openVDB to Vray for maya 3.0

[narbuckl]

We are testing out vray 3.0's vdb rendering capabilities within maya, I was curious if anyone has a working example of this?

 

I am using the VrayVolumeGrid to load the vdb into maya, the only viewport display is the animated bounding box.

 

Occasionally, not always (which is concerning) maya is spitting out this warning:

unsupported VDB file format (expected version 222 or earlier, got version 223)

 

It seems to read the correct range and the bounding box animation looks correct but the documentation from chaos group on the VrayVolumeGrid is limited. I'm curious if you are supposed to see more than just a bounding box and if there is a specific way of rendering the vdb, currently I've only been able to render it where the voxels appear as shitty blocks. Sometimes, not always (again...concerning), the render will just hang on 'prepping scene to render' and I will have to force quit maya. The vdb sequence is not that intensive, it should not take long to render.

 

Any thoughts anyone?

 

Also, Is there a way to specify the openvdb version when you rop it out of houdini?

 

 

I am on houdini v 14.0.201.13 

 

-N

 

ps. I hate maya...

[edward]

To save .vdb files for use with pre-OpenVDB 3.0 libraries, you need to first set HOUDINI13_VOLUME_COMPATIBILITY environment variable to 1.

[narbuckl]

Thanks, I shall give that a try.

[pigglet]

I'm trying to properly render openVDB with VrayVolumeGrid and it seems not production ready yet. 

 

 

Here is some test with houdini explosion out of the shelf

I'm using Houdini 13 with default settings and Maya 2015. All sequence files was tested in houdini and works legit.

 

VrayVolumeGrid open OpenVDB sequence very m-m... chaotic. Sometimes it can't recognize anything except  just first 50 frames. But after reexporting files from houdini (same file, just press render again) - it recognize all the sequence.

 

Also it can just simply turn off the lighting in the middle of the process (as you can see on the right explosion example with turned on GridBase light)

 

Left one is suddenly freeze a frame in the middle of explosion and render a still frame with flickering and vertical strobe. I think flicker and vertical lines (you can see it in all tests) could be eliminated with proper settings, but all the things happen looks very spontaneous

Edited February 9, 2015 by pigglet

[anthonymcgrath]

Hey guys I thought I'd add to this. I'm on maya2015 vray 3.05 and hou 15.5

I managed to get the vdb from hou into maya as a vdb sequence. I also see just a bounding box.. I think that's all vray gives sadly :/ I don't even know how to get it to show the sequence as i scrub the timeline.

Also I cant get vray to render the fire parts of the vdb it's like it's just a grayish dust cloud. Any way for that to be done like the video example by piglet above there?

 

Ta!

Ant

[anthonymcgrath]

hey guys i'm still a bit stuck here with the same stuff - vray doesn't seem to recognis the #### information that i enter into the file name

 

if i enter the specific number (frame0040 in this image below) i do indeed get a render

none of the settings seem to work below for setting a keyframe weirdly - has anyone got any advice please really stuck here

[anthonymcgrath]

Just a quick update. Maya2016 seems to have no issues reading a file so running with that. Also the vdb seems to render about 4 times quicker than in maya2015 so dunno why that is other than possible vray optimisation.

The vdb format is incredible btw such a clever method for getting data from hou into maya