour which already includes ubiqutious googling "basic vray interior settings". Lasse Rode wrote excellent guide on Ronen's blog, introducing fast BF+LC concept to beginners and everyone alikes.

 

I don't agree anyone will have time to set up the scene for him, and if such person exists...it's definitely not someone who should be doing it in first place. There is no point in someone doing his own homework. And there is no guarantee it would be done right anyway. Last...he would be fool to share is scene :- )

[Nic H]

further to that i would recommend signing up to see grant warwicks videos on optimizing vray for fast rendering

its a whole world away from the somewhat outdated 'universal settings' approach

 

i felt like iv been using vray poorly for 10 years after watching them and have implemented it with success on a number of projects allready.

its not a fix all solution but worth knowing about!

[RyderSK]

further to that i would recommend signing up to see grant warwicks videos on optimizing vray for fast rendering

its a whole world away from the somewhat outdated 'universal settings' approach

 

i felt like iv been using vray poorly for 10 years after watching them and have implemented it with success on a number of projects allready.

its not a fix all solution but worth knowing about!

 

I didn't know he made videos...I was waiting for his material tutorials, but it was some time I checked Chaos forum. I'll search a bit..very interested.

Looks like something I can use a lot too...this christmass almost drove me to depression trying to balance quality/fast time in animation.

[Nic H]

haha

yes he has 2 videos so far on materials (metals) and another on optimizing vray.

 

its the same approach as mentioned here, it kind of flys in the face of the 'keeping everything at 8 subdivs' approach!

worth a read for everyone using vray!

 

http://www.cggallery.com/tutorials/vray_optimization/

[Nic H]

also this to keep in mind...!

 

On a closing note - it's important to keep in mind that every scene is different, and therefore has different needs from V-Ray's two samplers.

 

Settings that optimize one scene can potentially grind another scene to a halt - so please remember: Your settings and ability to optimize a render can vary greatly from one scene to the next. With a bit of trial & error, practice, and patience, you can gain the experience to intuitively know what settings a scene calls for.

[Tommy L]

I think the fact that you have 13 renders to process with little time left points to a certain level of in-experience.

Install SolidRocks. I havent used it myself, but its the most comprehendsive time-saver you'll get in a short amount of time. To learn the settings of Vray by trial and error in a crunch is not advisable.

[M V]

13 HQ renders with a deadline looming and inexperienced. You are about to learn a valuable lesson in arch viz. I think most of us would want 2-3 weeks to do this with a high level of expertise.

 

Get SolidRocks, it will be worth the price for your situation.