The point of this post is to make anyone that isn’t aware already about a few of the more interesting things out there on the net that can make your VRay experience easier. The first of these is a wonderful article by Toni Bratincevic, which whilst confusing at first goes a long way to helping new users on their way to understanding exactly how the renderer operates.
The second is a very useful tool put together by Akin Bilgic, which allows people to see the maths of the above article in action, combining both of these tools really helps you to start getting your head around the way the sampling works.
The last thing I think I should mention (For the moment anyway) Is the Embree plugin for VRay which can be found on this page. If you haven’t already included this into your workflow then please do, it sped my scenes up dramatically especially when using just the environment tab for HDRI lighting. You need to make sure you are setting up your geometry type to static though as it doesn’t work well with Depth of Field/Motion Blur etc, so if you want to be using those effects in work accelerated by Embree make sure you do it in post.
*You will need to make sure you have an Intel CPU (SSE & AVX) to make use of the advances in speed though, you will also need to check what type you have to make sure you select the correct Embree addition. You can find more information on that here. It is also worth mentioning that Embree is set up for the Monte Carlo Ray-tracing, so that is where you will see the most improvement (Which is great for moving animation anyway).
Great post – but I think it’s worth mentioning that Embree only works with Intel CPU’s
Ah yes, a good point thanks I will mention that, I have a i7 970, so have noticed a real boost.