Caustics

[Andrew West]

Has anyone been able to get V-ray caustics to work yet?  I am trying to create some realistic pool water and I have watched a few videos of v-ray for Max.  No matter what I set my caustics to it has no effect on the image.  I have messed with every v-ray setting and even displaced the water surface. 

Secondly I noticed that if I use my GPU to render not only do the caustics not work but my bump map disappears and then the render hangs forever.   Does GPU not support bump maps?  Using Hybrid does the same thing. 

Anyone out there that has tried to make great pool water yet? 

[dankosturik]

As an avid 3ds max user, and now being forced to use FormZ for my job, I can tell you that there's a mound of reasons to why 3ds max is a far superior software to FormZ, and this being just one more thing to add to that list.

I can't get any displacement to function properly within FormZ + Vray. I have also encountered the same issue as you with the bump map disappearing.

[Des]

4 hours ago, dankosturik said:

As an avid 3ds max user, and now being forced to use FormZ for my job, I can tell you that there's a mound of reasons to why 3ds max is a far superior software to FormZ, and this being just one more thing to add to that list.

I can't get any displacement to function properly within FormZ + Vray. I have also encountered the same issue as you with the bump map disappearing.

Surely this is not a question of your opinion of 3d software? Vray is a new implementation in FormZ and obviously needs tweaking, give it time.

My advice.. get another job, nobody should be forced to do anything...

[Andrew West]

Lets not get into a discussion of software platforms here.  I own Max and several other programs and they all have their issues and quirks.  Yes, V-ray is a work in progress for FMZ and we are working on getting it implemented properly.  Testing this has taken a lot longer than I hoped but I am able to generate production images fairly quickly. 

So I am looking for advice on whether this is an internal issue with the software or if it is internal to my lack of understanding on how its used.  As for bump maps I did find out why the GPU is not getting the bump maps correct.  One must go down to that tiny little box in the render settings to check Advanced Mode for GPU.  Now it works.

As for caustics who knows why I can't get it to work.  Tech has gone MIA again. 

The displacement issue has continued to plague me but it is mainly when turning a corner.  I can get physical displacement on a flat plane pretty easily.  I do find it strange that the disp map tool is just an icon that you click and then click on the geometry.  Never sure if it is doing anything when I do it.  I would have expected an alignment tool or some pop up to indicate that something is happening.  My guess is that the displacement map is somehow linked to the alignment and scale of the texture map and that tool just gives the map some amplitude.  Don't forget to mesh your object before displacement.   One thing that I did find interesting were the values for displacement.  On a model with pool water I had a very blurry disp map that was not that high of a contrast and my Displ. value was 0.08 out of 100.  I attribute this to the contrast and the size of the original map.