So...is it time to upgrade?
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@earthmover said:
I think the patch will push this release to head and shoulders above anything else available for sketchup. I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade, unless you are trying to go back and re-render models.
I've gathered that the major bug in this release is that is tends to get stuck if one material (usually set up in a prior version) fails to process properly, the render will tend to freeze before it starts and eventually abort. They have added debugging tools to help find the errant material, but I haven't had that problem with materials setup from scratch in this version. I think the patch will help the program to rethink how it handles failed materials and a few other minor issues. The framework is in place though, to make this a really really good release.
The only thing I wish ASGvis would implement now is a drag and drop or copy and paste from one material slot to another as you can do in Max. It's such a time saver.
You sum up the problem quite well. However I'm less enthusiastic about your "heads above shoulders" analogy
Let me add a few observations.I was in the process of making a Tutorial for the Community. As I was copying and pasting a water plane defined by Vray materials from one SU model to another SU model with a different water plane also defined by Vray. My Intent was to use the Scenes feature by turning on or off various layers to demonstrate, how different water planes produce different Vray caustic effects. After pasting SU crashed just at the end of the "Building Caustic Photon" map.
After a good nights sleep, I decided to take a closer look at my Crashing SU file. I discovered that the copying and pasting process had added or duplicated materials in the Vray Texture editor. There were no duplicates in the SU texture editor, When I deleted the duplicates in the Vray Texture editor, the rendering process no longer crashed my SU file.
Changing Materials used by Vray from one version to the next is not a good marketing idea. If AutoCad had not supported all its initial formats from v.25 to v2010 it would never have become a dominant Cad force it still is today. Professional in Business buy software to make money, they don't have time to upgrage and throw out what just worked yesterday. Have a Look at the Extensive Maxwell Texture Library Individual Users have developed over the years. If Maxwell decided to abandon its Maxwell texture standard. Maxwell users would be up in arms. Furthermore consumers vote with their wallets. Fewer even bother to complain, because they can write-off the expenses. Fewer still spend or have the time to make comments, such as mine.
I wont bore those reading this thread without posting 7 error pics I have taken, which has caused SU to crash since I installed Vray for SU.
I have written a few Ruby scripts, and I don't consider myself a programmer, but I have a few problems with all the API interpretation the Vray developers are expecting to navigate in trying to run Vray within SU. As I see it Vray is trying to interact with the following:- Microsoft Visual C++, which causes Runtime errors
- Python API
- Ruby API
- SketchUP SDK
ASGvis needs more than good luck to get this proggie running under SU or Rhino.
To those contemplating a rendering program which runs in the $$$ range of Vray: I would give Modo a try for a comparison, it has a great rendering engine, its also a free download for 30 days, and it does way more than just rendering. my experience with Modo rendering is based on having used it 2 years ago, when I was working for a company that did all its in house rendering with it.
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@tomot said:
After a good nights sleep, I decided to take a closer look at my Crashing SU file. I discovered that the copying and pasting process had added or duplicated materials in the Vray Texture editor. There were no duplicates in the SU texture editor, When I deleted the duplicates in the Vray Texture editor, the rendering process no longer crashed my SU file.
Materials are one of the current bugs atm. There is a debug menu that let you force sync materials between V-Ray and SU.
@tomot said:
Changing Materials used by Vray from one version to the next is not a good marketing idea
? What's changed?
@tomot said:
ASGvis needs more than good luck to get this proggie running under SU or Rhino.
With the new core it's much easier to them to port V-Ray to other software and platforms. This new version came because they wanted to expand to OSX - and the old was locked to PC. Because of the new core made it easy for them to add new things they threw in a bunch of new features despite it was originally intended as a pure rewrite of the previous version. And I don't believe they use the SDK any more.
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Hey guys,
Sorry ASGvis hasn't been too vocal over here. I am trying my best to make my rounds and find any bugs we can so this patch will be as solid as we can make it. Poor thomthom has been acting as a temporary ASGvis rep it seems ::pats back:: thanks for that, I'm here to help now though. Also, in case you were wondering, I have been checking in on occasion to see what's going on, however I'm one of the developers, so I don't have a lot of time to chat with everyone, so I've been more of a troll than a participant. Our forum's traffic has started to die down a bit though, now that most of the bugs have been discussed on there and can be referenced by our users. That frees up a teeny bit of time to seek out our other users on other boards. Sketchucation of course, was my first choice.
I have seen many valid statements being made here, most of these issues are known, and are being worked on. Unfortunately our bug tracker isn't public, and we hope to work out a better bug tracking system in place before we do our next full release. We had a few curve balls hit us on the way to release, one of which was a lack of feedback from our testers
. Next time we do a beta of some sort, I'm coming here first to announce signup.We are currently waiting to hear back from The Chaos Group, about an issue with DR (DR is difficult to get working in the latest release, it's definitely not working properly.), once we get DR fixed, we plan on releasing a patch with that fix, as well as any other fixes that we can get done between now and then. We have managed to fix a number of material related issues, I haven't found an old scene with issues yet, since fixing the material issues. We're always looking for more scenes to test though. So let us know if you're completely stumped about why a scene won't render.
Also, just to clear up some confusion. We want to be 100% compatible with scenes that came from our old version. We don't want to have any broken vismats or visopts out there. Also, the latest version is based mostly in Python, which goes through a C++ bridge that ties Ruby and Python together so they can communicate back and forth. To be honest it's not all that tricky of a balancing act. The only tricky thing about any of it, is the fact that SketchUp's Ruby API is such a mess. I'm not even going to get started on that rant though.
Really the only reason this release had so many bugs, is because we were under the assumption that everything was fine. Our testers had reported a few minor issues here and there, but for the most part everything appeared fine... Then we released and found out what was actually going on... Ohhh my... So in the future, we plan on having a much tighter feedback loop with our testers than we did this time around. We understand the frustration and confusion that happened during this release, and we hope to rectify the situation asap. Keep an eye on our site and our forum over the course of this month, we should have an update soon. (And by soon, I mean this month, and not 6 months from now)
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Thanks Devin! Good to know and to hear it from you personally. I was wondering if, in the meantime, if it was possible for users who have upgraded and are having problems to have an option to download and revert to the previous version? This would allow users to feel more comfortable with upgrading and testing, while knowing they can always revert if they run into problems. I think the real hesitation is within a professional workflow, we can't take a chance on having a project that won't render....especially when deadlines are present. The benefit would be more people feeling confident to upgrade, and hence more people out there putting the new version through the paces to find all the bugs.
And definitely in the future, please announce your beta testing here as well. I would've been happy to beta test, but wasn't aware it was even going on.
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SHABAM!
V.6
Commercial
http://software.asgvis.com/dmdocuments/VRayForSketchUp_01.05.30.exe
Academic
http://software.asgvis.com/dmdocuments/VRayForSketchUp_Academic_01.05.30.exeV.7
Commercial
http://software.asgvis.com/dmdocuments/VfS7_01.05.30.exe
Academic
http://software.asgvis.com/dmdocuments/VfS7_Academic_01.05.30.exe -
@thomthom said:
@tomot said:
Changing Materials used by Vray from one version to the next is not a good marketing idea
? What's changed?
I can't use the new Textures with the old program. Not everyone is willing to be lead by the nose to upgrade to the lasted and supposedly greatest version each and every year. There are Architectural firm working happily with AutoCad 14, believe it or not. And when I do work for such a firm now and then I install my XP sp3 HDD which contains AutoCad 14 , otherwise I boot my Windows 7 HDD, Vista HDD, or my Ubuntu HDD.
I agree, thomthom has done a great job here, frankly, I don't know when he finds time to sleep.
Its obvious that Asgvis has not done good job selecting its beta testers! I also have a ton of time on my hands.
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I too would of loved to be a beta tester.
Mike
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@tomot said:
I can't use the new Textures with the old program.
? Is that so odd? Not many programs let you open their new stuff with old versions. ..or did I misunderstand this?
@tomot said:
I don't know when he finds time to sleep.
Sleep is for pansies.
Chuck Norris and I never sleeps! @tomot said:
I also have a ton of time on my hands.
@alpro said:
I too would of loved to be a beta tester.
Next time I'm going to make a big noise around here. It was lonely being a tester. Got a feeling there might be more active users over here than at the ASGVis forum... oddly enough...
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Thanks dkendig for the explanation.
About beta testing, I believe I signed up for beta testing twice and never heard from you. -
tomot - Our previous version of our plugin was written in C++ and used a binary format. This made our plugin much more difficult to maintain than it needed to be. Now we use Python and XML, which will allow our stuff to be more flexible and forward/backward compatible. I understand it's nice to be able to use the same files you would use in a new version, in an old version... but this isn't something that happens very often in the software world. We are trying to achieve that goal though. I would like to point out that it's free to upgrade to the latest version of our product though, and hopefully after this patch, this will be a very stable and flexible plugin.
Anyone that signed up for our beta - We had MANY beta applicants. We didn't really hand pick anyone. We waited too long to get our product out to testing, so we didn't really have time to hand pick anyone. We thought that if we allowed 700 or so eager users to use our plugin and test it out, we would be able to get feedback from a diverse group of people that would hopefully represent a majority of our users... That didn't quite work out. Instead of getting 700 users that were constantly testing and reporting back any bugs they found... we got maybe 10... 15? people to really give us any feedback. There was enough feedback to keep us busy though, and so we put our heads down and got to work. Since the developers were in charge of the WIP testing (corresponding with our users, and providing support/debugging), the developer blog (sorry if anyone was keeping up with that... I hope to update it at some point), and developing our plugin. We were too busy developing to mess around with finding more testers and sorting the bunch we already had.
It was sad. We even added a couple people here and there after the WIP tester selection was made, and they would provide some feedback here and there, but quickly faded away as their interest faded (I'm guessing that's what happened... maybe they were eaten by sea monsters?). So that's why some people got left out. It's nothing personal, you just fell through the cracks unfortunately. Next time around, we'll try to be more particular about who we let in... or we'll just do a public beta... haven't figured that one out yet.
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