VRay GPU Useability?

Rendering
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I’ve been a long time Rhino user and have rendered directly out of it for at least 10 years. Maybe 15! :slight_smile: My renders of choice have been Arion4Rhino and Arion Standalone and Brazil4Rhino.

Unfortunately, neither of the apps are actively being developed for Rhino. I know Brazil will be available for V6 and I’m sure I will continue to use it but I’m not holding my breath for many new features or much development. Arion…well? I just love using it but it feels like it’s time has come and gone.

I have Octane and Also Vray of which both I just never really warmed up to but are still around and being developed. Especially VRay.

So you VRay users…how is it on Rhino and specifically how is the GPU render acceleration? Is it just preview quality or is it final output quality? I have some great hardware with multiple GPU cards and would really like to utilize them in rendering. So, if you have time to give me your feedback with positive and negative…and is it that much better on 3D Max?

TIA
Paul

Some online work…

3D pre-production product illustration and visualization:

http://www.illustration-3d.com

On-going examples of recent 3D Illustration and 3D Sculptural experiments…and some frying pans:

3D Illustration Wires Sculptural and Experiments in 3D Form Frying Pans

Fender Custom Shop Logo project:

Fender Custom Shop

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is available for v6. And while you investigate the VRay and Octane options (which you really should), you can have a peak into the Raytraced viewport mode, powered by the Open Source render engine Cycles, GPU accelerated if you have a fitting card for that :slight_smile: Especially if you have multiple CUDA cards.

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I haven’t upgraded to V6 yet…this may be a good reason to.

You’re saying that Cycles is already integrated into Rhino V6? How does it compare with Octane?

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Yes, I have integrated Cycles in v6 as the Raytraced viewport. I haven’t used Octane myself, so can’t compare much in that sense - but the renders I have seen look good.

If you have some decent hardware to throw at Raytraced, say several CUDA cards, then it should fly quite a bit.

No denoising, nor filmic as in Blender, but I would say the results can be great. @BrianJ has a multi-GPU setup, he can give you a better idea of how well it works.

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It’s such a pleasure seeing your work Paul, you add a level of feel and magic that is just stellar!
I wish I could work with you!

@nathan, if you could get Paul’s opinions on Raytraced then I would really listen.
(But I am quite sure he isn’t too fond of viewcapturetofile, so I would hand him a renderplugin.)

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Thanks Holo…you’re too kind!

The more I read about ‘Raytraced’ the more I think a 3rd party plugin is the way to go.

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Ah yes, I should type some on that.

I never said the ViewCapture* commands are a great replacement… (:

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Hi Paul,

I think Vray and Octane are two plugins based on a continuous and active development. Since the last release also VfR3 is on a good way. For my daily work I stick at VfR2, but it’s time for me to involve VfR3 more and more.

VfR is my work horse, good for anything. Here I can be sure to get my projects done. I like Octane for product shot with a lot of glossy effects. Here no complex GI is needed and the easiest GI mode is good enough. So, the calculation is faster than at Vray. I like Octane for product animations. For interior shots Octane is to slow for my need. (I need high res interior shot within approx. 15min)
My impression is, VfR is very good for a professional use.

A new player is Enscape. It’s extremly fast and you get interiors done in seconds, never more than a half minute (I use a single GTX1080ti). It’s a young engine with a lot limitations. But the output looks nice and allow me to render a lot interior shots within very tight time frames.

I don’t have so much experience about Vray GPU and I’m curious to hear more about it too. My tests was not so successfully - to noisy, to slow or features wasn’t supported. I’m looking for fast interiors.

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@PaulS Hi Paul, Raytraced mode (i.e. Rhino Cycles) will use multiple GPUs and does so on par with other GPU based engines in my experience. Note for a pro like yourself, there are a number of optimizations and features that I’d still like to see for this engine in Rhino, namely…

  • Firefly removal
  • A blend material which uses a texture as input
  • Finished dev of the shaders available with TestShowPrivateContent
  • For it to exist as an actual renderer to not rely on view captures, (the dash version of the commands gets around the viewcapture dialogs in the meantime)
  • Support for sub-object texture mapping
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Hi Paul, nice to see you again.
I’m still using V-Ray as my rendering engine. I’m very pleased on how it’s developing now. The Rhino version is very close to the Max version in features and performance, they made changes that allows them to update the engine nearly as often as the Max one.
A good sampling of VRay GPU capabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh2keRsQy3k
A very interesting feature for me is that the CPU(s) can act as virtual GPUs so you use all your hardware.
The distributed, now called Swarm, is better than ever, the de-noiser is great, the integration in Rhino is now mature and seem natural.
I can go on and on… I’m producing my best renders ever… very rapidly!

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Thanks guys for the great feedback!!

Brian…I’m not sure what you mean by this: (the dash version of the commands gets around the viewcapture dialogs in the meantime)

By the way, I upgraded to V6 and am now playing with Cycles. A touch slower than Arion (just my feel) but quite good.

I think Vray is a route for me to also explore.

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Running “-ViewCaptureToFile” versus “ViewCaptureToFile” will move the capture options to the command line instead of in the new floating dialog box. The preview takes a while to generate if you are in Raytraced mode so I like the dash version myself.

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Hi PaulS,

There have been several good points brought up here. I have to throw in my two cents as well . . .

I don’t have any experience with Arion, so I honestly can’t compare any of these to that . . . however, I think your choice ultimately depends on what the bulk of your daily work renderings will be.

I’ve got seats of Maxwell, Octane, Vray, and Thea and have played with Enscape. My thoughts, in a nutshell are:

Maxwell : quality is top notch, but for what I do, it’s just two slow. Even with the GPU support they’ve added, which has cut several features out, btw.

Octane: this is what I do the bulk of my work in. 90% of my renderings are exterior architectural shots or products. I do several product animations each year. I could go into great detail about this engine and won’t unless you want me to, but I do want to at least point out, that it’s extremely capable of some sophisticated materials and render setups. I can get faster product renders and animations out of this engine than any of the others on this list, and with quality on par with each of the others, so there’s no quality sacrifice to the speed. So . . . i think if the bulk of your work is product based, I’d urge you to really check out this plugin in. The Rhino Plugin Developer, Paul, is very responsive as well and really listens to the Rhino user feedback.

Vray: if the bulk of your work is on interiors, i’d definitely lean towards Vray. You’ll get high quality and faster interiors with this engine than the others in this list. The UI for the VFR plugin is the best as well out of all of these on this list. I do have some development concerns with updates and such with VFR based on the past, but maybe that is going away. But still . . . an awesome render engine.

Thea Render: Thea attempts to do it all, and it’s a great engine. However, it’s user base, at least for Rhino seems small, and it’s development has been slower than I’d like. I’ve pretty much stopped using Thea however, because of it’s lack of animation support with Bongo. That’s a deal killer for me.

Anyway, personally, I’d download copies of both Vray and Octane and spend some time with them and see what works best for you. I don’t think you could go wrong with either. My choice to do most of my work in Octane was simply based on the fact that for my daily work it was more productive for me than Vray. Same quality and faster results for all the product shots and animations.

Hope this helps in some way,
Ryan

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That’s great! Thanks Ryan for the over-view.

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I downloaded VRay 3.6 and have to say after a little tutorial studying, I find it to be very well thought out. The interface is great! Seems to be quite solid and stable in my novice hands:-)

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And don’t be afraid to lower the rendering quality (let’s say from very high to high or even medium) and use the de-noiser.
It works very well and can cut your render time by half. Just watch so fine texture (such as leather, fabric or brushed metal) don’t get smoothed away.

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After using VRay for a few hours, I’m very happy with it’s performance and stability in Rhino. I can see myself switching over to it for all of my work.

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One last thing… you noticed the “cloud” button under the render button?
It can mean that you won’t buy any new hardware anymore…

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Marc – do you happen to know what the pricing structure will look like on the Vray Cloud? I couldn’t find any info on it on the ChaosGroup website? I’m wondering if this will be a viable pricing structure for only large production shots and animations, or if it’s meant to be something to use for daily work. Probably the former . . .

PaulS – please share any cool tests you do in Vray, I’d love to see them. With the latest 3.6 release (I have an older version not the latest) there seems to be some significant updates to the Rhino plugin. I’m eager to test out the latest as well when I have time.

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Hi Ryan.
I’m finding the implementation of 3.6 very good. I wish more GPU functionality was there but the basic stuff is fantastic. Rhino 6 is very, very fast…great speed enhancements under the hood. I’m very pleasantly surprised at the combo with Vray added.

You may have seen these quick tests with Vray 3.6: