Vray-VRScans Now Available for Photorealstic Rendering

#1

If you haven’t heard about it yet, Chaos Group has released a new set of materials called VRScans. VRscans is combination of a hardware-based scanning system and a software-based rendering plugin that work together to easily create material properties for creating realistic renderings without the usual workflow of texture maps and tweaking shader settings.

They have an entire library that can be viewed and accessed through ChaosGroup and a few 3rd party re-sellers. Even though can’t fully tweak the shaders you download, you can still get a very realistic material very quickly, literally drag and drop and automatically have physically accurate shaders for your work.

Click the link below to checkout more on VRScans and also check out some renders from Grant Warwick to see what can be achieved with the VRScans.

https://www.chaosgroup.com/vrscans

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=358&t=1419881

#2

available for a price: Annual Subscription: $420 / €300 / £ 260

#3

This seems to be a service where you send in a physical material sample to be scanned, and Chaosgroup scans it in such a way that the result CG shader looks EXACTLY like your real, physical material.

This has potential for the future.

If they could create a portable scanner, you could scan something on a filmset and add CG to the footage that looks exactly like the physical set.

#4

So ChaosGroup “scans” your physical material sample with… A camera?

Then they take it into Photoshop and balance it out and prep it for rendering, kinda like… A texture map?

I’m calling Shenanigans. I have no beef with Vray or ChaosGroup, but if you’re stupid enough to pay for a service you’re already doing, then you definitely should purchase this service right away. Buy multiple subscriptions - you’re probably going to need them.

#5

Or, you’re paying for a service that you’re not already doing. Maybe you don’t have the time. Maybe you’re not a skilled material creator. Either way, it’s saving you time and effort, and freeing you to work on other things.

The subscription gives you access to the entire library of ultra high-quality materials and 10 free render nodes.

The custom material pricing works on a per-sample basis - almost like hiring a professional to do some work for you. You might as well call shenanigans on getting anyone to do any work for you for a price.

You certainly set an interesting bar for stupidity. “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, you sneaky waiter, you. How dare you presume to serve me food that I can already get for myself? SHENANIGANS! Look at all those stupid, stupid people paying to have their food cooked and brought to them. Some dumb enough to leave a tip! This world is going to pot I tell you, POT!”

#6

While a camera is a component of the scanner, the actual hardware is way more complicated in order to capture the material appearance from many angles under different lighting conditions. This allows us to reproduce very accurately materials that you can’t really create with texture maps (f.e. these ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XhVy_8QYaQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpumQMGBULw)

Then they take it into Photoshop and balance it out and prep it for rendering, kinda like… A texture map?
There is no Photoshop involved, or any other image processing program. The result from the scanning is not a texture, but a BTF description of the material response to light.

Best regards,
Vlado

#7

Ha, I knew vlado would respond to this.

It’s pretty easy to see how naive that post was, since I knew that these were more than just what a camera can do along with some photoshop.*
Autodesk, Briefly, had a fairly basic version of what they are doing using a scanner from Xrite. That one estimated color fleck, and created the model based on reflectivity, at a bunch of angles, color flop (instead of just one color), and glossiness.
But you had to have their plugin, and I think it’s already dead? Note by the question mark, than I’m not sure, nor do I care enough to google it.*

I’d really like to use this service. I just need a project to come my way that allows me to charge a few arms and legs so I can experiment with it. Unfortunately, people keep undercutting me by a little bit, so there’s not really any wiggle room.