Are there any image fidelity or quality ceilings for the image generation that happens in ThreeKit that we should be aware of that don’t exist when you use the Vray renderer directly outside of Threekit? We have determined that VRay by itself produces images of sufficient quality and we want to make sure we can achieve the same level of quality through Threekit. Also, to make this more concrete what are some examples of ThreeKit 2D renderers out there that are using Virtual Photography with VRay?
Hi Daniel,
There are very few restrictions when it comes to producing Vray renders on Threekit. First and foremost it is important to understand that producing renders on Threekit using Vray is still very much the same as what you’d be doing locally. The platform makes use of the Vray standalone renderer to render vrscene files in the same way as the Maya or 3dsmax plugin does in the background.
On Threekit we import these vrscene files and we can modify them to combine multiple assets together into a final vrscene, which then gets sent to the standalone renderer. Through the vrscene you can import all vray-supported features, including geometry, materials, lights, render settings, and fur.
This means that the render outputs on Threekit should look the same as your local renders, assuming you’ve exported and set up everything correctly.
The features where you’d run into trouble are those that rely on external files, such as previously saved light-caches, geometry proxies, or UDIM files. This is a limitation because the Threekit platform has its own internal file system which is different than your local computer file system.
In addition to this, our rendering machines have a set limited amount of RAM, set to 24.7 GB per machine. This may prove problematic in cases where you are relying on massive amounts of geometry such as huge amounts of fur. It’s possible this could be increased on request for special situations. Similarly to that, we also have a time limit per render set to about 3hours. However, if your individual renders need to take that long, then your setup is likely in need of optimization.
Small differences will occur when it comes to the compression of the images served to the front-end. Even though our internal renders are saved as EXR files, we cannot serve EXR files to the browser due to filesize and format limitations, so we have to process them as either optimized PNG or webp files. From the org settings you have control over the compression settings of the webp files, which are the recommended format.
You can find more details about the rendering workflow here:
And about the Vray requirements in particular here:
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Oh, and one last limitation is around color spaces. On Threekit we only support the sRGB space for render outputs, and the RAW linear color spaces for certain types of textures. You need to ensure you set up your Vray assets in Maya and 3dsmax using the sRGB output, instead of the current defaults which use the ACES color space.
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One last limitation I forgot to mention is the fact that on Threekit you can only render using the Vray CPU option in Bucket rendering mode. We don’t currently have support for either Progressive rendering or GPU rendering.
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This is great, thank you Andrei. I think it will also help to see some examples of configurators out there that use VRay 2d renders. Could you share that here?
The point I was trying to make above was that the quality of the visuals will only be as good as the artists working on them. The Threekit platform does not modify or influence the renders beyond what you can get yourself inside a tool like 3dsmax or Maya.
However, here are a few quick examples of some public configurators using renders done on Threekit:
Jpress Shirt Configurator - entirely Threekit renders
Crate & Barrel Sofas - most of the fabric sofa whitesweep hero shots are renders from Threekit
https://www.crateandbarrel.com/furniture/sectional-sofas/1
Masonite Doors:
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@Daniel_Sandberg
We have another example that launched recently, which includes a lot of the features we use for Vray. It’s currently launched in China only, so you’ll have to cope with the Chinese characters for the moment, but it’s still pretty easy to navigate and configure.