V-ray 1.6

valerostudio

This is Graphics Card. With GPU, the rendering is off loaded to your graphics card and not your CPUs - results in faster RT renders but you need a high end card to do so.
A dongle is a physical piece of hardware that contains your license. It will be a USB thumb drive and will arrive when you purchase/upgrade to 1.6 once it comes out of beta. You need to have it plugged in for V-Ray to work.
Models in Max format are everywhere - Evermotion, CG Axis, VizPeople, Turbosquid, to name a few. It depends on what you are looking for. Trees? Cars, Furniture? I should mention 2 things. 1 - if they are in Max format, you need a license of 3D Studio Max and V-Ray for Max ($$$). 2- If you can buy the OBJ version, then you can convert in Blender or using the utility that comes with VR4SU - see my tutorials on the V-Ray for SketchUp forums over at Chaos' website.

shannakae

A dongle is a physical piece of hardware that contains your license. It will be a USB thumb drive and will arrive when you purchase/upgrade to 1.6 once it comes out of beta. You need to have it plugged in for V-Ray to work.

Thank you for the reply!, It sounds like you are someone over at vray so maybe you can help me with another issue I am having. I Recently purchased vray and will be able to upgrade to 1.6 for free once it comes out... I installed the beta version of 1.6 on SU 8 about a month ago... then I noticed that yall had released a newer version of the beta 1.6 so I tried to install that... During installation it removed my first beta then it would not re install the newest version with an error saying that I had already downloaded the trial and that I needed a key or license in order to make it work... I dont have a key yet because I dont think it is out of beta... the problem is, I no longer have vray on SU 8 and I can not render my projects.... So I downloaded SU 13 and installed it there... but when I render with it there I get Vray watermarks on the renderings... I tried re installing 1.49.01 but am running into errors (i dont really want to use the 1.49.01 as I would rather continue using 1.6). Any help here would be much appreciated!

Also, how easy is it to install a GPU? I have a ASUS Gaming Laptop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M, 16 gigs of ram. Approx how much does it cost and is it possible to install it on my computer? Does it make a huge difference in rendering time? is it like having a separate rendering engine... so i can continue to work on the model wile it renders?

Thanks!

valerostudio

I am not a member of the team at Chaos. I have been in the beta testers group since the early private beta though. Devin or Fernando frequent these forums, so I am sure than can answer your questions.

I am very knowledgable about installing a GPU, but my understanding is that you will have access to higher power cards on a desktop rather than a laptop machine due to limitations on cooling fans and power supplies (I think).

shannakae

@valerostudio said:

I am not a member of the team at Chaos. I have been in the beta testers group since the early private beta though. Devin or Fernando frequent these forums, so I am sure than can answer your questions.

I am very knowledgable about installing a GPU, but my understanding is that you will have access to higher power cards on a desktop rather than a laptop machine due to limitations on cooling fans and power supplies (I think).

Thanks! I wonder, is there a way to tag someone in here so they see the thread?

Rich O Brien

Devin reads this forum so I'm sure he'll pop in at some point

valerostudio

They are working feverishly at getting the final candidate out, so they may be not logging in as much as they usually do.

I would suggest to email vraysketchup@chaosgroup.com

dkendig

Oh, I'm here every day. Just don't always have time to respond to posts, and luckily the community seems to jump in when I fail to. ::high fives V-Ray users::

The watermarks are showing up for many users these days, because our beta testing phase is running a little longer than originally anticipated. When we release a new release candidate, we will allow fresh demo licenses to be checked out again.

holmes1977

Hi all, been away from Vray testing because of heavy work load and haven't installed the latest beta. Did I miss something big, does Vray 1.6 use GPU to RT render?

@valerostudio said:

Also, how easy is it to install a GPU? I have a ASUS Gaming Laptop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M, 16 gigs of ram. Approx how much does it cost and is it possible to install it on my computer? Does it make a huge difference in rendering time? is it like having a separate rendering engine... so i can continue to work on the model wile it renders?

I have the same laptop. Your GPU is the GeForce GTX 670M which is pretty fast considering it fits into a laptop. Like I said above I dont know if Vray 1.6 uses GPU's, but using the GTX670M with Thea Render RT works very well. So your GPU is fine

shannakae

@holmes1977 said:

Hi all, been away from Vray testing because of heavy work load and haven't installed the latest beta. Did I miss something big, does Vray 1.6 use GPU to RT render?

I have the same laptop. Your GPU is the GeForce GTX 670M which is pretty fast considering it fits into a laptop. Like I said above I dont know if Vray 1.6 uses GPU's, but using the GTX670M with Thea Render RT works very well. So your GPU is fine

Yes, Vray 1.6 is using GPU to RT! I have not been able to get it to work properly yet... but they are still in Beta, they are planning on releasing the full version very soon.

Thanks for clarifying about my computer! I was thinking I was going to need to get a separate GPU, but it sounds like you are saying my computer has a GPU already!!! Makes sense, this computer is a beast!

you can download the Beta from their website.... There are some pretty cool new features! Looking forward to seeing the full power of RT.

andybot

You do need to have OpenCl or CUDA (respectively) installed for GPU rendering to work, otherwise it defaults to CPU rendering (at least based on my limited experience testing it out.)

shannakae

@andybot said:

You do need to have OpenCl or CUDA (respectively) installed for GPU rendering to work, otherwise it defaults to CPU rendering (at least based on my limited experience testing it out.)

Ok, so can you tell me what an OpenC1 or CUDA is?

THanks!

andybot

Hi Shanna, I am referring to the software you have to have installed to allow the rendering to run on the graphics card. Go to your card manufacturer's website and make sure you get the latest drivers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home_new.html

@shannakae said:

@andybot said:

You do need to have OpenCl or CUDA (respectively) installed for GPU rendering to work, otherwise it defaults to CPU rendering (at least based on my limited experience testing it out.)

Ok, so can you tell me what an OpenC1 or CUDA is?

THanks!

AcesHigh

ehh??? VRAY 1.6 Sketchup renders on GPU?? I remember asking around and I think someone from Chaos itself said they PLANNED to have GPU rendering on VRAY Sketchup but right now, ONLY CPU!

dkendig

at that time, the statement was accurate. GPU rendering was added during our beta process. Originally it was assumed that this addition would take too long, and would potentially be too unstable to add to this release. We have it working now, although it is limited.

AcesHigh

so its working since what version? And is it automatic detection or the user has to select GPU rendering? (I suppose it does not support ALL features of CPU rendering?)

Available for final rendering or only for RT?

shannakae

@aceshigh said:

so its working since what version? And is it automatic detection or the user has to select GPU rendering? (I suppose it does not support ALL features of CPU rendering?)

Available for final rendering or only for RT?

It is in the Beta version so it has not been released yet. In the options under RT you have to choose GPU....

I am not sure about what it supports....

dkendig

GPU support does have some limitations. Here is the documentation for what is supported: http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/rt100/supported_features.htm

and here is what is unsupported:
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/rt100/unsupported_features.htm

Obviously the 3D Studio Max specific stuff isn't relevant, but for the most part these documents apply to V-Ray for SketchUp. It's recommended to use CUDA over the OpenCL method, if you have an NVidia graphics card that supports it. If the chosen GPU method isn't supported on your machine, a message should appear in the progress window indicating that CPU will be used instead.

dkendig

@shannakae said:

It is in the Beta version so it has not been released yet.

We are well on our way to final release though! RC2 should be our last Release Candidate prior to release, so everyone get ready!

shannakae

I am attaching a screen shot of Render window using a full render. I am also attaching a render window using RT CUDA GPU, ....I waited about a minute and this was as far as it got.... notice the walls are black and nothing really looks the same as the full render. I am also attaching an image of RT Using CPU... this one is much closer to the full render using Render button. I got a similar Result using Open GPU as I Got using CUDA GPU... I am also attaching a screenshot of my system...

Maybe someone over at Vray can take a look at this and tell me what is going on? Not sure what I am doing wrong or what I should expect with RT but it seems a lot slower than what I saw on the webinar the other day... and the GPU is not looking right?

I am using 1.6 23412 which is one of the latest nightly builds.... so...

Thanks, loving the new Vray,

Full Render using regular render option

RT CUDA GPU, after I waited over a minute

RT CPU after i waited over a minute

my system graphics card

andybot

you know, certain material types, like diffuse, aren't necessarily supported in GPU...

Just kidding! you probably have reversed faces on your walls. RT is still a work in progress, there really are some material types that aren't supported or don't render the same way as the regular render.

The more lighting sources and the more reflections you have, the slower your render will process.

That's nice that you got the GPU render to work. I have an older card in my machine and I never got around to finding the proper software to try it out.