Render Settings in Vray for Sketchup
Vray has been one of the most widely used rendering software for sketchup in the past due to its user friendly interface and easy to learn system. The rendering section of Vray comes with a huge library of materials, presets, and modes to choose from giving the designers a big range of options to select from depending upon the device they are using. Here are the 9 Render Settings in Vray for Sketchup.
Vray GPU, CUDA & CPU modes
Engine switches between the CPU, CUDA(GPU), and RTX(GPU) rendering engine. The devices used by the GPU engine to perform the raytracing calculations, can be specified via the menu available on the right
If V-Ray GPU cannot find a supported CUDA device on the system, it silently falls back to CPU code.
If V-Ray GPU cannot find a supported RTX device on the system, the process stops.
The Computer CPU is also listed as ‘C++/CPU’ in the CUDA device list and can participate in rendering (Hybrid rendering).
GPUs are said to be much better at 3D rendering than CPUs because they’re optimized for graphical computations and parallel processing. This means that they are able to process many tasks simultaneously, unlike CPUs which operate serially.
Hybrid Rendering with CPUs and the CUDA Engine
Starting in 3.60, V-Ray GPU can perform hybrid rendering with the CUDA engine utilizing both the CPU and NVIDIA GPUs. V-Ray can now execute the CUDA source on the CPU, as though the CPU was another CUDA device. To enable the hybrid rendering mode, simply enable the C++/CPU device from the list of CUDA devices.
The hybrid rendering mode does not require any special drivers. Furthermore, you can use the CPU as a CUDA device even if you don’t have an NVIDIA GPU and/or NVIDIA drivers installed. Meaning, this mode can be used on computers that don’t even have GPUs. The hybrid render engine running on a CPU supports the same features as the regular V-Ray GPU CUDA engine.
Noise Limit
It is a threshold that determines when to stop refining a pixel. Higher values allow more noise in the image, while lower values try to reduce the noise. A value of 0.0 traces the entire image unconditionally.
It specifies the maximum samples per pixel for refining the image. V-Ray performs adaptive sampling on the image, trying to put more samples into areas that have more noise.
UI Path: ||Render Setup window|| > V-Ray tab > Render Settings rollout (Renderer set to V-Ray GPU)
Progressive & Bucket Rendering Modes
This Enables the Progressive image sampling mode. With this mode active, a noisy image appears in the VFB at first and its quality improves over time.
Buckets render the parts of the image that are pointed to by the mouse.
The Progressive sampler is similar to the Bucket sampler, but instead of rendering the image in buckets, it renders the entire image progressively in passes.
UI Path: ||Render Setup window|| > V-Ray tab > Progressive image sampler rollout
(When V-Ray is the Production renderer and the Image sampler type is set to Progressive)
Color Clamping
Ensuring the light is balanced in a scene helps the scene appear more natural and real. Essentially this is a step in production where you review if shadows are too dark or ensure the lights aren’t too bright, washing out details from the scene. The color clamping tool can be used as an option to assist with this process. By disabling the Forced Color Clamping icon, the Vray Frame Buffer will identify the areas of the image that are over-exposed. With the Vray Frame Buffer, you can correct this by adjusting the exposure. As you slide the exposure up and down you’ll see the highlighted areas adjust accordingly.
Global Illumination
Global illumination refers to lighting in a scene/environment that comes from light bouncing around and off objects (or the environment itself). Global Illumination (or GI) refers to the computation of this effect through computer graphics.
V-Ray implements several approaches (called engines) for computing indirect illumination with different trade-offs between quality and speed. Additional rollouts become available depending on the engine(s) specified for Primary and Secondary Rays:
- Brute Force Settings – The default engine for Primary Rays. It can be used for Secondary Rays as well.
- Irradiance Map Settings – An alternate engine for Primary Rays only.
- Light Cache Settings – The default engine for Secondary Rays. It can be used for Primary Rays as well.
UI Path – ||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Settings > GlobalIllumination
Anti-Aliasing
In V-Ray, an image sampler refers to an algorithm for calculating a pixel’s color based on the colors within and around it. One of the functions of image sampling is anti-aliasing, which is the reduction of jagged edges in a rendering.
It is a blending/blurring of pixel information based on sampling differences to produce a cleaner render particularly on diagonal/curved areas of a render, or where there is a difference in pixel colors/values.
UI Path – ||Render Settings window|| > VRay tab > Image sampler rollout
Volumetric Environment
The Volumetric Environment section in V-Ray renders parameters is where you can see and adjust the settings of the volumetric effects Aerial Perspective and Environment Fog.
Aerial Perspective – Simulates the aerial perspective atmospheric effect, the result of viewing objects from a distance through the Earth’s atmosphere. The effect is similar to fog or haze. This atmospheric effect works together with VRay Sun and VRay Sky to calculate color and brightness.
Environment Fog – Simulates participating media like fog or atmospheric dust. By default, it scatters the light emitted from all the scene light sources.
UI Path – ||V-Ray Asset Editor|| >Settings > Volumetric Environment
Ambient Occlusion
The Ambient Occlusion Render Element renders the entire scene with one texture mapped onto all objects in the scene. The resulting element can be used in compositing to control ambient occlusion separately.
UI Path – ||Render Elements panel|| > Lighting rollout > Ambient Occlusion – Ambient Occlusion
Subdivisions
The number of paths traced from the camera is determined by this parameter. Using 1000 subdivs means that 1,000,000 paths are traced from the camera (the default is 1000 subdivs).
UI Path: ||Select mesh|| > Attribute Editor > Attributes menu > VRay > Subdivision
If you would like to download Vray for Sketchup, head to this link https://bit.ly/vray6
(Information Source – Chaos, Vray for Sketchup)
I hope this blog helped you.
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