Better Material Preview

[doomgrave]

Until Vray implement a better Material preview scene, I've created a background and a max file to load to have a better preview of reflections, inspired by Corona.
Here it is an example: Note how non blurry reflections are correctly shown.



--------> DOWNLOAD<--------

NB:

• Just Set "USE CUSTOM OBJECT" in 3dsMat editor to see my sphere
• The sphere I've created can show up to 8 MultiSUbMaterials
• The scene uses a point light to illuminate and Vrayplane only for reflections to not be heavy.
• I cannot increase blurry refl-refr quality cause I don't know where to change Vray rendering setting for preview window, increase Vraylight samples do not work with vray 3.4
• It should work with 3dsMax 2013+

[^Lele^]

You need to set the quality in the source file.
A little word of warning, however: a custom preview is identical to file merge.
Which in max CAN be problematic (this was done by me a decade back, with GI, sun and sky and all. It must still lay around in the forums, somewhere.), and historically has been (crashes, scene corruption and so on.).
No idea if with the most recent versions things improved in that department.

Really good idea, though.

[doomgrave]

You need to set the quality in the source file.
A little word of warning, however: a custom preview is identical to file merge.
Which in max CAN be problematic (this was done by me a decade back, with GI, sun and sky and all. It must still lay around in the forums, somewhere.), and historically has been (crashes, scene corruption and so on.).
No idea if with the most recent versions things improved in that department.

Really good idea, though.

Quality in the source, so It's impossible for the user to change it?
I use schene like this since Vray 2.10, and never had a problem it's just heavy when you make preview bigger. ;D

Anyway just using the custom background and preview becomes a lot better. 3dsMax standard background it's just unusable!

[^Lele^]

yep, that's a max thing.
Admittedly, my sample scene had BF GI and a sun, sky and domelight in it.
Perhaps simpler is better.

[NicoC]

Clever idea, Doomgrave ! thanks for sharing

[doomgrave]

yep, that's a max thing.
Admittedly, my sample scene had BF GI and a sun, sky and domelight in it.
Perhaps simpler is better.

Yep, I've also a scene only with Domelight used for background and reflections, but it's much heavier, and after a bit of experimenting I've found that this combo Standard +VraylightMesh (mesh seems to be faster than VrayArealights) only for reflection it's quite as fast as standard Preview.
The point is that since Vray 3.30 Light sampling do not increase quality anymore in the preview, so we get noise with glossy under 0,5 (I think it doesn't use local subdivs)

Anyway I hope that Vlado gets inspired by this and will add a better preview integrated in Vray

[tricky]

My specular highlights are showing up as circular rather than the rectangular shape of the plane light. Am I missing something?

[doomgrave]

My specular highlights are showing up as circular rather than the rectangular shape of the plane light. Am I missing something?

A more complete image guide

[AlexP]

Any chance this can be saved for max 2015?

[tricky]

A more complete image guide

a-ha! Thanks mate.

[doomgrave]

Any chance this can be saved for max 2015?

I'm almost sure I saved the scene for 3dsMax 2013. I've just re-saved and reuploaded to be sure.
If it doesn't work: Just try to reopen the scene with your max version and resave.

Max File For 3ds2013

[AlexP]

I get this message


really need to upgrade....

[^Lele^]

Well, now you see why ten years ago my one didn't take off... ^^

[AlexP]

Anyone know how exactly you control the quality of the custom preview?
Additionally, it is really really slow to update (with crappy quality), using a sphere with a couple of vray lights, anyone why this is? or how to improve this?

[^Lele^]

previous page in the thread?