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Author Topic: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?  (Read 3068 times)

warrenwnuk

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Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« on: June 04, 2013, 09:02:55 AM »
We have the Forest Pack Pro 4.03 running on 3ds Max 2014 with Vray 2.4
we like to use the forest color material to add variation to our trees, however we have only just noticed that it doesn't work when vray distributed rendering.  The machine that starts the job is fine, however the other machines just render the trees as if there is no forest color material.  See the image for what I mean.  The blue/red trees are from the local machine (as expected) and the green (incorrect) are from the spawner.

I've no idea how we have missed this before or if it's a newish problem or if in fact it's vray that's the problem, however on further testing we had the same result on max 2012 with forest pro 3.93 and vray 2.1.

Any ideas?

iToo

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Re: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2013, 10:04:54 AM »

It works fine here, using a similar configuration.

Please try reinstalling Forest in the slave nodes, but be sure both VRaySpawner and Max are stopped. A common problem with DR nodes, is that the setup program cannot update the plugin, because Max is running and blocking the files.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

warrenwnuk

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Re: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2013, 11:04:47 AM »
Thanks for your suggestions, but Max was not running in any capacity when I installed on all the nodes.

I have been doing some further testing though, and it all works great on geometry that is physically in the scene such as proxies or teapots etc.  

The problem starts when we try to use the library.  We have set it to use the xref mode to save file size.  Whenever we grab a tree from the library and apply the forest color then save the file, reset and reload the file, the forest color is no longer in the material chain.  It's almost like it's resetting the material to whatever the default for that xref is and not what we've adjusted it to in the scene.  We have tried the 'use scene material if duplicate exists' check box in the library, but it has no effect.  We also have tried using the merge mode instead of the xref mode and the same problem exists.


Surely whatever happens in the scene materials should override whatever is on the library model?  If not this makes the library feature completely useless to us.

Update:
Actually, setting the library to merge does work.... sorry!  However the Xref mode still doesn't.
« Last Edit: June 04, 2013, 11:10:53 AM by warrenwnuk »

iToo

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Re: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2013, 11:45:08 AM »

How do you modify the material ? The right procedure should be dragging it from the Geometry->Material parameter to the Material Editor, selecting "Instance", and making the changes there.

In this way, materials can be adjusted regardless of the materials assigned in the XRef. Only take care if you select the same model again from the library (i.e. for other Forest object), because the material would be overwritten in the scene. To avoid it, set in the Library Browser the "On Duplicate Material" selector to "Use scene material".

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

warrenwnuk

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Re: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2013, 12:02:34 PM »
I tend to click the optimize material button then use the pipette tool to select the material from the scene.  If i drag the material from where you say, I just end up with an xref material..... no good to man nor beast.

I tried un ticking the consolidate materials button, which left the changes i'd made to the forest material but then it all rendered grey.

I'm 100% sure it's got something to do with the library and how the models are being brought in, because we've only just started using the library and before that we had no problems at all.

iToo

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Re: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« Reply #5 on: June 04, 2013, 12:16:55 PM »
It's not a good idea to modify the forest automaterial, because it is updated automatically by the plugin, to consolidate all materials of the Geometry list. Also, as general rule the Consolidate checkbox must be on, specially using the library.

I just tried it the procedure described in my previous post, and everything works fine; the material assigned to the Geometry parameter is normal, not XRef. What library element are you testing ? If you like, post the scene here and we'll check it.

Edit: ok, i can reproduce the problem creating a custom library, not with the standard ones. I'm checking it, please hold on.

« Last Edit: June 04, 2013, 12:24:39 PM by iToo »
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

iToo

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Re: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« Reply #6 on: June 04, 2013, 12:50:51 PM »

You are right: the material is loaded as XRef when using custom libraries. This doesn't happen in our libraries, because we use "Override Material" for all elements.

There are two workarounds for that:

a) Save your materials in a material library, copy it to the library folder, and for each element in the Lubrary, turn on "Override Material" and select the material (see screenshot).
b) Once loaded the trees from the library, merge the Material XRef reference to the scene (only the material).

Anyway, would be interesting a library setting to choose if the materials must be loaded as XRef or not. I add it to the wishlist.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

warrenwnuk

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Re: Forest Color with Vray Spawner Bug?
« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2013, 12:54:56 PM »
I've just been rebuilding the forest in a new scene from scratch with our custom library and it seems to work as it should.  I did think the Xref material was not supposed to be there.  Perhaps it's something to do with working on a forest that was initially created with max 2012 in max 2014 using the xref library.


Thanks once again.