I have used Vray for almost 4 years now, so obviously started on Vray 2.0, on Sketchup. Over that time I have worked to optimize render settings, for the least render times while not sacrificing quality so really, a lot of tweaking. Now on Vray 3.4 (3.6 is slow to start rendering once you hit the big red button, so I don’t like it!!!) I have followed discussions on improvements to say, Brute force and Progressive rendering and guys are of the opinion that it’s the way to go. That Irradiance maps and Light Cache combo is on its way out.
I have to say, I use Irradiance map and Light Cache for GI, maybe old habits from Vray 2.0. I have found Progressive render to be no good for my hardware (A modest Core i5-3210m with 8gb memory and a 5400rpm HDD). My GPU is no good so I never engage.
So, in my eternal quest for optimal settings, I’ve tried different combinations and these are the results…
Yup, I agree.
Well, unless your settings involve Skatter considerations, of course.
I see you have pebbles on the ground? is this where resides the skatter in your image?
Anyway, is the rendertime around 2h for a 1080p image? In this case, indeed your hardware must be a bit on the slow side or your setup needs optimization.
I haven’t used vray for ages now but for exterior images, I usually got nice enough results with much lower noise thresholds than 0.01 (like 0.05 but that depends on the complexity of the lighting and the textures) in max vray 3.4 (never tested 3.6) and earlier.
I usually crank down the noise threshold for interior views with no direct lighting and yet I use a photoshop mix with a denoise pass (render element) to get rid of some noise.
I agree that with powerful recent machines, Brute force primary and Light cache secondary gives fast and reliable results.
Yet for exterior views like the one you show, Thea is unbeatable speed/quality wise (and compatible with Skatter from the ground-up), but even more, Lumion 8 gives impressive results (I’d say a still image similar to yours in 1080p would take around 20 seconds in 5 star quality and perhaps around 5 minutes in 8k) but you need to learn an other soft again and of course it’s not given.
BTW is the truck imported from 3DWarehouse?
I did it (well, not 100% as I borrowed some parts, but it has some success)
Yes, the truck is from the warehouse. Thanks for the kind words. I did use Skatter for the pebbles, trees, grasses and potted plants. I can’t imagine the hustle without Skatter here.
My hardware is a bit dated (Core i5 at 4 cores, 3.1ghz and a modest 8gb ram) thus optimization is very necessary. Vray 3.4 Sketchup gives you a bar to slide to ‘adjust render quality’ and thus far, I have found none of it works well (either too noisy or too long render times). A native denoiser was added to the Sketchup vray but it doesn’t work very well on this machine. Again, I prefer bucket rendering over progressive rendering and primarily IR map+LC. I tried Brute force+LC but no good results so far in the time that the other option gives. So til I get better hardware I’m going to stick to the good old Vray 2.0 ways.
I’ve used Thea before and loved it! I agree it’s unbeatable especially when using a nice graphics card+CPU and in my opinion, it gives better glare+bloom and more artistic freedom. Lumion 8.3, I’ve seen really nice work done on that (I used Lumion ver 5 and the improvement is huge) but for stills I prefer Vray for stills. I don’t mind the 2 hours really, as long as the end is pleasant.
@Thomas, I believe this could help someone here as well. And I like the layout of this forum more than chaosgroup!
Here’s one of the images, with LUT and some glare+bloom applied…
I am a long-time V-Ray user and honestly by the time you move every single setting of irradiance to get 'the best image you want brute force is already done rendering.
Yes out of the get-go irradiance will be faster than Brute force, but this speed comes with a cost, that is quality. Setting such -6 and -2 Subdivs will render better details but it will create dark blotches on interiors, you will need to increase your Subdibs count and with that, rendering time.
Believe me a lot of people spend lots of hours adjusting Irradiance map to maintain quality Vs speed, but at the end, Brute force maintains high quality with very little setup. Mostly on exteriors with millions of polygons, and displacement maps.
Now the latest version of V-Ray is even better, and Optane denoiser may work for you since you don’t have a newish video card.
I would recommend you on getting more RAM for your computer, 16 Gb preferably 32Gb, this will also help you with the scattering of objects.
If you have little RAM then you should stay with Bucket rendering, this method saves memory, compared t progressive.
Best luck
