Skylight Portal In Vray 6

[Jacqualine Henington]

Get a good camera setting and put a very normal amount of lights in your scene (by normal I mean what would exist in the physical world), setup your glass to affect all channels and shadows so the sunlight finds its way into your scene, and I typically override the environment GI with a Vray sky map.

Portals only take the color from what's behind. I understand it as transporting light info (colors, intensity, etc) into the lit geometry. With a VRay Sky overall, portals or not wouldn't make any difference. (I'm tlaking about VRay plane lights on windows)

Might it be that before Gamma 2.2 LWF practices were commonplace that portals were necessary to drive light deeper into the interior scene and now that more people are running LWF that light naturally travels further into interior scenes?

Using portals will help drive light/color information into a your interior, but at the expense of severe noise.. On the other hand, you'll get better GI distribution and thus you can do with lower GI settings.

Sir pls can anyone help me with this vray information..i am looking for a skylight portal option in vray 5 3ds max there used to be an option for skylight portal in vray in the old versions have they removed that option in the new versions?.. if not where can I find them.

"With the Adaptive Dome Light, Skylight Portals are no longer needed. It automatically figures out which portions of the environment to sample and which ones to ignore. This makes it much easier to set up and much more efficient."

I hope you can help me out with this. Let's say we have an interior scene with storey high windows that are covered with curtains which are set to V-Ray 2 sided material with transparency turned on. However, the amount of light in the interior is still pretty low. With V-Ray CPU renderer we would just use skylight portals just in front of curtains and the amount of light would be satisfactory. My question is what is the alternative to this for V-Ray GPU renderer, since, as you all probably know, it doesn't support skylight portal?

If this is a real world example I will assume that there are lights inside the room, in that case you can turn on those lights, and adjust the exposure as need it. If you need more light than that, then just place plane light as you need it them, You could place them right in front of the top windows, make them invisible, and they just work 'like' port lights.

Some features have been modified in V-Ray 6.0 compared to previous versions of V-Ray. The sections below provide more details on what has been changed to help you transition to using the latest version.

VRayMtl's Double-Sided option is removed from the UI. Older scenes with this option enabled will render correctly. To disable the option, use the MEL command: setAttr "VRayMtl1.doubleSided" 0.

The Chaos Cosmos Browser replaces the V-Ray Material Library Browser. The old V-Ray Material Browser is still usable if downloaded with a previous V-Ray version. However, we recommend using the materials from the Chaos Cosmos Browser for any new projects. If the V-Ray Material Library folder has not been downloaded with a previous V-Ray version and its folder is empty, clicking the V-Ray Material Library Browser button from the V-Ray toolbar automatically opens the Chaos Cosmos Browser. The mtllib.exe tool is still available and downloads the V-Ray Material Library.

The Local space bump map type in VRayMtl and VRayBumpMtl is not supported in V-Ray 6. Opening an older scene, which uses a Local space bump map, converts the bump map type to its default setting.

The Stochastic bump filtering option found under the Overrides Textures rollout of the Render Settings is an option visible only for scenes created with V-Ray version 6.10.01 or earlier. It improves the bump texture sampling method, which fixes unwanted artifacts for high-frequency textures viewed from certain angles. For all newer scenes, the option is enabled by default and hidden.

Select devices for GPU rendering tool no longer offers command-line control. The VRAY_GPU_PLATFORMS environment variable can still be used. The vray gpuDeviceSelect MEL command is also still active in Maya.

With V-Ray 6, update 2 the default USD translator is Hydra compatible. This enables the asset transferring process between Houdini and Maya to go smoother, eliminating some differences in rendering. Hydra translator introduces some improvements of USD support with IPR - of transforms and materials. The default mesh subdivision method becomes Catmull-Clark. Old scenes exported with default set to Catmull-Clark instead of None can be manually adjusted.

V-Ray 5 for Maya removes V-Ray Quick Settings from the user interface. If the V-Ray Quick Settings are used in older scenes, they will open with the correct parameters set. The default V-Ray settings are optimized to provide the best starting point, removing the need to use Quick Settings.

Local subdivs - V-Ray 5 automatically determines the shading sampling in the scene. The only settings that need changing are the image samples. With this change, the Local subdivs are hidden from the user interface for all lights and materials. Scenes from previous V-Ray versions will use automated shading sampling when rendered in V-Ray 5.

VRayFastSSS2 material no longer supports the Front and Back Lighting options, which are now removed, as they were only used for the already deprecated pre-pass-based illumination modes.

Glossy Fresnel option is removed from the UI of VRayMtl and VRayToonMtl. It is always considered enabled, even for older scenes with the option disabled.

The Invert Normal options in VRayDirt are now hidden from the UI. Old scenes with this option enabled will still show it. For newer scenes, the option can be enabled using the following MEL command: setAttr VRayDirt1.invertNormal 1

Sharp mipmap filtering is used by default for file textures instead of the previously default Smooth with mipmap. Note that adding the extra V-Ray Texture Filter attribute overrides the filter type.

When user attributes are used at the beginning of a file path, V-Ray treats the path as absolute. To mimic the old behavior, use the fake user attribute that forces the path to be interpreted as relative.

Starting with V-Ray 52001, V-Ray Lens Effects are applied in the RGB channel together with other post effects. When a Denoiser render element, Source LightMix, or Composite mode is used, the lens effects are applied to the effectsResult channel. Alternatively, enable the Create effectsResult channel option.

The out-of-process option for IPR is removed from the UI. Historically, it was the first implementation of IPR in V-Ray for Maya, and it internally used DR with a locally spawned server to communicate and render the scene changes.

Min Shading Rate is removed from the interface and always uses the default value of 6. This is the optimal value for V-Ray, and changing it usually comes at the expense of performance. Old scenes saved with a non-default value can still be adjusted.

The Linear Workflow option from the Advanced Color Mapping Settings in the V-Ray tab is removed from the UI. It is no longer available for new scenes. V-Ray 5 will automatically offer to migrate scenes with light portals to a compatible setup that adds gammaCorrect nodes. The migration can also be run manually from the V-Ray menu > Tools > Migrate Legacy Scenes. Read more about legacy Light Portal migration.

What you can do to speed things up is to put emitting planes in your windows and disable Camera in their object properties, Ray Visibility tab, so they will be invisible. Play with those other ray visibility settings to taste, like disabling diffuse will let skylight come through.

A curiosity: is VRay using GPU too? I know VRay is the best renderer but if it has GPU rendering then no doubt it is the number one. Cycles lacks things yet. And perhaps some of them like portals never will be in. But who knows, I remember Ton explaining (while doing Sintel) that GPU rendering was not something in the horizon for Blender. :evilgrin:

This is my rendition of the 1972 Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo by the late architect Kisho Kurokawa. This is a full-CG environment and an attempt to model and render a detail-heavy urban scene. As usual, the modeling was done in 3ds Max and the rendering in V-Ray.

For lighting, despite the uniform look, I used quite a few different HDR skies from various vendors, including this one, this one and this one by Peter Guthrie. The last exterior render (with the bright sunny look), uses a nice free HDR sky by Vizpark.

Obviously these images are fantastic, especially the final image:
There are two light sources: HDRi (cool) and a spherical light (warm)?
The materials look to have a vertical gradient ramp to control grunge for floor objects?
There is a moderate fish-eye lens effect with small amount of chromatic aberration?
The carpet material is texture only?

amazing work! could u pls share me some tips on how to reduce the noise when using HDR(DOME LIGHT) to light up space which has small opening window (e.g. your scene here). do u use v-ray light as skylight portal in front of the windows? and how do u set up the subdivs firgure of skylight portal and the dome light (with the HDRI MAPS)? many thanks!

amazing work! for the interior shots. could you pls share me some tips how to reduce noise when using HDR(Dome light) to light up interior space which has a small opening window such as your scene here . are you using vraylight as skylight portal puting in front of the window? and how do you set up the subdivs of skylight portal and Dome light(with HDRI maps)? many thanks.

c80f0f1006