List of Vray for Rhino bugs

Rendering V-Ray
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Hi,

I thought of starting a new thread where several bugs we have been experiencing with Vray for Rhino plugin will be pointed out in a hope that they will be resolved at some point in the future. Please feel free to add to this list.

We are an architecture office that uses Rhino in its everyday workflow more and more and finds the program very useful. Unfortunately, we are disappointed that the rendering, material/texture handling and in particular Vray plugin are still far from what 3ds max version offers. This often forces us into a workflow where the Rhino model has to be exported and then rendered in another software which is both time-consuming and costly. I know similar is true for many other offices. Most issues probably originate with the Vray developers, however I think both software should do a step further in making it work.

Some problems:

  • interoperability: Vray community has build high-quality collections of materials and models for its most used software 3ds max and Maya. Using those assets in Rhino is not very well addressed, needs a ton of manual setup and adjustments. This makes it difficult to achieve the same level of the final output. We are sometimes exporting 3ds max assets as a vrayscene objects to use them in Rhino. However this requires us to have a vray for 3ds max license, open each file separately and export it out for Rhino to understand it. Once the files is exported it is also impossible to change any of its settings. Sometimes the assets will also not render the same.

  • Vray assets importing: There seem to be several bugs related to importing of the Vray assets such as materials and lights. when copying a Vray material from one file to another we have experienced everything from files crushing, to materials not importing correctly, to materials becoming Rhino materials, to renaming of imported materials as (imported1, imported2,…) making and endless list of same materials. The way of handling Materials with duplicate names is also not resolved and behaves inconsistently. The same problems persist when working with referenced Rhino files (which is for us a common practice).

  • texture handling: Rhino has a very confusing way of handling textures and other external files. Ideally, we would like to find a way, where all the textures would be saved in one place on the server. However Rhino keeps creating a folder called filename_embedded_files, despite always choosing not to embedd the files.

  • Rhino default Materials library: it uses its own files format .tx, which creates a temporary jpeg file when the material is added to the scene. Those temporary files get random generated names and are then periodiacally deleted. This makes maps go missing, difficult to relocate or being located in all kinds of places where they shouldn’t be.

  • display of maps: Rhino display modes often don’t work well with Vray materials and can’t preview them realistically or at all. This is often problematic as we want to create a mapping of objects, which is of course impossible without a preview. The workaround is to create a Rhino material with the same maps as the Vray version, map the objects and then replace the material with the Vray material - time consuming and unnecessary.

It is difficult for me to say which of those issues come purely from Vray developers and which can be addressed by McNeel, but there is clearly also a need for better communication between both sides that will be neccessary if Rhino desires to become a viable high-end platform for rendering.

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  • textures and embedded files → Rhino issue, not V-Ray

  • Rhino default Materials library → Rhino issue, no V-Ray

  • display of maps → there is a binding parameter at the V-Ray materials which should allow to see any texture at the viewport. I hope so you don’t need the workaround per temporary Rhino material anymore.

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I know this is a terribly late reply (apologies for that) but I want to address a few of your points in addition to what @Micha wrote.

interoperability: Vray community has build high-quality collections of materials and models for its most used software 3ds max and Maya. Using those assets in Rhino is not very well addressed, needs a ton of manual setup and adjustments. This makes it difficult to achieve the same level of the final output. We are sometimes exporting 3ds max assets as a vrayscene objects to use them in Rhino.

V-Ray scenes are still the way to go. Chaos Cosmos is another way to bridge the gap between asset creators from 3ds max and Rhino users.

However this requires us to have a vray for 3ds max license, open each file separately and export it out for Rhino to understand it.

V-Ray Collection licensing offers one combined license for most Chaos products.
Alternatively, importing from 3ds max to Rhino raw geometric data as .obj files, for example, should work fine, leaving only mtl recreation to be done in V-Ray for Rhino.

Overall, interoperability is a topic often discussed internally and there are several plans how to improve it further, especially after joining forces with Enscape.

Vray assets importing: There seem to be several bugs related to importing of the Vray assets such as materials and lights

Asset conflicts are handledby using Rhino behavior. There is no separate V-Ray solution. It can be controlled via the Rhino commands RenderImportConflictOption and RenderPasteConflictOption .

display of maps: Rhino display modes often don’t work well with Vray materials and can’t preview them realistically or at all.

This is due to:

  • V-Ray procedural textures cannot be displayed directly in the Rhino viewport.
  • Some V-Ray material parameters have no equivalent in Rhino
  • Some V-Ray material parameters work differently than their equivalents in Rhino

Running V-Ray interactive render and making adjustments to object mapping is entirely possible. Alternatively, the Rhino UV editor allows slotting a custom texture for preview purposes. This is not an ideal solution to your problem but a workaround, nevertheless.

For timely assistance or discussion of anything else related to V-Ray for Rhino, please reach out via https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Kind regards,
Peter Chaushev
V-Ray for Rhino | QA

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This is supposed to be fixed in the next official release, but I thought I’d add it here…

A Grasshopper bug… When modifying geometry, either referenced or GH geometry in Grasshopper and using Interactive mode with the Render node, your Rhino will crash.

For example, I tried to edge fillet a referenced Rhino cube and it killed my entire application.

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rhinos way of handling textures is crazy. when i open a file frim cloud and rhino finds a texture on supposed url it loads it even though it can be very different picture on the other computer. i cannot force rhino to use textures from embedded files folder… one has no mean to assure that model looks the same on different pcs

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Can confirm the next V-Ray for Rhino update will contain solution to the issue Richard described.