Interesting settings - Vray (visopts included)

[EarthMover]

I recently purchased SolidRocks 0.85 for 3ds Max and Vray (http://solidrocks.subburb.com/ ), because of its awesome preview window, automatic exposure control and automatic white balance settings. These are amazing features that are worth the money of the soft by themselves. Other than that the plugin is a pretty in depth set of sliders and buttons that will automatically adjust vray for you to give optimum render times with quality results. Immediately after using the plugin for the first time, I notice a lot problem areas had cleared up and my render times were cut in half. As I got to looking at the settings, I was a bit surprised by some of them. Such as switching SolidRocks to a Very High preset with IM+LC the plugin sets Vray to have a Hsph Subdiv of only 10 and interp. samples at 21, and then adjusting the noise, color and distance thresholds to fine tune the quality. By doing this, it seems quality is maintained, but render times go down.

Anyway, I took two of the preset settings from Solid Rocks and converted those numbers into a Vray for Sketchup visopt. Both are for exteriors and use detail enhancement, but that could be switched off to gain a few minutes in render time. I'd like someone else to try the visopts and look at the settings and let me know if they are getting quicker render times with good quality results. I'll try and post a visopt or two for interiors in a while.

Visopts need renamed to remove the .rb.

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SRMedium - Copy.visopt.rb

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SRVeryHigh - Copy.visopt.rb

[Mr S]

Hi,

Getting optimised visopt settings would be great.
I look forward to you posting interior settings as well.

I would like to help out more here but I am off on holiday tonight.
(Spending 10 days at Coral Bay in Cyprus. Lovely!)

For this to work and obtain any results that can be properly compared don't we all need to use the same test scene?

Anyway, just as a very quick test, I made this scene and rendered it using your "SRVeryHigh.visopt".
(Yes, I changed the file names).

Don't know if it helps you at all, but see attached.

Regards
Mr S

Optimised_Visopts_Test.skp

[EarthMover]

Thanks Mr S. Enjoy your vacation! No working!

I think the best way to compare these settings, is to take a scene that you've rendered previous with the settings as you normally have them, then run the SR settings and compare the results. Being that we all have different hardware, it would be hard to test a single scene as a group.

I'll post some interior visopts in a bit.

BTW - All credit to Jerome, who wrote the SolidRocks plugin......it's an amazing tool. I'm wondering if something similar would be possible for VfSU and if you could even access the settings in Vray through ruby. SolidRocks for SU would be pretty cool!

[Stinkie]

Looks like an interesting plugin, Adam! Makes me want to sell my kidneys and get Max + Vray.

Bit OT, but considering you're a Modo user as well, I'll take this opportunity to point out Seth Richardson included a render presets script with his latest series of tutorials. Darn handy, these sort of plugins/scripts!

[sepo]

Interesting... I whish they made one for SketchUp as well.

[EarthMover]

Here are the interior visopts.

I believe I left the Vray sky on in the environment slot for these with a size multiplier of 10. That could be reduced if the shadows are looking too soft.

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SR Interior MediumDE - Copy.visopt.rb

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SR Interior Very HighDE - Copy.visopt.rb

[alpro]

Thanks Adam, I've really been beating my head against vray the last two weeks trying to get a good ratio between speed and quality. I think that I've had some success with an interior, but still running into some problems on the exterior. Definitely gonna do some tests tonight, have been doing alot of rendering lately so I can make some comparisons. Will report back.

Mike

[orei]

and.. for external view???

[alpro]

Adam, don't know if its because maybe I don't have the font that you used or something else but below is what I get when I open your files, hope to figure it out, was looking forward to running some tests, just got done with an exterior scene that took 10 hrs, wanted to compare it with one of your settings.

Mike

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[EarthMover]

Mike,

You have to rename it and remove the .rb. I just put the .rb extension in there to be able to post the visopt. Remove the .rp and load the visopt through vray. Open the render options window and choose load, then navigate the visopt.

Looking forward to see how the settings compare in speed and quality. 10 hours seems very excessive for vray unless you are using the progressive path tracing option.

[dcauldwell]

Adam

I tried your external (medium) setting, and found it slower than my current external setting.(Quality seemed comparable to me)

My setting, for a 1800pix wide render (with bumps etc) took 7m 19sec, using your medium setting took 24m 28sec. I haven't really got the time to test the 'higher' setting.

I will give your internal setting a go later today)

David

[subburb]

Hi all, and many thanks for speaking about and pushing SR into heavy tests, sound very interesting !

special thanks to you, EarthMover, you your kind words
As you can see, i've created an account here as i'm really interesd by SR usage in Sketchup/vray.
i encourage these heavy testings, that's the better way to imrove SR presets, and SR by itself.. !

i find really interesting to test Sr presets on Vray for sketchup, i'll follow your results with great attention.
critics are the base of improvements

@unknownuser said:

Such as switching SolidRocks to a Very High preset with IM+LC the plugin sets Vray to have a Hsph Subdiv of only 10 and interp. samples at 21, and then adjusting the noise, color and distance thresholds to fine tune the quality. By doing this, it seems quality is maintained, but render times go down.

you're right, but Hsph needs to be multiplied by the global multiplier value to have the "real" hsph subdivs..
so, for example, at medium (exterior preset) the Hsph is 18 and global mult is 2, so the "real" hsph is 182 = 36
at VeryGoodsettings, the hsph is 10, but the global multiplier is 6.0, so the "real" hsph is 106 = 60

that's why the preset editor in solidrocks ask you for the "desired hsph" : if you say 80 for example, SR will calculate for you the correct hsph value depending of the global mutiplier.

you have a resume of all importants vray values when hitting the "Adv.tools" under the minipreview in SolidRocks.

i take some holidays this summer (the first since 4 years !!), and go to the siggraph on new orleans to make some little advert

after that, perhaps can we discuss about a SR for sketchup ??
for info : actually working on V1.0, including the "animation wizard" tool. tht's my main goal since the very first day of SR project...

Cheers !

[subburb]

to dcauldwell :
Hi,

hmmm sound bad, twice than your personnal settings !!

just a thing for more precision :
While rendering, SolidRocks adjusts all lights subdivs to 4 subdivs and all materials glossies to 8 subdivs.
perhaps can you make some manual asjustements to have a real comparison scheme ?

[alpro]

Well, after a first test this is what I got. Rendering this scene @1600x1200 with my settings took 10 hrs (and I screwed up, forgot to save the orginal, just got the postpro version), I believe the long render time is due to the grass displacement. Using your SRveryhigh settings @2560x2048 cut the render time down to 4hrs, however I got alot of blotchiness and some color bleed looking into the interior but I did notice some more detail in the stucco, in my orginal it was just a kinda washed out gray. So I will do some more tests today and post both renders and times.

Mike

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[dcauldwell]

OMG!! 10 hours! You must be very patient. (I don't use displacement)
Having said that, it reminds you that comparable tests need to be done on:
a) the same scene
b) the same machine
so time differences are actually all relative.

David

[alpro]

Yes David, I agree with you. I have quite a few interior and exterior scences of this model that I've already rendered with my settings so when I have a chance today or tonight I'm gonna render some with these settings at the same resolution and on the same machine. As far as displacement, I usually don't use it much however wanted to see if I could create some realistic grass for this scene. And as far as patience, it rendered over night while I was sleeping so no big deal, don't think I could of waited that long during the day.

Mike

[EarthMover]

Jerome, I think a lot of people here and also on the asgvis.com forum would be interested in a solidrocks plugin for vray for sketchup. I noticed in your plugin you change the settings not only for different quality selections, but also I noticed that the settings will change based on the size of the output. Can you explain the thinking behind the optimization based on render output size?

Mike, for the blotchiness, based on the output size you rendered at, you can increase the light cache subdivisions to 1800 or so and in the DMC sampler rollout, you can change the subdivision multiplier to something higher. The SR plugin shows a global subdivision multiplier of 6 at that render size. The plugin also changes the min/max for the IM to -4,-2 at that render output size. For grass I usually get good results by painting the grass area with a contrasting color from the rest of the render, then removing it in photoshop using the select by color range option. (ThomThom's blackout script works good as well) CGtextures.com has free high res grass images that you can you can drop in your renders. Then just use a photoshop clone stamp with a really small brush and fake the displacement along the edges of the grass. Just a suggestion....the displacement results you have achieved looked great, but the render time is astronomical.

[subburb]

@unknownuser said:

Jerome, I think a lot of people here and also on the asgvis.com forum would be interested in a solidrocks plugin for vray for sketchup

good news ! i'll be on siggraph on 3-5 august, and try to meet ASGVIS to talk about SR for Sketchup

@unknownuser said:

but also I noticed that the settings will change based on the size of the output. Can you explain the thinking behind the optimization based on render output size?

sure ! i've just followed the Vray rules, and modified them a little bit.

note that all Vray default values are "prepared" for a 640480 rendersize. So i've considered SR "base" settings for 640480 render.

But ! There are some values that are tighly tied to the resolution :
Vray manual (http://www.spot3d.com ) says :

• When resolution double, LC subdivs needs to be doubled as well to keep the same quality.
• as well, irrmap min and max rate can be lowered by 1 each time resolution double, for example a -4 -1 irrmp at 640480 is same than -5 -2 at 1280960, and so on. the detail enhancement radius (in pixels) can be doubled, too, when resolution double.
  At least, the AA subdivs can be lowered as well when res double, as each time the resolution double, it's just like an additionnal subdiv.

These resolution dependant settings are a pain to manage, for example for a 1/4 test render and can take huge rendertimes on big resolutions if Vray settings are not modified....

That's Why SR manages all these changing parameters, in a smart way, with an algorithm wich evaluates the number of pixels to render, and adjusting all these parameters for you each time you change the resolution or for fast 1/2 or 1/4 test render.

i've made a LOT of testings while adjusting SR presets and found some interesting settings (not exactly following the manual..)
For example, the SR0.85a default (factory ) presets make these changes, each time the resolution double :

• Lightcache subdivs are multiplied by 1.5
• irrmap min and max rates - 0.6 (to get a smooth slow down)
• detail radius is multiplied by 1.75
• AA subdivs are divided by 1.2 (to be safe)

Of course all these settings are modifiable by Sr users !

Hope it helps

[dalomar]

Subburb...Fernando and I will be at SIGGRAPH, so look forward to meeting you. We'll be at the ChaosGroup booth which is booth num 3119 I believe.

I really like the solid rocks plugin, so it would certainly be a welcome addition to VfSU. Unlike the ChaosGroup, which hasn't really expressed much of an interest in changing their interface, that's probably the biggest request we get. Subsequently the next full version of VfSU/Rhino will have a tiered interface solution with a Basic UI, Intermediate UI, and an Expert UI (Expert being essentially exactly what we have now). The Basic and Intermediate UI will remove a lot of unnecessary parameters and offer some more user friendly ways to adjust settings than having to deal with numbers.

There will be some more resources available in the next full version to do something like Solid Rocks, specifically the ability to add custom UI. I'm not sure how much we'll be offering in terms of scripting support, but hopefully there will be something to offer as we currently don't have anything exposed scripting wise.

In regards to the changing the settings for high res, there isn't the need to double the LC subdivisions. The reason being is that LC is not really tied to resolution in the sense that each sample area will be the same percentage of the final image (assuming screen sample scale) and although that area will cover more pixels, it will not change in regards to the area of the scene that each sample is describing. Therefore, regardless of resolution, there will still be the same number of samples created, and each of those samples will get approximately the same number of subdivisions. When you begin to change the sample size to add more actual samples, then the LC result with the same number of subdivisions will be more noisy and require more subdivisions. I'm actually an advocate of using smaller sample sizes (I typically have mine at about 0.5%) since that allows the LC solution to capture more detail and make better use of adding additional subdivisions.

[subburb]

Hi Damien,
thanks for this LC explanation, i'll make some test to try to reduce even more my lc subdivs when res is raising... it'll help to gain a little bit more time

i'm interested in a SR for Vray for sketchup dev, as it can have an interest for all of us !
i'll start too see how i can do that (perhaps with a little help ?) in begenning of september.

i'll for sure come to botth 3119 to say to you an hello !! (somewhere between 3 and 5 august)

i'll have exactly the same face than my avatar pic and will wear a solidrocks Tshirt .. easy to target

See you on Siggraph !