ARK Infosolutions in partnership with Chaos Group hosted the last day of V-Ray Days on 10 November at The Classique Club, Mumbai from 10:30 am to 7 pm. With a mix of free extended masterclasses, latest and future releases overview, guest sessions and more, V-Ray VFX & Animation Day Mumbai concluded the drive.
The first two sessions of the day were Render Makes The Difference and a masterclass on Super-fast rendering workflows with V-Ray RT GPU. Post lunch, DSK International Digital & Transport Design department head Rattan Gangadhar and digital design trainer Rohan Shedjale spoke about bringing life to industrial design. “We use V-ray daily in our pipeline. It is a preferred software. We are working very closely with ARK too. They have been helping and supporting us always,” said Gangadhar.
“A customer in our session complained about not getting real output with consumer cards to finish the project trouble free,” said PNY Technologies technical consultant (MEA & India) Senthilraj Balakrishnan. “With this forum, we get an opportunity to interact with the customer and provide them with correct solutions.”
PNY is a global technology leader within the OEM, consumer and channel electronics markets. The PNY team is comprised of industry experts who provide knowledge to deliver OEM qualification, meet the requirements of the most demanding enterprise application environments and offer both pre and post qualification engineering support. “We get a chance to make people aware because when you wank into the stories and ask for a graphic card, you are provided with a consumer card. But when it comes to professional applications, you should use the right tools,” explained Balakrishnan.
After a quick break, Chaos Group CG specialist Kalina Panteleeva took a masterclass on The Secrets of 3.6 in which she spoke about how not to be afraid of rendering characters and environments that have millions of polygons. She explained the newest features of the version that help save time and make the process efficient.
“Many people come to us for technical issues, and of course we help with that but at the end of the day, it is all online. If you know what to search, you can find it,” Panteleeva told AnimationXpress. “In this event, what I personally want to achieve is giving those people the perspective that it’s not only about deadline or technical difficulties, it’s about making a difference, making something of your own, expressing yourself and the project you believe in and think about the way it feels.” They thus help students and artists not only with the technicalities but also to think on the lines of the idea, story, how they want to do it and how they see it.
Next, Yellow Dogs chief commercial officer Tom Rockhill took a session on the limitless possibilities of cloud rendering. Yellow Dog is a UK-based company that provides a platform to animation and VFX studios to get access to cloud rendering really easily without being limited to one render farm or one cloud renderer.
Following that was a masterclass again by Panteleeva on V-Ray’s Phoenix FD 3.4 which is an all-in-one solution for fluid dynamics that help to simulate fire, smoke, liquids, ocean waves, splashes, sprays, mists and more. She elaborated on the quick presets, fast setup, intuitive controls, preview and render interactivity, and fast and flexible controls of the version.
Up next was a guest presentation by Happy Finish CG supervisor Heten Daiya and CGI lead Subak Patwardhan. Happy Finish is a studio that provides services of animation, VFX, CGI, AI, AR, VR and MR. The duo spoke about their work and how V-Ray helps them overcome day-to-day challenges in their workflow. “I have worked with a lot of renderers but V-Ray brings an ease of use and has given us a speed boost,” said Daiya.
Talking about V-Ray’s progressive modes – resumable renders, denoising, adaptive buckets, aerial perspective, render under mouse, render masks – he said that V-Ray is spearheading a lot of force in renderers.
“Previously, we were using built-in render engines of software and were not aware of anything better or more efficient,” shared Patwardhan. “After V-Ray, we have not used anything else. The result being- clients are happy, we are happy.”
The last was also a guest presentation by Prime Focus World technical director Hrishikesh Andurlekar and senior creative supervisor Dipan Gajjar, who spoke about their work pipeline and V-Ray utilisation in their animation projects.
“1250 shots, 87 minutes, 315 assets- these are the kinds of deadlines we have. Work is so much that we need render farm or we outsource it. However, we have built a great relationship with the V-Ray team which is a strength,” revealed Andurlekar. “When the artist is working on the shot, she/he only needs to know the sequence number and shot number. The rest is taken care of by the pipeline team.” Hence, they have extensive use of the V-Ray attributes.
Gajjar showcased stills of some extremely heavy BGs of their upcoming animated co-production with a Mexican studio, explaining the kind of high-end output they got with V-Ray. “The BGs were huge. But V-Ray came as a rescuer,” smiled Gajjar.
The four-day event had a count of more than 1000 attendees including students and artists. In terms of feedback, the event received an overwhelmingly positive response like every year as it is more about awareness and enlightening artists. “We make people aware of the software and its new features. That way people learn how to use it more effectively,” said ARK Infosolutions country manager (Chaos Group) Percy Daruwalla.
ARK Infosolutions, the nationwide distributor of V-Ray in India attends to customers who use the software as well as those who do not use them, providing software as well as hardware solutions. Their motto is educate and aware as much as they can in this field. And the response stated that, apparently!