Example Images

[johnalexander1571]

Hi Andrew,

I have never learned to do the Material ID trick and I just sat here trying things to get that to work. Forgive me for a silly question, what are the steps? How to save the image? Etc.

Also, I have been looking to the Ronen Bekerman website for inspiration because I don't know how they accomplish all of those incredible renders. I am trying to level up by looking at their case studies on that site. I wish I could see your lodge/aspen home model done up like that! You start being able to tell that those really nice renders are lots of extra work. Of course, I'm now in the mechanical world as opposed to the architectural one. I have to make mundane building materials look dramatic.

https://www.ronenbekerman.com/

[timgarner_10]

So I'm trying to follow along with these forum posts as I'd love to know all these great tricks to get our formZ renderings to the next level. But with my current workload I'm slammed and it's hard to find time to keep up with all this. Should we start a YouTube page and share some quick tutorials on how we achieve some of these things?? I know, it takes time to create video's and edit them ,etc. But a picture (video) is worth a thousand words trying to explain all these things. I really wish formZ would release some video tutorials that go into more detail about using Vray and what all the settings do but that's just wishful thinking.

Also, I'd love to be able to create some simple animations using Vray, is this even possible yet? Last time I tried to use Vray in Imager earlier this year I couldn't even get that to work. 

[johnalexander1571]

I have been doing VRay animations using Imager. I contacted support when it crashed the first time, and I was told how to toss the Imager 8.5 autodessys folder before I start. Since then, I throw away the folder and start fresh each time I want to use the Imager, and Imager has worked without any flaw for thousands of frames of animation. I have let it run all weekend doing a large number of clips and they are all done when I come back. I am on Windows 10.

[Andrew West]

2 hours ago, johnalexander1571 said:

Hi Andrew,

I have never learned to do the Material ID trick and I just sat here trying things to get that to work. Forgive me for a silly question, what are the steps? How to save the image? Etc.

Also, I have been looking to the Ronen Bekerman website for inspiration because I don't know how they accomplish all of those incredible renders. I am trying to level up by looking at their case studies on that site. I wish I could see your lodge/aspen home model done up like that! You start being able to tell that those really nice renders are lots of extra work. Of course, I'm now in the mechanical world as opposed to the architectural one. I have to make mundane building materials look dramatic.

https://www.ronenbekerman.com/

John

I can help you and everyone else out on the material ID feature.  This is a very important feature of Vray that everyone should use.  I can't tell you how many times in my work I get asked to tweak a material color after the image has finished rendering.  Or perhaps  you want to work on a particular piece to dodge, burn, blur, or fix a map  without affecting the areas around it. Rather than re render the image a material ID channel allow you to do all your color management Post Process by isolating that material in your image. 

Its really quite simple:  Double click on your material to pull up the material parameters.  Go to the Vray tab of that material.  Below IOR is a Material Options button.  Open that and you will see a new palette with the Material ID button already highlighted.  Type in a number from 1 to whatever.  That number corresponds to a base color that will be assigned to that material in  a separate channel during the final render.  Now in your Vray settings palette scroll down through your Render Elements and select Material ID.  I also select Reflection, Depth of Field, Denoiser and a few others.  When you render your final image you will get each of these in a separate channel to be loaded in PS.  To save those separate channels just choose that option at the top of the render window rather than just saving the current channel.  There is also the option to save out as an EXR which should have the channels all loaded into one file but that has never worked for me. 

Tech, if you are listening I have suggested before that it would be very convenient for us if the program just automatically assigned a Material ID number/color for every new material created.  Easier said than done I suppose.

Hope this helps improve your workflow

AW

[johnalexander1571]

Thanks Andrew, I didn't know there was a drop down menu at the top of the render window with a plethora of channels to save out. I was missing that part, all is well now. Thanks for your great reply and the other suggestions on how to use this feature.

[timgarner_10]

John - Thanks, I'll have to give that a try for the animations next time! I'm on a Mac so might be a different story for me.

Andrew - I never knew about the material ID thing and being able to adjust things post process!!! I've always just hit render and if something needed adjusted I'd stop the rendering and adjust that material or whatever, then would re-render. I have always just saved the renderings as a png once they got to a good amount of passes, usually at least 50 or 60+. But you're saying you can save all the channels separately? Do you know if there's a way to adjust the lighting post process like this? That's something I loved about Maxwell the very little time I had toying with it.

[Andrew West]

The short answer is yes and no.  Maxwell has that wonderful feature called Multilight that allows you to turn lights on and off and adjust intensity post process.  Amazing stuff.  However, in Vray there are a few channels that you can output called Global illumination, Self Illumination, and lighting.  Along with the reflection channel you can really adjust the way light is handled post process.  Still nothing like Maxwell but a huge improvement over RenderZone. 

[timgarner_10]

Andrew - Thanks again! This is all definitely something I need to dive into then. I'm actually going to do a quick rendering now just to test out some of the material ID stuff with saving out the separate channels to make sure I understand it all while we're on the subject. Again, it would be nice if there would have been some sort of series of videos released about all this stuff instead of having to basically learn on your own thru trial & error, or via forums, etc. If I only had all the wasted hours of my life back haha...

[Justin Montoya]

Wow.  Some great information sharing here on how to get these awesome example images.  Nice!

For those looking for a bit more documentation and videos on VRAY, I'd suggest looking at the VRay for SketchUp docs and videos.  Our VRay interface is similar, and the VRay Frame Buffer (VFB) rendering window is the same.  The VFB has many advanced tools that you may find useful.  I don't use post processing much for my work, but occasionally I find it really handy to use the Clipboard (Copy) feature of the VFB, which allows me to then Paste the selected channel in Photoshop.  You can also save out the separate channels as separate files, or a single EXR file with all of the channels on seperate layers.  This may be handy if you do a lot of post processing.

https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAYSKETCHUP/V-Ray+Frame+Buffer+|+VFB

 

[johnalexander1571]

I can confirm that using the VRay Reflection channel is not producing reflections on the objects in the scene even when set to 8.

[Andrew West]

For me the reflection channel seems to handle gloss more than reflections.  Add that channel into your photoshop image over the base png file and set blending to Screen mode.  It will tend to lighten an image and add more realism.  The reflections in Vray are a bit difficult to control compared to Maxwell.  Some people are adding spheres around their models with hdri images inside and some are using dome lights.  I wish I had a set way of doing things but it really depends on the materials, models, environment lights, etc.  One of my bigger disappointments with Vray has been the reflection issue which really should be easier to control and more intuitive.  Going back to the Material ID channel in PS still seems to me to be the easiest way to get total control of this.  Hope this helps.

AW

[Andrew West]

On 11/22/2019 at 9:27 AM, Andrew West said:

John

I can help you and everyone else out on the material ID feature.  This is a very important feature of Vray that everyone should use.  I can't tell you how many times in my work I get asked to tweak a material color after the image has finished rendering.  Or perhaps  you want to work on a particular piece to dodge, burn, blur, or fix a map  without affecting the areas around it. Rather than re render the image a material ID channel allow you to do all your color management Post Process by isolating that material in your image. 

Its really quite simple:  Double click on your material to pull up the material parameters.  Go to the Vray tab of that material.  Below IOR is a Material Options button.  Open that and you will see a new palette with the Material ID button already highlighted.  Type in a number from 1 to whatever.  That number corresponds to a base color that will be assigned to that material in  a separate channel during the final render.  Now in your Vray settings palette scroll down through your Render Elements and select Material ID.  I also select Reflection, Depth of Field, Denoiser and a few others.  When you render your final image you will get each of these in a separate channel to be loaded in PS.  To save those separate channels just choose that option at the top of the render window rather than just saving the current channel.  There is also the option to save out as an EXR which should have the channels all loaded into one file but that has never worked for me. 

Tech, if you are listening I have suggested before that it would be very convenient for us if the program just automatically assigned a Material ID number/color for every new material created.  Easier said than done I suppose.

Hope this helps improve your workflow

AW

I now need to update this post since I just found out something in V-ray that I did not know exist.   As I said before this feature requires a unique number assigned to each material.  In the past I assigned one manually to each using the Material Options button in the Material   Parameters window.  I just found a little button in the V-ray Settings window that automates this process.  If you go to the Render Elements drop down window you can pick your different render options ( I choose Material ID and Denoiser for instance)- then right under that window is a line called ID MANAGEMENT-  if you click on that there is an option to Assign Unique Material ID's to all materials.  I wait until I have created all my materials for a project and then click on it.  Not a huge time saver but it all adds up.  Hope this helps (or maybe everyone knew about this already).  

Edited March 3, 2020 by Andrew West
clarification

[Jaakko]

I put here few renderings made for our customers in differnt sectors. The images are pretty much straight from V-Ray, no after work.

Have a nice weekend 🙂

[Andrew West]

Very nice work.  If I may comment on one thing the last image with the red dome lights could use an SSS material for the shade.  There is an orange plastic SSS material that comes with V-ray that would work once you change the color and scatter distance.  Just a suggestion.  

[Jaakko]

Thank you Andrew. A good point. I'll keep that in mind. 👍

Edited March 9, 2020 by Jaakko
correction

[rmulley]

Thought I'd throw a few images up.... any rendering tips to improve my technique are always warmly received.

I do love Vray I have to say.... Renderzone is just a sad distant memory now

I'm still trying to nail down a good go-to technique for a white background, I am getting there but I can't show those right now.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by rmulley

[Jaakko]

Very nice renderings rmulley.

White background technic is only thing I am missing from Renderzone. Not achived as easily in V-Ray yet.

[Andrew West]

Excellent work rmulley.  Hard to make any suggestions.  It is probably client driven but I would have snuck in a little more glossiness on the packaging if they allowed.  That along with an hdri light tends to add a lot of life to objects. 

Here is one I have been playing around with.  It is actually an older project that was originally done in Maxwell.  I wanted to try V-ray on it to see how they compared.  No real difference other than the fact that V-ray was 100 times faster.  The lights were a little harder to set up in V-ray because Maxwell has the multilight function which is one of its greatest strengths.  If only we had that on all render engines!

 

[rmulley]

16 hours ago, Andrew West said:

Excellent work rmulley.  Hard to make any suggestions.  It is probably client driven but I would have snuck in a little more glossiness on the packaging if they allowed.  That along with an hdri light tends to add a lot of life to objects. 

 

This is where I come unstuck with a white background. When products are white when I add any reflectivity to it they become washed out but if I turn the light down a bit to compensate for the over exposure the background becomes grey.  

[Andrew West]

4 hours ago, rmulley said:

This is where I come unstuck with a white background. When products are white when I add any reflectivity to it they become washed out but if I turn the light down a bit to compensate for the over exposure the background becomes grey.  

I understand your dilemma.  Perhaps if you add an HDRI image to a dome light you should be able to keep that highlights from washing out.   Just a thought.  

[¢hris £und]

Don't use V-Ray myself, however, does it have the ability to render Alpha Channels?  If so, would this help?

[Andrew West]

Chris

It has alpha channels.  V-ray would be pretty useless without it.  

[¢hris £und]

Then, with a little work, you could accomplish what you want?  Render twice(or multiple depending on complexities), one+ with full background you want for reflections and transparencies then the other+ with Alpha channels applied.   Post composite.

 

¢£

[Andrew West]

It is also worth reiterating something I have posted about in the past. Which is the Material ID channel option.  If selected in Render Elements and your all your materials have ID numbers then it is very easy to isolate objects, adjust materials and adjust curves and colors in PS.  Works a lot like an alpha channel for every material independently.  I love this feature and it saves me a LOT of time.

[¢hris £und]

Oh yea, I have done things like that in Renderzone too.