Render vray with 4d virtual builder & vray 2.1 scene support
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Hi everyone,
Just wondering if anyone has had any experience rendering in vray with 4D Virtual Builder. link:http://4dvirtualbuildercom.webhosting.be
My models tend to be pretty large and complicated upwards of 100mb files with lots of high res maps and high poly proxies and components, I constantly feel like I'm teetering on the edge of sketchup bugsplats (they happen often). my understanding is 4DVB would have to replicate each object a number of times to change the texture appearance.
On a side note, I remember reading somewhere that vray for SU 2.1 will support proper scene 'automation' rendering with hide/unhide objects. Super excited for this, does anyone know much about this?
Thanks
m -
we were hoping to add hide/unhide support during animation, but I don't believe we were able to add that for this service release. It should be in the 3.0 release though.
If you are teetering on the edge of crashing, I would suggest exporting any "finished" geometry as a V-Ray proxy. Especially if we're talking about a component that is reused many times (like support beams, street lights, etc). If you are running a 64bit OS, the 64-bit workflow is rather helpful as well: http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/distributed_rendering.htm#settings
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@monkers said:
Hi everyone,
Just wondering if anyone has had any experience rendering in vray with 4D Virtual Builder. link:http://4dvirtualbuildercom.webhosting.be
My models tend to be pretty large and complicated upwards of 100mb files with lots of high res maps and high poly proxies and components, I constantly feel like I'm teetering on the edge of sketchup bugsplats (they happen often). my understanding is 4DVB would have to replicate each object a number of times to change the texture appearance.
On a side note, I remember reading somewhere that vray for SU 2.1 will support proper scene 'automation' rendering with hide/unhide objects. Super excited for this, does anyone know much about this?
Thanks
mHi Monkers,
Devin (dkendig) is right, we don't support hide/unhide during animation, however the newly added Batch Render tool (in the soon to be released Patch) will support hide/unhide functions. So you wont get animated scene transitions, but you will be able to render out scenes with hide/unhide object information, which I believe is how the 4D Virtual builder system works when exporting to Sketchup scenes (http://www.4dvirtualbuilder.com/support/).
Once released, I would be interested to hear back on how it works out, as I've not tested this workflow out. If you have a scene set up and would like to share it with me, I can go ahead and test this work flow out for you and let you know what I find out. In theory it should work fine!
V-Ray Batch Render tutorial: http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/tutorials_batch_render.htm
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@dkendig said:
we were hoping to add hide/unhide support during animation, but I don't believe we were able to add that for this service release. It should be in the 3.0 release though.
If you are teetering on the edge of crashing, I would suggest exporting any "finished" geometry as a V-Ray proxy. Especially if we're talking about a component that is reused many times (like support beams, street lights, etc). If you are running a 64bit OS, the 64-bit workflow is rather helpful as well: http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/distributed_rendering.htm#settings
Thanks for the feedback dkendig. I have a few gripes with VR Proxies.. I have had a bit of experience with them as I was intending to do just what you suggested, convert my complex geometry into proxies then save them within components for quick access with layering and materials. My biggest problem with proxies in SU is that it takes forever to convert to proxy, I would have to copy to a new document then convert and leave it running in the back ground for a few hours, due to sketchups limited processing power, not really ideal. I also did this with some assets I had in 3DSmax, converted them to Proxies (which takes no time at all) re opened them in SU and re applied texture maps then packed them up as components. I spent a fair bit of time optimizing these components, manually removing all unwanted textures and geometry as sketchups built in purge function doesn't work properly with VR proxies.
That all works sort of well sometimes. Sometimes, when I bring in a component with a proxy nested it will drop all materials from it and render the default colour. I have tried removing all traces of that component and proxy from the scene (materials and components) and re importing it to no avail. also I have tried re assigning it to the VRmesh file in the context menu with no luck, it even wont fix it if I manually reconfigure the associated material IDs, its almost as if it forgets its material IDs. Any light on this problem would be great. Saying all this, this is a random and very frustrating occurrence, when proxies work they work really well!!
@tedvitale_cg said:
Hi Monkers,
Devin (dkendig) is right, we don't support hide/unhide during animation, however the newly added Batch Render tool (in the soon to be released Patch) will support hide/unhide functions. So you wont get animated scene transitions, but you will be able to render out scenes with hide/unhide object information, which I believe is how the 4D Virtual builder system works when exporting to Sketchup scenes (http://www.4dvirtualbuilder.com/support/).
Once released, I would be interested to hear back on how it works out, as I've not tested this workflow out. If you have a scene set up and would like to share it with me, I can go ahead and test this work flow out for you and let you know what I find out. In theory it should work fine!
V-Ray Batch Render tutorial: http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/tutorials_batch_render.htm
Thanks TED,
Yeh thats what how I thought it worked, which might cause problems for me with my model size and tip the scale on memory usage. However I always use distributed rendering which is a great way to prevent memory overload during rendering. Do we have an ETA on the service pack or batch feature? This is a much anticipated feature for me.
Thanks guys!
m -
it is up on our site now and ready for the masses! Enjoy
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@dkendig said:
it is up on our site now and ready for the masses! Enjoy
Thanks dkendig been testing BR out a bit handy for simple scenes. Im having a few problems when I try do a highres and complex scene that I can only use distributed rendering for to avoid crashing SU it stops randomly and gives me a message saying "vray is already rendering" its almost as if it tries to start the next render before the frame is saved or the DR spawners have had a chance to refresh.
Thanks
M -
I have to +1 this as well. It has happened to me a couple of times on not just hi-res renders, not just DR either. It happened to me last week and there was a 'ghost' SketchUp running for a few days on my machine and I had no idea it was there until I ctrl alt del and saw it sitting there.
I think VR needs to be told to wait, let's say like 20 seconds or something before moving on to the next scene?
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update on the batch render problem. reducing the render image size seems to reduce the chance of this happening although as I progress into more complex scenes (construction stages) it will not get past one with out stopping.
To add to the batch render problem mine seems to go on a rampage after unless I restart sketchup. If I untick include in animation for the scenes that were rendered then start a new batch render it either names them with strange names or if try to just normal render continues to render through the scenes with out saving the rendered image. looks like I wont be sitting back and sipping that tea after all back to baby sitting
45 scenes to go.. if anyone has figured out a fix for this please let me know!!
Thanks
M -
could you submit this as a bug report to vfswip@chaosgroup.com? I want to be sure we address this in a future release.
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To keep everyone updated I got 2 replies when i contacted chaos group.
"Hello Peter,
We do have an error log now in our latest release, which is located in the ASGvis folder, maybe it can shed some light on these issues. The ASGvis folder changes location according to the OS you use:
XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ASGVIS\VfS\vfs_stderr.txt
Vista and Win7:
C:\ProgramData\ASGVIS\VfS\vfs_stderr.txt
OS X:
/Applications/ASGVIS/VfS/vfs_stderr.txt
The error log is wiped every time you open SketchUp, and it won't be fully written out unless SketchUp is completely closed. So as soon as you see a problem of some sort, close SketchUp, and then open the error log file to see what it says. If there's an issue with materials being mismatched or something along those lines, you should see some sort of message about that particular asset in the error log. The most common things we see causing errors are corrupt materials, textures, or components. If you have any Unicode characters in the file paths this will sometimes cause an error too.
We are working on a patch to correct the Unicode issues but for now you can get around it by storing textures, materials, etc in a root folder using only English characters.
The latest version of our software comes along with a few tools to help you if a particular scene (especially older scenes) doesn't render correctly. They can be found in the Plugins->V-Ray for SketchUp->Help->Debugging menu. They are as follows:
Regenerate all V-Ray Materials - This tool will delete any material information that is currently stored in the V-Ray Material Editor. Then it will iterate through the SketchUp scene, treating it as if it never had any V-Ray material data in it before, and it will create a V-Ray material for every SketchUp material. The newly generate material will only have a Diffuse layer. This tool is useful if your scene's materials are preventing you from rendering, and the Force Sync tool doesn't do the job. Keep in mind that while using this tool, any materials you have set up are going to be completely destroyed, so it might be a good idea to back up the scene prior to running this tool. In addition, if this tool allows you to successfully render the scene, then you know that the issue was a material in your scene. So you can just load your old backup scene, save all of your materials, run the tool, and then import that materials back in to your scene. If after importing one of the materials, you notice that the scene fails to render, then you found your problem. If after importing all of the materials back in to the scene, it still renders fine, then there was probably just some data corruption that was floating around from an old version.
Force Sync for All Materials - This tool will iterate over all of the materials in the SketchUp material editor, and then all of the materials in the V-Ray material editor. The two lists of materials are compared, and if either the SketchUp or the V-Ray material editor is missing a material that the other editor has, a new material is created to correspond with the missing material. This tool should not be destructive.
Clear Texture Cache Folder - Every time you open SketchUp, the directory we write textures gets cleaned out. Occasionally, it helps to have that folder wiped during a SketchUp session. This is usually something that isn't going to help unless you're about knee deep in code though, so I don't recommend using it unless directed. If you use this option make sure that you are using a New/Blank scene.
Please send us your error log so that we can look further into your issue.
Thank you,
Chaos Group USA"
AND
"Hello Peter,
A member of our support team has replied to your support request:
Hello Peter,
With Devin and Ted already helping you there is not too much I can add but I do have one trick to share.
SketchUp is always a 32 bit program even on a 64 bit machine. All 32 bit programs have a RAM limitation and as a result can crash when 4 or more GB of memory is required. To get around this limitation we have added a 64 bit V-Ray DR process that you can offload all of the work to.
If you are using a 32 bit machine crashes at large resolutions or with large or complex scene files would be normal and I'm afraid nothing can be done to fix that.
Please try these steps if you are using a 64 bit computer.
- Open the V-Ray options.
- Click System
- Check "On" and "Don't use local machine" under Distributed rendering.
- Press the "..." under Hosts.
- In the Window that appears press "Add server"
- Enter 127.0.0.1. Press OK.
- Ok on the Distributed Rendering Settings window to close it as well.
- In the options menu under "Output" Check "Save output" and "Render to VRImage"
- Under "Output file" beneath this click on the "..." and choose a location to save the file.
- Attempt to render.
It's not perfect and sometimes you'll have to trim the scene down where you can or split large structures into multiple files on top of the above but it can be very helpful. Unfortunately we have to work within the framework we have and not every scene that can be built can be rendered.
Thank you,
Chaos Group USAWe hope this has answered your questions. If not, please just reply to this email.
Thank you,
#TICKET THREAD#
Date: Tue, May 13 2014 12:55pm
From: Keith Thompson
To: phm@timep.com.auHello Peter,
With Devin and Ted already helping you there is not too much I can add but I do have one trick to share.
SketchUp is always a 32 bit program even on a 64 bit machine. All 32 bit programs have a RAM limitation and as a result can crash when 4 or more GB of memory is required. To get around this limitation we have added a 64 bit V-Ray DR process that you can offload all of the work to.
If you are using a 32 bit machine crashes at large resolutions or with large or complex scene files would be normal and I'm afraid nothing can be done to fix that.
Please try these steps if you are using a 64 bit computer.
-
Open the V-Ray options.
-
Click System
-
Check "On" and "Don't use local machine" under Distributed rendering.
-
Press the "..." under Hosts.
-
In the Window that appears press "Add server"
-
Enter 127.0.0.1. Press OK.
-
Ok on the Distributed Rendering Settings window to close it as well.
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In the options menu under "Output" Check "Save output" and "Render to VRImage"
-
Under "Output file" beneath this click on the "..." and choose a location to save the file.
-
Attempt to render.
It's not perfect and sometimes you'll have to trim the scene down where you can or split large structures into multiple files on top of the above but it can be very helpful. Unfortunately we have to work within the framework we have and not every scene that can be built can be rendered.
Thank you,
Chaos Group USA"
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