Critical V-Ray Settings

Introduction

To say that VRay is a complicated program would be an understatement! Ironically enough, however, it has become the most ubiquitous engine in the visualization industry because of, among other things, its simplicity. Although it contains a large number of settings which should ideally be separated from critical settings and grouped into an advanced section all alone, it is nonetheless a fairly easy program to digest when you know which settings are critical and which can be left for exploration down the road.

We believe knowing VRay means knowing how to troubleshoot your scenes. When you render a scene, you either get a result you want or don't want. If you get what you want, great - but if you don't, and don't know how to fix a problem, such as blotchiness, noise, flickering, etc, then you are bound to spend precious time testing numerous settings. Even when you do get the results you want, you may not realize that you can achieve the same or better results in less rendering time.

Rather than explaining the critical settings in a top to bottom manner, starting with the top-most rollout and ending with the bottom-most, this discussion presents VRay features in a more logical manner, from most critical to least critical. For example, there is an option to disable glossy effects in one of the first rollouts, Global Switches; however, it wouldn't make sense to discuss an option for a concept that has yet to be explained. Therefore, such a setting is reserved for later.

For the purpose of this discussion, we are defining critical settings as those which tend to require attention at least once during the course of a typical visualization animation. This means that while a particular setting's use may not be guaranteed during any given visualization, its use will probably have been at least considered as an option because of its special qualities or characteristics that it offers a user. By the same token, having not listed a setting does not at all mean that it is not something worth exploring, but rather it is a setting most likely not as widely used, as unique in its affect, or as practical in a production environment.

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