Switching from maxwellrender to vray / scatter, references, grass?

[Thorsten]

Hi,

i just heard that maxwellrender won't be supported / updated by nextlimit any longer 😞 Are here any users with experiences in switching from maxwellrender to formz/vray?

I'm playing with the demo right hnow but I can't find tools like scatter, reference or grass etc. which are important for architectural visualization.

[Justin Montoya]

Hello,

I only briefly used Maxwell before jumping in completely with VRay, but I can help point you in the right direction with VRay.  First thing to know is that we, FormZ users, have a different integration with VRay than other applications like Max,Rhino, SketchUp, etc.  So if you watch a tutorial on how to do something in VRay the interface and access is going to be different.  There's also a couple of things we are missing currently in v5 that you may come across. 

Have you checked out the VRay for FormZ Documentation yet?  This should explain all the features available at this time.  I use VRay fur/grass from time to time and it works superbly.  Not sure about scatter, but FormZ labs does have something like that too. Reference? I'm not sure what you mean but we do have vrscene files for placing reference geometry from another file, and it works great.

http://www.formz.com/products/vray/V-Ray5_Documentation/index.htm#t=Overview.htm

https://lab.formz.com/

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Cheers.

[Thorsten]

Hello Justin, thanks for your help. Looking deeper into the documentaion is a good point indeed 🙂

maybe Just another question, which I couldn't solve: Where is the external material editor gone? in a tutorial video about materials i saw a standalone material editor (similar to maxwell), but when clicking 'edit' a vray material file,  formz only switches to internal material settings with a very poor preview mode

 

 

[Thorsten]

vertical / horizontal Shift (shiftlens) would be important, too. Unfortunately, I can't find this feature.

[Thorsten]

ok, i just have read the story about the editor from v3 to v5... what do you think about the poor quality of the material preview window?

[johnalexander1571]

Hey Thorsten, you can do it in VRay it's caller vertical tilt. No preview for it, I just add small values and start renders until the lines are straight.

[Thorsten]

Hi John!  thanks, the "tilt" function I have found, but not the "shift" one. Here you can see what I'm thinking of, if you scroll down a bit: (https://docs.chaos.com/display/VMAX/VRayPhysicalCamera)

[Justin Montoya]

40 minutes ago, Thorsten said:

Hi John!  thanks, the "tilt" function I have found, but not the "shift" one. Here you can see what I'm thinking of, if you scroll down a bit: (https://docs.chaos.com/display/VMAX/VRayPhysicalCamera)

Those are 3DstudioMax camera specific functions I believe.  However you can achieve the same thing using FormZ View parameters and/or the Cone of Vision. 

You would change the view to 2 point perspective to do a Horizontal tilt.  

 

And you could change the Eye Point by a set distance to accomplish the 'shift' function.

[johnalexander1571]

Hi Justin,

In my case Vray 3 goes ahead and ignores the 2 point perspective setting in formZ? Is it different in 5?

[Justin Montoya]

5 hours ago, Thorsten said:

ok, i just have read the story about the editor from v3 to v5... what do you think about the poor quality of the material preview window?

Poor Quality of the material preview window?  I'm not sure what you mean?  Are you using a high resolution screen where the preview window is very small?  It looks fine for me, but I mostly use quick test renders and interactive renders to see changes full size on my models.  That way you can see what the material in your scene and lighting setup are actually going to look like, which is often a bit different from this preview.   I agree we could have a larger preview box here too, and this will hopefully be addressed in an upcoming release.  

The latest v5.1.3.0 update of VRay for FormZ has a much more robust material editor than was first released in v5.  Using the icons just below 'Method' you can setup all the various layering effects you can with the standalone material editor.  This way is just integrated into FormZ instead of a separate app.  In this example you can see I imported one of the included Concrete flooring materials included with VRay and then made some tweaks to make it darker and glossier:

The same method can be applied using the dropdown beside the checkerbox on each material parameter.  This may be easier to understand with some descriptions of the options, which can be found in the VRay for Sketchup or Rhino documentation that Chaos provides.  I'd steer away from the VRay for 3DStudioMax documentation because those often do not carry over to the other VRay installations like Sketchup,Rhino, and FormZ.

https://docs.chaos.com/display/VSKETCHUP/Generic

[Justin Montoya]

5 minutes ago, johnalexander1571 said:

Hi Justin,

In my case Vray 3 goes ahead and ignores the 2 point perspective setting in formZ? Is it different in 5?

Hi John,

Hmmmm, that does appear to be the case here in v5.  I can't say I had ever tested it before because I only render in a more realistic 3 pt perspective.  Must be a bug, so I'll report it.

[johnalexander1571]

Thanks Justin, I thought it was an unsupported feature that might be in the update. Thanks for reporting it.

[Thorsten]

maybe I am a bit spoiled by great tools like maxwell scatter, maxwell grass or maxwell shift lens. But in my workflow these have always been essential....

So I hope that formZ has these on their to do list for future updates, otherwise I probably can't switch.