Vray status?

[Eric Mehl]

I'm interested to know what is the current state of Vray development in Gaffer, if any. I see some references to it being a goal to support some day. I'd be up for contributing or starting to add some support.

Our pipeline is built on 3ds Max (Windows only, so would need to work along with Alex Fuller and his fork) and Vray Standalone for Linux. Kind of an odd setup but it's working well for our small projects.

[Andrew Kaufman]

Hi Eric,

We don't have any plans to add VRay support at Image Engine, but we'd love to see the contribution if someone else is up for taking it on. I think one of the VRay developers expressed interest a year or two ago, but that was in the midst of Siggraph, so I imagine he had other priorities when he got back to his desk... if you have a good support line with Chaos Group, it might be worth reaching out to see if they'd be interested in helping you out on that front.

The one thing to bear in mind is that we're in the midst of a Renderer API overhaul. GafferArnold and GafferAppleseed are already transitioned to the new API, but GafferRenderMan is lagging behind for now. So if you need a source of inspiration, take a look at one of the first two.

Other than that, we're always watching the list here and can provide advice on general approach or implementation. We'd just have a bit of a struggle coding or testing since we don't have any VRay licenses at IE.

Cheers,

Andrew

On 19 September 2017 at 06:29, Eric Mehl <eric...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm interested to know what is the current state of Vray development in Gaffer, if any. I see some references to it being a goal to support some day. I'd be up for contributing or starting to add some support.

Our pipeline is built on 3ds Max (Windows only, so would need to work along with Alex Fuller and his fork) and Vray Standalone for Linux. Kind of an odd setup but it's working well for our small projects.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gaffer-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gaffer-dev+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Andrew Kaufman - R&D Lead

Image Engine

studio: +1 (604) 874-5634 | and...@image-engine.com | www.image-engine.com



15 West 5th Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5Y 1H4, Canada

If you are not the intended recipient, disclosure, copying, distribution and use of this email is prohibited. Please notify us immediately and delete this email from your systems. You may contact us at in...@image-engine.com if you do not wish to receive further commercial electronic messages. We may still send you messages for which we do not require consent.

[Alex Fuller]

I am interested in this VRay support but I don't have access to the standalone SDK as I think it costs money unfortunately, and I don't think I have enough time/resources to develop it right now. Alternatively I think the VRScene python library is freely available, I think Blender uses this one but it is probably not nearly as robust as a proper integration into Gaffer.

On Tuesday, 19 September 2017 09:46:12 UTC-7, andrewk wrote:

Hi Eric,

We don't have any plans to add VRay support at Image Engine, but we'd love to see the contribution if someone else is up for taking it on. I think one of the VRay developers expressed interest a year or two ago, but that was in the midst of Siggraph, so I imagine he had other priorities when he got back to his desk... if you have a good support line with Chaos Group, it might be worth reaching out to see if they'd be interested in helping you out on that front.

The one thing to bear in mind is that we're in the midst of a Renderer API overhaul. GafferArnold and GafferAppleseed are already transitioned to the new API, but GafferRenderMan is lagging behind for now. So if you need a source of inspiration, take a look at one of the first two.

Other than that, we're always watching the list here and can provide advice on general approach or implementation. We'd just have a bit of a struggle coding or testing since we don't have any VRay licenses at IE.

Cheers,

Andrew

On 19 September 2017 at 06:29, Eric Mehl <eric...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm interested to know what is the current state of Vray development in Gaffer, if any. I see some references to it being a goal to support some day. I'd be up for contributing or starting to add some support.

Our pipeline is built on 3ds Max (Windows only, so would need to work along with Alex Fuller and his fork) and Vray Standalone for Linux. Kind of an odd setup but it's working well for our small projects.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gaffer-dev" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gaffer-dev+...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Eric Mehl]

I'm in Alex's boat as far as not having time for a full-blown integration with Vray, but I'd like to make a pass at some simple things to at least be able to render a vrscene, customize render settings, etc. Maybe from there slowly adding functionality like specifying cameras, lights and shaders.

In case you weren't aware, Chaos also has published source to their Houdini translator: https://github.com/ChaosGroup/vray-for-houdini/blob/master/LICENSE (building it requires the SDK) which might be helpful.

I have access through my Chaos downloads page to something called the AppSDK. I didn't license that specifically, so maybe it's something included with a regular Max or Standalone license? Is that what you mean by standalone SDK, or is that the Python library you mention? It has examples for Python, C++, and a couple others and it seems pretty fully featured though I haven't looked at it in detail.

[Alex Fuller]

Yeah the AppSDK would be the one to use to make your own classes/objects in C++ (IECoreVRay and subclassing the converter class to make to/from's) be a and do progressive renders and such (subclassing IECoreScenePreview), bypassing the need for vrscene. Also to integrate VRay's OSL to do translations from Gaffer's OSL like Arnold/Appleseed do already, as well as its standard shader libs.

[Eric Mehl]

That's a great start - looks like a fun challenge to chip away at. I'm going to do some planning on what I may be able to realistically take on in the next few months and will surely have more to ask since I'm new to Gaffer and these sort of projects.