V-Ray Scene Exporter

This page provides information on the V-Ray Scene Exporter standalone tool.

Overview

The . vrscene file format is an ASCII file that can be exported from 3ds Max. It contains information about the geometry, lights, and shaders in the scene and can be rendered with the V-Ray Standalone. Additionally the file can be used to transfer shaders from 3ds Max to Maya.

UI Path

||3ds Max Quad menu|| > .vrscene exporter

.vrscene Export

Export path  – Specifies the path where the .vrscene file will be saved.

V-Ray path – Specifies the path to the vray.exe (V-Ray Standalone), which is used when the Export and render button is clicked. Clicking on the button allows you to specify the standalone from a certain V-Ray for Maya installation or to specify a custom path.

Compressed – Compresses geometric information so that the resulting .vrscene file is smaller. Only valid if Use HEX format for meshes is enabled.

Separate files – Writes each category of objects (geometry, materials, bitmaps, lights, notes, and textures) into their own .vrscene files, which are then referenced by the main .vrscene file.

Use HEX format for meshes – This option writes geometric information as binary data in order to preserve the data exactly, without the round-off errors introduced by conversion to human-readable form.

Use HEX format for transforms – Writes the object transformation matrices as binary data in order to preserve them exactly without round-off errors.

Strip paths – When enabled, the paths for assets (bitmap textures, proxies, GI caches loaded from file, etc.) are removed from the exported file and only the file names of the assets remain.

Export animation – When enabled, the animation from the specified frame ranges is exported into the .vrscene file.

Frame range – Specifies the animation frame range that is going to be exported.

Scene Animation range – The whole animation range from the scene is exported.
Frame Range – Manually specify a frame range using the Start/End frame parameters.

Start frame – Specifies the first frame of the animation to be exported.

End frame – Specifies the last frame of the animation to be exported.

Export and render – The scene is exported to a .vrscene file and then is rendered with the V-Ray standalone application specified in the V-Ray path.

Export  – The .vrscene file is exported to the specified location.

Cancel  – Cancels the .vrscene export.

Rendering with V-Ray Standalone

One way to use .vrscene files is to render them with V-Ray Standalone, which is included with the installation of V-Ray for 3ds Max.

Open a V-Ray Standalone command prompt from Start menu > All Programs > V-Ray 4.0 for 3ds Max NNNN > Tools > V-Ray Standalone command prompt. This will run V-Ray Standalone and will display all the available options. For example, if you want to render an already exported .vrscene file from frames 0 to 10, you can use this command:

vray -sceneFile="c:\temp\my_file.vrscene" -imgFile="c:\temp\render.png" -frames=1-10

Using MAXScript to Export V-Ray GPU Scenes

The vrayExportVRScene MAXScript command can be used to export the current 3ds Max scene into a .vrscene file from the current viewport. The script is typically used with the name of the file to export (vrayExportVRScene <filename>). Additional flags can be used to specify certain details of what is included in the .vrscene file. A few of these flags are listed below. For a complete list, please see the V-Ray GPU Functions section on the MAXScript page. Note: The exporter takes the render settings from V-Ray GPU, thus it must be the current production renderer, otherwise default rendering settings will be exported.

Note: Currently the .vrscene export follows the settings in the V-Ray GPU ActiveShade renderer for export of proxies, X-Ref scenes and containers, particle systems and displacement.

Incremental Export

Currently incremental export is performed only using MAXScript. The idea behind it is exporting a sequence in portions to several files.The first file is a standard sequence export. It contains full data for the initial frame and only the modifications on it in the consecutive frames, as usual. The incremental export on the other side writes only these modifications for the frames in a new file, and then on render the complete frame data is collected using the initial export file too. These files are then included in another file which is the one we use to render the scene.

For example, prepare a scene with animation and type the following in the MAXScript Listener window:

vrayExportVRScene "S:\\incremental\\frames0-10.vrscene" startFrame:0 endFrame:10

The above command exports a sequence from frame 0 to frame 10 in a standard way. It is important that you specify the start and end frame – otherwise, the exported file will not contain any animation. The start frame you specify here will be the base frame for the rest of the files. For the incremental files, you need to add the parameter "incrBaseFrame". It must be equal to the start frame you used in the previous command and must be the last parameter of the vrayExportVRScene command like this:

vrayExportVRScene "S:\\incremental\\frames10-20.vrscene" startFrame:10 endFrame:20 incrBaseFrame:0

You can make multiple files like this but always using the same base frame:

vrayExportVRScene "S:\\incremental\\frames20-30.vrscene" startFrame:20 endFrame:30 incrBaseFrame:0 
vrayExportVRScene "S:\\incremental\\frames30-40.vrscene" startFrame:30 endFrame:40 incrBaseFrame:0 

Finally, you create a combined .vrscene by including the base file and the other files like this (combined.vrscene):

#include "frames0-10.vrscene"
#include "frames10-20.vrscene"
#include "frames20-30.vrscene"
#include "frames30-40.vrscene"

Use the combined .vrscene file to render any frames.