Vray render settings - Options tab
Now we will take a look at one of the most in depth areas of control in Vray for C4D, the Render Settings. To enable Vray you will go to the Effects tab of your render settings and enable Vray for C4D. You will then see a large number of tabs with settings in each for every function that you wish to incorporate.
On the Options tab you will find some basic settings which are fairly self explanatory concerning options that you would like to enable.
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Vray render settings - Options tab |
The Antialiasing tab is where you will set the parameters for antialiasing your renders. In Vray, you can choose between different types of image samplers and filters to compute the antialiasing of the image. This controls how sharp and smooth your image will be, but it does have a large effect on render times depending on which ones you choose. You will be able to choose from the different types of samples as well as a list of filters.
Higher subdivisions produce better quality but will cause higher render times. The adaptive filters are nice and will adapt their calculation to each situation. They will compare the quality and decide if the computation is correct at that setting or if more calculations are needed. The antialiasing filter can be changed or even turned off if you have problems with too many small details in a scene. Every sampler has its own characteristics and I would recommend testing different settings depending on what your scene contains, ie. glossy reflections, etc.
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Vray render settings - Antialiasing tab |
On the DMC Sampler tab you will find a method for evaluating blurry values such as depth of field, glossy reflections/refractions, translucency, motion blur etc. Vray uses a variant of Monte Carlo sampling called Deterministic Monte Carlo (DMC). It utilizes a single method that determines how many and exactly what samples will be taken for a particular value. The actual numbers of samples for computing blurry values is based on three basic settings: the amount of subdivisions supplied by the user for a particular blurry effect, the priority of the value and the noise of the samples taken for a particular value.
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Vray render settings - DMC Sampler |
The next tab contains one of the most important areas of Vray´s abilities, the GI or Global Illumination settings. You will first need to check the box to enable GI. In the first settings you will have a drop down list of different rendering presets from which to choose. You can also enable caustics, which is turned off by default. You can select Reflective, Refractive or both. This is especially important when rendering water and glass.
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Vray render settings - Indirect Illumination (GI) tab |
The Primary and Secondary Bounces determine the effect of light bounces which will be determined for the scene's illumination. Vray can determine the GI in a scene in a variety of methods including Brute Force, Irradiance Map, Photon Map and Light Caching. I find Irradiance Map and Light Cache to be the best for the primary and secondary bounces respectively. These produce the desired results in my work so far. The Irradiance map settings contain areas where you can set all values for this option. The Min and Max rate determine the resolutions for the first and last GI passes. You will be able to control the quality of samples, the number of samples to be considered and the number of frames that will be used for the interpolation. The different Thresholds will be set here to control the sensitivity of the map. You can also choose how the render displays on your screen either by showing samples, showing direct light and showing the calculations.
You can also turn on Detail Enhancement which is a method for adding additional detail to the irradiance map. When this is enabled, you can use lower map settings and higher Interpolation samples. Many advanced options can be enabled such as Interpolation Type and Samples Lookup. This area is best left at the defaults until you are more familiar with what each option does.
The Irradiance Map Mode contains groups of controls which allow the user to select the way the map is used or re-used. Under Light caching you will be able to choose the method of judging the global illumination in a scene. The options are Progressive path tracing, Single frame, Fly-through and From file. These modes determine how the light cache is computed. Depending on what type of scene you are rendering, each method will be pertinent to the output desired. The On Render End option controls what happens with the light cache after rendering is finished. You can choose to retain the map in memory and also to auto-save so that it will be written to file.
The Caustics tab controls the caustics in your scene. Please note that you must have the caustics settings enabled in the Render parameters of each item for this to work. After placing a checkmark to enable caustics, you will have access to other settings.
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Vray render settings - Caustics tab |
Displacement settings control the amount of displacement on objects by using a map for that purpose. It must be noted that in order to function, the Vray displacement tag must be applied to an object in the object manager.
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Vray render settings - Displacement tab |
Under the Environment tab you will find the settings which allow you to specify a color or a texture map for your environment and/or background, global illumination, reflection and refraction.
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Vray render settings - Environement tab |
Color mapping can be used to adjust darkness, brightness and gamma settings. These settings and different modes control the multiplying of colors based on brightness, the saturation of colors in relation to brightness, preserve color hue and saturation, correct gamma in an image and they can blend color and linear mapping.
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Vray render settings - Color mapping tab |
The Vray camera tab settings control the way the scene's geometry is projected onto the image. You will be able to choose different types of cameras in this area which will determine how your camera displays the scene. Different types of cameras will capture a scene in very different ways.
The DOF parameters control the depth of field effect when rendering with a standard camera or in a perspective viewport. You must manually enable this function. After doing so you will be able to set some specific values. Remember that you also need to have this option enabled in your camera parameters under the "Sampling" tab. The Motion Blur feature works with object blur but doesn't work with camera blur at this time. It will be available in a future release.
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Vray render settings - Vray camera tab |
The final tab is the Vray System tab. In this section you can adjust a variety of Vray parameters related to the overall operation of the rendering. Each of these settings can control how the scene is rendered and can have an effect on overall rendering time as well.
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Vray render settings - Vray system tab |
The following are several Vray renders by me as are all of the other renders. I wanted to show what was possible for the typical user.
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Click on the image for a larger version |
Click on the image for a larger version |