V-Ray vrscene/vrproxy export Settings

[Flosimo]

When exporting a vrscene from e.g. sketchup you have an export dialog where you can set the preview-detail-level. That is extremly useful when exporting objects with a lot of faces like trees or other foliage. I think the whole idea behind vrscene and vrproxy is to keep your main working file lean and the shaded view snappy. now with formz i could not find those export settings. When importing a tree the preview detail level is way to high, even in normal mode. bounding box is to low and makes it hard to place objects precisely. Does anyone know where to find the export settings or if formz will implement this in the future? To me this is a key function for arranging complex scenes in formz and would actually solve alot of other problems that are present at the moment with formz and vray.

 

[Andrew West]

Flosimo

Since Tech is absent in the forums I will try to explain where we are at with this.  First off what you are trying to do is correct in order to bring complex geometry in to Form.z without it bogging down.  That said vray proxy is broken and should not be used.  According to Tech Chaos group included it in the package because it was hard to take it out but they advise not to use it.  I tried at first and immediately gave up.  They advise to use V-ray scene files instead because they include more information and are more stable.  Stable being a relative term.  In order to make a scene file you open your geometry in a separate model and then open the palette called "v-ray".  The last two icons in that palette are place Vray scene and export vray scene.  When exporting you need to identify the path where you want it stored and check "pack" to include all texture maps.  Be aware that if there is a vray sun in your scene it will be included as well.  When importing your scene file you will need to make sure you uncheck "import lights" or you will have a second sun in your scene that can not be edited.  If you forget to uncheck that box then right click on the object and go to its parameters tab.  Click on Edit and then turn off the sun light.

When placing your scene files back into a project be very patient.  The placement seems to take a lot of computing power and it is often slow and arbitrary in terms of where the geometry shows up.  I will often throw a few scene files in and them place them accurately later.  Changing the preview from normal to bounding box doesn't help the speed.  Once you are done placing your scene files take a close look at the whole model.  I often find that I have some extra arbitrary scene files placed in random locations far from where they are supposed to be.  These I just delete. 

All in all it is nice to have this tool since the Components feature of Form.z has been broken for a very long time.  I have used this to bring in trees and plants that would have killed Form.z instantly.  It is still a work in progress but hopefully getting improved upon.

[Tech]

The V-Ray proxy is not broken, its just limited. Proxies only include a mesh and a list of discrete face color indexes. To be clear this is not the material itself, just an index of a material the face should use. When importing a proxy, form•Z creates a unique material for each discrete index in the file, maps the imported mesh to the new materials and you then need to "fill in" the material with the desired color/texture etc in the material editor. V-Ray proxies are included in V-Ray for formZ primarily for users who have older content created with V-Ray 2.x.

V-Ray scenes are newer and much more powerful as they encapsulate the complete description of the scene (geometry, materials, lights, settings etc). In fact if you export a vrscene from form•Z you can render the scene with V-Ray standalone outside of form•Z and it will render exactly as it does inside form•Z. Some V-Ray scenes can be slow to process when placed because the preview is not saved in the file and must be generated when the screen is placed (even the bonding box is not necessarily stored in the vrscene file). This is an area of improvement that we have requested from Chaos Group. Since vrscenes include lights, you may want to disable these when placing the scene as Andrew describes (but they can be useful for things like light fixtures).

Components are not wholesale broken, but they do not handle large components or nested components efficiently. This is an area that has had major improvements made for form•Z v9

[Flosimo]

On 1/18/2019 at 5:07 AM, Tech said:

form•Z v9

Is there a rough date for the release?

[Andrew West]

That is a question that has been asked many times now.  I don't imagine we will get an answer until right before it is released. 
Getting back to V-ray proxy objects I have gone back again to examine this and I still stand by my assumption that this feature is broken.  If I take a bush and group it together then select the group and hit export v-ray proxy nothing happens.  Nothing.  I should get a dialogue giving me an option to save my proxy object somewhere just like it does for Scene files.  I don't really care as long as I have some way of saving my complex geometry in a manner that frees up the program.  So scene files is where its at. 

[Flosimo]

Thanks Andrew, so scene files are the weapon of chice. but, when looking over to vray for sketchup implementation you will find options that allow you to control the detail level of the preview mesh for scene files when exporting or importing. i found that the "normal" mesh preview is often to complex and slows down my ui, especially when importing trees with lots of detail. Therefore it would be great if formz implemets those options too. So to sum it up, "normal" vrscene preview is to detailled and "box" is to simplified. We need the same import/export options for vrscenes that you find in other implementations. 

[Andrew West]

I agree 100%.  As I mentioned above the interface is awkward and very slow when importing a scene file but in the end it saves me a ton of time not having the sheer mass of geometry in the model which would kill my system pretty fast.  For decades I had only used 2D trees and plants in my final images and now with V-ray I am able to use 3D assets in the program that I never could use before.  In a perfect world programs like X-frog, Plant Factory and Onyx tree might take notice and work on an interface that could allow us to integrate their plant assets directly into Form.z and Vray.  For now I just create those plants I need and go through the tedious process of exporting them from a tree builder program, import into Form.z, re texture map and then save it out as a scene file.  Once I get a large enough library things should get a lot faster.