Table of Contents

This page provides information about the real-time viewer V-Ray Vision.

 

Overview


V-Ray Vision is a real-time viewer that can be used in any project set up for V-Ray rendering. It is a lightweight “game engine” (rasterizer) that does not currently use any type of ray-tracing. Due to its speed, it can serve as a powerful alternative viewport that provides better lighting and material representation.
In addition to its main function as a viewer, V-Ray Vision can produce spherical panoramas and quick output of still frames. It comes with its very own auto-exposure, tone mapping, and color correction options. Furthermore, V-Ray Vision also supports Solar Studies (sun animations) exported from Revit.

When V-Ray Vision is launched, it automatically loads the current Revit project and starts an interactive session. This means that while it is running, a live link is established that sends to the viewer all updates made to the Revit project.
Stopping the live link by clicking the Revit ribbon's V-Ray Vision button ends the connection but does not clear the loaded model. To stop V-Ray Vision, close its window.

In addition to loading models directly from Revit, V-Ray Vision is able to load .vrscene files directly. In this case, in order for the modifications to be displayed, the source file has to be reloaded.

V-Ray Vision can produce quick output of still frames, VR panoramas, image sequences as well as videos in .webm format.

For more information, see the Courseware section.

 

 

UI Path


||Revit Ribbon|| > V-Ray tab > Render panel (dropdown menu) > Start/Stop V-Ray Vision

 

V-Ray Vision Menu


 

IconDescription

Indicates whether the live link with V-Ray is currently active.
When the circles are connected, the viewer displays the Revit model and updates with every change of it.

Click on the button to open the Live link parameters panel:

Sync Camera – Sync vision camera with the host application viewport.
Sync Sun – Sync vision sun with the host application.

Selects a .vrscene file to be loaded in the viewer.

Shows or hides the information panel and the shortcuts.

Resolution mode. Click on the button to cycle between the following modes:

Fit in Window – Matches the window size and aspect.
Match Scene Aspect
– Matches the aspect ratio from the V-Ray Resolution panel. The size of the image is still determined by the window size.

Camera Navigation Mode. Click on the button to cycle between the following modes:

Orbit mode – Enables the camera movement based on orbit, pan, and zoom manipulations.
Fly mode – The keyboard W, A, S, D, Q, E buttons are used for movement while mouse left-click + drag can be used for looking around. Holding down Shift temporarily increases the movement speed.

Enables/disables Auto Exposure.

Opens the Settings panel.

Opens the Save Options panel.


Enables the Standalone Application Export.

Packages and exports the project as a standalone application.
The application can then be used for exploring, presenting or interacting with the project.
No V-Ray license is required for running the app.

 

 

Toolbar Menu Hide Option – An arrow appears upon hovering at the top part of the V-Ray Vision window. This allows for the toolbar to be hidden or expanded.

 

 

Settings


Enable Proxy LOD – Enables the LOD switching for Proxy Mesh assets. The full mesh is visible up close, whereas the proxy preview mesh is displayed in distance. Note that both share materials.

High quality Cosmos Assets – Displays a high quality version of each Cosmos asset close to the camera. Cosmos assets have multiple levels of detail and by default Vision loads lighter meshes for increased performance. When this option is enabled the highest level will be used when the camera is close to the object. Note that enabling this option might have major impact on performance and loading time depending on the assets used. The scene will be automatically reloaded when the option is changed which might take a while depending on the project's complexity.

Shadows Quality – Controls the quality of Sun, Directional, Omni and Spot lights. From the drop-down you can choose from:

Low – Low quality shadow map filtering is used. Shadow map size is decreased during scene interactions.
Medium – Medium quality shadow map filtering is used. Soft shadows are disabled.
High – High quality shadow map filtering is used. Soft shadows are supported. Changing the Sun size affects the shadow softness.

Temporal Anti-aliasingEnables a higher quality anti-aliasing method. Note that this is a compute expensive option and needs multiple frames to achieve good-looking results. 

Auto Exposure– Enables auto exposure. Note that when enabled, if there are sizeable very dark or light portions of the buffer (e.g. completely black background surrounding a model), they may produce an exaggerated exposure value adjustment.

EV Compensation – Multiplies the exposure value of the camera or the value calculated by the Auto Exposure (when active). This option can store two independent values based on whether Auto Exposure is active.

Fly Mode – Changes the view navigation mode. Use the W, A, S, D, Q, E keys on the keyboard to move around. Holding down Space temporarily increases the movement speed. Hold the Left Mouse Button to look around.

Free Flight – In free flight the forward movement of the camera is determined by the view direction. When disabled, the vertical camera orientation is ignored and the movement is constrained to the horizontal plane.

Fly Speed (m/s) – The movement speed measured in meters per second. Only has an effect in Fly mode.

Mouse Sensitivity – Changes the mouse speed when looking around in Fly Mode.

Smooth Movement Delay – The time it takes the camera to gradually cease after being moved during Fly Mode. Calculated in seconds.

Automatic IBL Sun – Automatically adds a directional light based on the brightest spot in an HDR image. The option has no effect if the project Sun is enabled. It is not recommended to enable it if there is no single distinct bright spot in the image used for lighting.

Ambient Light ModeEnables the ambient lighting mode. This mode can be used to remove the blue sky tint from interior renders. When enabled, the project's environment will remain visible in the background but will no longer affect the diffuse indirect illumination and the reflections. An ambient white/gray color will be used as indirect environment. Note that the state of this parameter will not be saved with the project and has to be manually set. 

Ambient Light IntensityControls the intensity of the ambient lighting. Note that the value of this parameter will not be saved with the project and has to be manually set. 

Ambient Light Intensity value between 100 and 200 is sufficient for interior renders when using Sun and Sky.

 

 

Color Corrections 


Tonemapping Curve – Specifies the type of tonemapping applied to the image. When disabled, no tonemapping curve is applied.

Disabled
ACES Curve

Exposure – Controls the post-exposure value.

Contrast – Controls the post-contrast amount ranging from -100 to 100.

SaturationControls the post-contrast amount ranging from -100 to 100.

Temperature – Controls the post color temperature value ranging from -100 to 100.

Tint Controls the post color tint value ranging from -100 to 100.

Reset – Resets all color corrections values to 0 (the default value).

Load – Loads color corrections preset file.

Save – Saves the color corrections as a .visioncc file that can be loaded later.

 

 

 

Output


Output Mode - Specifies the type of the exported image. Note that VR Cubemap output in 6 separate files is not available for video export.

Image - Exports a still image.
Image sequence - Exports a sequence of images.
Video - Exports a single video file.

Camera Type

Standard – Uses a standard pinhole camera.
VR Spherical Panorama – Uses a spherical panorama to save the image.
VR Cubemap 6x1 – A cubic/box camera with the cube side arranged in a single row.
VR Cubemap 6 images – A cubic/box camera with the cube sides saved as separate images.

Note that in Image sequence and Video modes only Standard camera and VR Spherical Panorama projection are supported. Some screen-space effects are disabled in Video mode to avoid artifacts.

File - Specifies the output file path.

Image Format - Specifies the output image file type.

Resolution Mode

From Vision Window - The window size determines the output image size.
From Project - The image size specified in the host application or the V-Ray scene determines the output image size.

Output Resolution - The final output image resolution. Note that the size multiplier value is also take into account.

Size Multiplier - Multiplier for the base resolution. Note that there is a hard limit of 8192px along the long image size to avoid video memory issues.

Animation FPS - Controls the number of frames per second when exporting sequences.

Frame Delay - Specifies the number of frames that each animation frame is rendered for. Some effects need more than one frame to be resolved to final quality. For example, the Temporal Anti-aliasing benefits from longer delays.

Export – Exports a still image if Animation is disabled. Exports an image sequence or video if Animation is enabled.

 


Shortcuts


These shortcuts navigate through V-Ray Vision.

 

Shortcut

Description

Ctrl + Space or Ctrl + O

Opens a .vrscene file.

Ctrl + Backspace or Ctrl + N

Clears the viewer.

TabChanges the camera navigation mode.
Left-click

In Orbit Mode, it allows to orbit.

In Fly Mode, it allows looking around.

Right-click or Scroll

In Orbit Mode, it allows zooming.

In Fly Mode, it allows looking around.

Middle-click

In Orbit Mode, it moves the camera left and right.

In Fly Mode, it allows looking around.

W, A, S, DIn Fly Mode, allow for moving around.
Q, EIn Fly Mode, allow for moving up or down.
SpaceIn Fly Mode, it temporarily increases the movement speed.
Ctr + '+'In Fly Mode, it increases the movement speed.
Ctr + '-'In Fly Mode, it decreases the movement speed.
CResets the camera.
F12Shows or hides the Vision toolbar.
Shift + Left-click

Moves the Sun.

Up/Down – Altitude
Left/Right – Azimuth

Shift + Right-clickUp/Down – Changes the sun intensity.
Shift + Middle-clickUp/Down – Changes the camera exposure.
F5Resets the sun position and the lighting changes to match the original scene state.

 

Notes


  • V-Ray Vision is part of V-Ray for Revit and does not require additional licensing.
  • V-Ray Vision requires hardware capable of running DirectX 11 or DirectX 12 and Shader Model 5.0
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