V-Ray plane as a helper

[glorybound]

I don't know about everyone else, but that makes sense to me.

[vlado]

How would it be more useful if it was a helper? Or you mean that it should be similar to the 3ds Max grid helper?

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

For me, I turn off my lights, camera, and helpers often. I see the V-Ray Plane as a helper. Maybe it is just me.

[andy51]

I was going to ask the same as Vlado, but now I see what you are getting at. Yeah I guess it would make sense, since the only way to hide it at present is to either select it or hide all geometry... and since it doesn't really create geometry as such, until render time, I can see you point in making it a helper object rather than geometry.. However since I rarely use it myself, it isn't so much of a problem for me. One thing that can be rather annoying though, is it doesn't scale with the viewport view, zoom out and it just gets larger... Also perhaps the same could apply to the VrayFur object, make it a helper, rather than an actual object, since the helper itself doesn't render, only the actual fur, which can be selected, without the helper in the scene.

[M.Max]

I never noticed that hiding geometry won't hide vray plan. If that the case then yes being a helper would help I guess.. What i would like to be "fixed" is the scale issue.
To avoid that I usually apply "display as box" to it and then i can freely zoom in/out without seeing it covering the full project.. But I prefer to not do this woraround as things getting messy if i have other objects with display as box enabled too for example.

[andy51]

Actually hiding geometry does hide the Vray Plane, however, I think what glorybound was saying is that it would be better if it was under helpers, not geometry, so that you could just hide all helpers and the geometry would remain unhidden, though as I say, another way is to select the vrayplane and hide it, but I do feel glorybounds idea makes more sense.. but yes it's the scale issue that I have found most annoying, if it was actually geometry and you zoomed in or out, it would scale up and down with the zoom level... also same goes for vray lights to be honest, though I usually have them hidden, once they are in place and I can use the drop down to limit selection to lights only, if I need to move them later.

[glorybound]

For me, it is when I am early in a project and hide the cameras and lights, so I can select everything and collapse it. Or, when I hide the cameras and lights, so I can delete everything else in my scene, so I can import an updated model.

[dans]

Helpers are usually not supposed to be visible in the render. So the rendering control object properties such as "Visible to Camera", "Cast Shadows"... are not available for helpers. Other plugins will not let you pick the object for their include/exclude lists for example anymore (because helpers are not considered geometry). I think this would cause more trouble that this is wroth - bad idea from my plugin developer point of view.

Daniel

[Dave_Wortley]

I'd like the VrayPlane to have a width/length property which is for viewport only.... let me decide how big it should appear in my scene and then render to infinity (and beyond).