SolidRocks

569 votes
Version: 
2.4.0
Date Updated: 
08/20/2022
Author Name: 
jerome prevost (Subburb)

SolidRocks V2.4 is out !!  Support for V-Ray 6 (hotfix 2) and  MAX 2013-2023 ! 

SolidRocks adjusts and optimise all needed Vray parameters to reach the best rendertime/quality ratio.

Learn Vray progressively, see in realtime changes made by SolidRocks when you change resolution/quality.

SolidRocks includes new tools for both VrayMasters and Beginners:

  • Support for Max 2020 and V-Ray NEXT!
  • Handle The two V-Ray NEXT engines : Adv and GPU (single clic switch !)
  • Presets now handle separate settings for each engine for best comfort
  • Presets have been revisited for vetter quality in production settings
  • IPR button working with the 2 V-Ray next engines
  • Bucket and progressive mode for 2 engines
  • Denoiser button
  • New gamma Workflow by default to match the actual workflows
  • All new V-Ray algorithms activated by default : VBAA, Autopilot, SRGB VFB, Gi caustics, dyn thr.
  • Rebus Farm/RANCH Computing interoperability
  • New "NO GI" method ! Perfect for exterior dome(+sun)+VrayAmbientlight anim setup (fast and flicker free)
  • Compatible with MAX Physical Cameras
  • Better glossy subdivs algorithm. Materials with low glossiness value have more subdivs.
  • SRGB button (Vray VFB) is now managed automatically.
  • New special DOF/motion blur preset (based on interior preset, experimental)
  • Unified Save feature for easy save management
  • Includes MOA Wizard (animation wizard) - More info here !
  • DR and BB buttons for network rendering
  • FlyThrough animation Wizard !
  • Compatible with SigerShaders
  • 1 click for complete Vray setup !
  • Modular and small interface (GUI)
  • mini preview for fast feedback
  • auto Exposure and Auto White balance tools
  • friendly and Very simple usage
  • Full LWF gamma correction with useful options
  • modifiable presets : exterior, interior...
  • learn Vray watching SolidRocks at work !
  • shareLightcache tool to speedup slaves warmup
  • materials and lights optimisation for best rendertimes
  • switch from draft to production settings in one click !
  • gain time... Lot of time !!

New Vray users can also learn essential rules of Vray, observing changes made by SolidRocks when resolution and/or quality are changed.

Vray Masters can customise SR and presets and use SolidRocks as a custom settings automator.

note : This is a commercial script. (FREE LITE version available on website !)

 As always, Have FUN with SolidRocks !  

Version Requirement: 
Max 2013 to max2023 and V-Ray 2.4 to Vray 6 hotfix2
Video URL: 

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
100cg's picture

IT's good. But i think our

IT's good.
But i think our work need the more creativity!A excellence CG need you constantly adjust.You can't let our work be like to operate a machine.

tang

W DIGITAL's picture

hi jerome, im still waiting

hi jerome,
im still waiting for the NON-GI tools :)

i think if its GI only it should be made aware that its only for GI modification...

but why not just include non-gi settings? they very much determin the render times as well
which sampler is being used, what divisions, the global subdivision multiplier has a great effect on over all speed, then noise threshold etc.

there are all these options for non-GI, please let me know when you have included them
ian

coffeeholic's picture

This script rocks. It's so

This script rocks. It's so much of a time saver that it's hard to believe how I could work without it until now. Definitely buying it and recommend everyone that works daily with vray to do the same.

Lukesta74's picture

With out a doubt Jerome and

With out a doubt Jerome and his Scripts rock!! I use it, love it and recomend it to everyone. I have had great success with it personally and commercially...it's reliable, fast and easy to use! my only comment would be to raise the price as it's worth far more!!
Keep up the great work Jerome!

Kind regards,

Luke

48design's picture

@simons You are very unfair!

@simons

You are very unfair! Why do you discharge all your problems at scriptspot and not in the forum at solidrocks.subburb.com?? That's the place where you, as you have bought your software there, should talk to the developer of the software! Not here, where programmers (and designers) show their work. By the way: you didn't read the whole answer of jerome. Otherwise you would not again claim "light subdivisions are set to a wrong number". Jerome has an open ear for questions about solidrocks, so you should not scream into the world how "bad" solidrocks allegedly is.

solidrocks rocks!

subburb's picture

Hi simons, you're right

Hi simons,

you're right about manual. it would be a great addition. i agree.
BTW there's a lot of explanations into solidrocks website, into videos and forum. i'm on forum every day to give support to customers if needed.

about materials :
- if checked,the "auto glossies subdivs" option modifies at render time the refr/refr glossies value, according to the actual preset.
- if checked, the "interp glossies" forces all material refl and/or refr (at render time) to be interpolated in irradiance map, if the glossiness value is <= thresold specified in preset.

I don't understand what you mean with red under bitmap problem. Feel free to post in solidrocks forum to see that problem together.

about color mapping :
100% reinhard ? this makes non sense. the reinhard color mapping authorise from 100% linear to 100% exponential. the goal is to try to keep maximum amount of linear to get a full LWF render. You can low down a little bit your Vray camera exposure do achieve this. Make first an autoexpo to have a good starting point.
SolidRocks Autoexpo works only with Vray Physical cameras, and that's normal.
Using standard cameras instead of using Vray Physical cameras when making Vray renderings is just like using microsoft paint instead of photoshop to tweak images...

About light optimisation : SolidRocks adjusts values related to rendering time/quality optimisation. it does NOT manage lights intensity ! It would be very hard for a program to know what's in your mind... but that's an idea !

About Lightcache and irradiance map.
SolidRocks is a deep optimizer and need to manage almost every parameters into irrad map and lightcache to get really optimised settings. it makes changes deeper than we can reasonably do manually. Some of these values are resolution dependant and needs to be ajusted according to the actual resolution (irrmap min and max, lightcache subdivs, irrmap DE radius, etc..).
But, again, you can tweak everything via the preset editor and make exactly what you want into your personal preset(s).

about Hsph subdivs :
Sorry but, again, you're Wrong:
straight from the help :
Global subdivs multiplier - this will multiply all subdivs values everywhere during rendering; you can use this to quickly increase/decrease sampling quality everywhere. This affects everything, except for the lightmap, photon map, caustics and aa subdivs. Everything else (dof, moblur, irradiance map, brute-force GI, area lights, area shadows, glossy reflections/refractions) is affected by this parameter.

As you can read, irradiance map is affected by global multiplier...

About interior lighting :
I very often lighten my interior scenes with only Vray Sun+Sky. but you can do as you want ! i don't see where is the problem... If you prefer adding interior artifical lights, than.. just do it ! Solidrocks will make autoexpo according to the resulting preview render. no problem about that.

just to say, here's a very popular tutorial of interior lighting with Vray:
http://vray.us/vray_tutorials/rendering_vray_interior_tutorial.shtml

In this tutorial you can see an interior scene lit with only one exterior light.
And, in chapter 6, you're asked to reduce the hsph value to compensate the increase of the global multiplier...

I do believe that solidrocks helps users to go in the good way, encouraging them to use VrayPhysical cam and sky and helping them to manage camera exposure. More than that, users can observe changes made by solidrocks to learn progressively the Vray core.

The mini preview is tiny, yes.. It's a compromise between size and fast render time.
i'll try to improve this part to give it more interactivity.

Best regards, hope to see you into the forum and discuss about new features coming.

jerome Prévost (Subburb)

simons's picture

first of all thanks for

first of all thanks for answering after my harsh words.

my biggest interest is that of a manual. this would be of great help. some options are selfexplanatory, but some aren't.

there are a lot of things which bothered and still bother me.

-materials: optimization of my materials made a strange red under bitmap, output, enable color map.

-color mapping: i have tried about 3-4 scenes of mine. there is no chance to switch the slider lower than 100% reinhard without red areas. so it is impossible to achieve a lwf. i am using vray physical cam. what i meant is that i use the standard settings. by the way: your program can't render with 3dsmax standard cameras, a popup appears.

-apply lights: what sense does an optimization make if the intensity is not optimized?

according to vray skills and values for hemispheric subdivs go here:
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/render_params_advancedimap.htm
low values can produce a blotchy result. my words.

and most of all i don't understand why you change the vray settings under light cache and irradiance map totally. chaosgroup has definately made research on it and the standard values actually make sense. besides i haven't seen an interior scene yet which only had one light source from the outside like in your tutorial. there are always lights inside to brighten up the scene.

i understand that solidrocks is not a one click solution for high quality renders (and there never will be one for complex renderers), but it should at least point the user into the right direction.

one more thing: the 90x60 pixels preview of auto exposure and auto white balance is actually of no great help. what about a magnify option or bigger resolution?

thanks for reading and don't take my words too hard

regards

subburb's picture

Hello, simons, And thanks for

Hello, simons,
And thanks for your feedback, even if it's hard.
Only critics makes things better.
But...
I must say that less than 24hours of use is really short to post this kind of killing advice.
And I confirm that SR0.85b is fully compatible (and designed for) Vray 1.5 SP4.

Before answering, please note that if you're unsatisfied, just ask me, and I'll give your money back. No problem about that.

Let's try to find a way together. Solidrocks is in constant evolution and takes account of users complains.

First of all, SR is NOT intended only for newbies, but has evolved to match Power users requests. VrayMasters like Simmsimaging, glorybound, cecofuli, steelbug, phizikil, trick use it all the time...

I'll try to answer point by point :
optimize lights : Solidrocks quality algorithms needs first to unify subdivs values on Vraylights and Vray shadows (and glossies). The default value is 8 but you can change it. (see preset edit). Some newbies put extreme subdivs values on sun or other lights and this perturbate the solidrocks quality computation. That's why it forces the same subdivs value on all lights before.
Note that if this feature don't interest you, you can simply turn it off into the solidrocks configuration panel by switching off the "auto Vray shadows subdivs" option. (and, too, the glossies interpolation options)

AutoExpo and White balance have an important option. Perhaps you've missed it : into solidrocks configuration panel, there an option named : "ignore alpha pixels" or "whole image". This options forces the AutoExpo algo to take account of alpha pixels (background) or not to compute the exposure. Sometimes it fails, but this is caused by extreme camera settings. Try to start with standard cam values (f:8 shutter 125 and iso 100) to see if it's better. You can also run the tool twice to make the computation more precise.
Please note that a 1000 € reflex cam can often fail when computing White balance or Autoexpo ;)
But, you're right, the best thing would be realtime sliders ! I'm working on that point.

The default gamma is 1.8 (good compromise for newbies), but you can easily change this default value (and many others) to became YOUR default values. Watch the end of the demo video to see how to do that (init/save rollout, button named : >> Save actual settings as solidrocks defaults <<).
I've spended lot of time to develop this feature. Everyone can have it's own preferred settings when launching SolidRocks on a fresh scene.

Lots of materials causes troubles....!? did you take 5 minutes to give an eye on SolidRocks users gallery ?
Others users seems to have very good results, even with tons of complex materials...
For example : http://solidrocks.subburb.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=34&f...
Feel free to send me an email (or post on SR forum) to have a support for your problematic scene. It's included in the price !
Note that SolidRocks is a Vray settings automator.
As you are a power user, you can create your own preset (via the "edit" button near the preset dropdown list) to get the results you want.
There are also many options into the SolidRocks configuration panel wich can impact the final result, like glossies interpolation options.

About colormapping :
The Reinhard colormapping is a mix between linear and exponential. The slider helps you to determine the amount of linear and exponential into your final image. The goal is to keep the most linear as possible, and avoid red pixels (burned) in minipreview. You can low down a little bit the exposure to do this, or put 100% exponential if you're hurry.
You can also turn OFF the color mapping management in solidrocks (see SR configuration panel) and manage color mapping by hand if your prefer.
But, hey !! WHY damn are you using a standard cam ???? SolidRocks (And Vray!) are intended to use VrayPhyscam and sun/sky.

About lowering Hsph when raising quality... Are you sure about your skills on Vray ? Hsph is strongly tied with global multiplier...
Click on Adv tools button to see what's happening : for example, with interior preset :
- at medium, hsph is 16, but global multiplier is 2. The real subdivs value (as shown in adv.tools info panel) is 16*2 = 32
- at production, hsph is 12, but global multiplier is 8. The real subdivs value is 12*8 = 96.
That's why the preset editor asks you for the real desired hsph values and makes the calculation for you. Easy !
So just be comfident with SR settings.. If you don't understand something, just watch settings adjustements made by SR to understand what's happening progressively.
Of course, nothing is perfect because natively setting up a render engine is always finding a compromise between quality and render time, but i'm pretty sure about SR presets, as they have been progressively affined since 3 years with the help of many Vray power users (beta testers).

About the preview : Just hit the ESC key on your keyboard to abort ;)
The mini preview will be faster in the next builds, but will not be magical. If you need instant feedback, you need to buy Vray RT ! (SolidRocks and RT works fine together).

Hope it helps, and, like I said, if you're not fully satisfied with SolidRocks, just send me an email and I'll give your money back with no discuss.

Regards,

jerome Prévost (Subburb)

simons's picture

Well, I am a legitimate user

Well, I am a legitimate user of vray and solid rocks. So I am using the latest Vray Build 1.5 SP4a and Solidrocks

0.85b.

My guess is that this program is not compatible with the newest vray yet. If I am wrong this is the biggest piece of

junk and waste of money and time.

I am very diappointed and don't know what other user in here use this program for and most of all why they praise

solidrocks. My guess to this is that here are only newbie user of vray confused by the many settings and finally

glad that they somehow get a picture out of vray with solidrocks. No matter what quality the picture has. or you

just have easy scenes with not many or better no materials.

Here is what problems occured to me:

Apply Lights is a fake and lie. Message saying lights and sun were optimized, but actually nothing was changed at

all. even when you use the weirdest and most absurd values for your lights and sun. solidrocks is not able to turn

them back to common values.

The options Auto Exposure and Auto White Balance are a joke too. Either you have to accept the sometimes strange

settings or cancel the whole process. If there would be an alternative of adjusting the sliders manually, these

options would have been helpful.

Why is the automatic Gamma value 1.8? Actually if you use LWF (which is not at all possible with solidrocks, since

managing the color mapping through solidrocks is a pain) the gamma of your monitor is 2.2!

In the tutorial on the website the kitchen has almost no materials but plain white faces. But having a lot of

materials obviously causes a lot of problems for solidrocks.

I don't know what the ColorMapping option is for. I always have to push the slider to 100% to get rid of the red

marked overexposed areas. Though I am just using a standard vray camera and a standard vray sun. And even then the

final render still has an overexposed area. thus the burn value for reinhard is 0,0? what is this?

and besides: why does solidrocks use so weird and uneven values? thanks god that you can change them all to your own

needs.

another thing: by increasing the quality solidrocks lowers the hemispheric subdivs? pardon? this must be the other way round else all gets blotchy.
when the vray frame buffer is enabled, but the resolution not taken from max, it will not render with the presets in solidrocks, but actually with the vray frame buffer resolution.

why is there no option to cancel the rendering of the preview? if you have complex scenes it is no rarity that it

takes a lot of time to calculate this small preview picture (i am on a quad core and 8gb ram).

well, if this is actually solidrocks without any bugs and working with vray 1.5 sp4a this program is overestimated

and way to expensive. use it for heavy scenes (which is actually the way a decent work is) and please tell me what

experiences you have.

as said solidrocks might be extremely useful for beginners, but is this really the aim?

regards

malevy's picture

I am using 3DS Max 2010 x64

I am using 3DS Max 2010 x64 and VRay. This is an awesome program definitely worth the money. Within 30 seconds it turned my horrible lighting scene into a photo-real scene with vray. Customer service is amazingly fast at responding to customers. Everyone should own this program. Its going to be a great learning tool.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.