Don’t know if you guys know already, but a few days ago Andrei posted on twitter that he has been hired by chaos group (the developers of vray), saying that this is good news for everyone. I’m not sure, but probably they’ll make an official version of the plugin now, which is pretty cool, since vray is an awesome renderer (vray 3.0 will be quite amazing), and this move by chaos group means that blender is been taken into consideration as a viable business for them, which speaks good about blender too.
Good news indeed =)
Hopefully they learned something from how Otoy did their Octane integration and will release their own modded Blender with all supported Vray features as well, can’t wait
Sincere congratulations to Andrey! And a big hope that it’s a step towards Blender and not otherwise. Of course we’ll be using Cycles a lot (and use already) but VRay solves designer’s problems quicker in some concrete cases. So called “caustic problems” I’m not much into VRay but it will be really interesting to use 3.0 and further versions with Blender.
Sh**, I´ve said congrats on twitter and facebook. But might aswell say it here Congrats again Andrey.
Whatever happened to the talk about letting C++ plugins into blender? if that was possible these 3rd party renderer adaptors would need to build custom blenders right?
C++ has the speed for traversing geometry and what-nut. Are there missing functions in blender they need to ad to be able to export to the renderer,
AFAIK the render result, and even the 3d viewport render border are available via python for updating with renders from 3rd party renderers.
Really good news for Vray/blender developpement !
Just waiting for the price… For now, standalone version was around 350$ vs 1000$ for integrated version.
On the other side, it could open the door to other plugin integration that works well with Vray (phoenix, fumeFX etc) if C plug come back with 2.7 rework
Question, would using the non python (Is it C?) Render API limit the use of some programs having Cycles like integration?
Such as LuxRender being allowed to as its GPL, but V-Ray not? Does that count as linking, which IIRC the GPL disallows to non compatible licensed software?
It doesn’t matter whether you use a C or a Python API, both count as linking according to the GPL FAQ. You can work around it by using the filesystem or the network (which is what I believe Octane does) to pass data.
On top of that, the Blender Python API doesn’t have an efficient way of getting geometry data out, which is the likely reason why Octane requires a patched version of Blender.
Ahh sorry, yes I had accidentally associated python exporters (using filesystem) with the python api, which are quite obviously different things
So is it possible to have a wrapper library that uses an intermediate license (if that is possible)? Or are there not really many options to having non GPL compatible render engines running inside blender using the API’s instead of workarounds.
Congrats Andrei!!!
It is great to see a developers recognition for their efforts in porting commercial software into blender.
Well earned and deserved
You’ll b,danc(ing)er with chaos :RocknRoll:
Hmmm… this mean we get blender-n-law deals for vray?
Well, you could release a GPL addon that talks to the Vray core over the network/filesystem. No license issues there, although if Chaos wanted to charge extra for the integration, having a GPLd .vrscene exporter could make that difficult, since there’s really no way (practical or legal) to stop someone downloading the addon then using it to feed Vray-standalone.
That is awesome! Congrats Andrei! I don’t know about you, but I have been hoping for awhile that something like this might happen. You deserve to have some income for all the great work you have done on the Blender2Vray addon. Hopefully, you’ll be able to make the addon even more awesome now. :yes: Interested to see where this goes for you.
I think you guys are making a mountain out of a mole hill with all this worrying about the python API or net sockets being to slow for real-time performance. Have you seen MOMA? This is basically the Modo command line renderer being controlled in real-time by Maya. There is no direct API communication what so ever in this example and it’s works amazingly well.
If something is wrong inside Blender and you’re not able to do this because of a limitation of the Python render API, then I feel like that is something that needs to be taken up with Brecht.
I hope this means node based shading. That reminds look at modo with its layered based shading…
Anyway vray is in the top 3 and would really bring blender up in the charts.
Performance seems indeed really good,but we should see how it will work on huge polygon count scenes(maybe I’m missing something,I have given it only a quick look,but the tests are not to intensive from a geometric point of view)
I think the need for a good(fast) binding between blender and external renderers is mainly needed on large scenes(as far as I know Bdancer has patched blender to improve the performance).
Anyway,congratulations Andrei !
Btw Vray exporter is built very well, very stable and fastest material + texture workflow I’ve ever seen.
Yes, the export mesh stuff etc is patch into Blender for faster output of mesh.
Btw, in past (before hired by chaosgroup) Bdancer had realtime scene update working, it wasn’t in the Blender interface like cycles but moving objects etc in Blender updated in the Vray Framebuffer.
I’m not much into VRay but it will be really interesting to use 3.0 and further versions with Blender.
Congrats again Andrey.