Looks like vRoom is now shipping

[digefxgrp]

http://www.euriskostudios.com/es/plugin_pages/vRoom.php


A bit spendy though... :eek:
http://www.euriskostudios.com/es/plugin_pages/shop.php

[Matt]

Does seem high, but I am impressed by the results it gives, looks neat.

[gordonrobb]

It looks awesome. Now I need to have a reason to get it :)

[cresshead]

will be a great assest for arch tech design artists using lw

[calilifestyle]

390 dollars for the whole bundle. That's way to much. Well for me at lest.

[Greenlaw]

To me, the price seems more than fair. I haven't used vRoom yet, but if it works as demoed, I can see the plug-in paying for itself by saving me many, many hours of work.

Finally seeing it in an animated clip has almost sold me on it. I can immediately think of a half dozen jobs where I wish I had this.

Grabbing the demo right now. :)

Greenlaw

[Ernest]

Yeah... $325 USD is a bit high. I think I'll spend the $300 on JimmyRig instead. :DFor me the decisive factor is that you can buy JimmyRig in two monthly payments of $150 with no interest but I do love how this looks.

[jeremyhardin]

$390?

XE.com's currency converter has £200 coming in at about $325.

[calilifestyle]

Yeah it came out to 390 when i added the image library

[jeremyhardin]

Complete, at £200, includes the image library. £180 is for people that want to save a buck and take their own images for the interiors.

[Greenlaw]

Hmm. I'm trying the demo in LW 9.6 x32 (no dongle attached as instructed,) but I keep getting the following error:

'An exception occured in Xpanel: Interface (): (invalid vector <T> subscript)'

This is after I've added the plug-in and applied it in the node editor. I can see the node, but it won't let me open the node's properties panel.

Anybody else getting this? I'm running it on my laptop with XP Pro, sp3. I'll try it in LW96 x64 on my workstation in a minute.

Greenlaw

[Greenlaw]

For me the decisive factor is that you can buy JimmyRig in two monthly payments of $150 with no interest but I do love how this looks.

I think the decisive factor should be: which plug-in do you actually need? Jimmy Rig and vRoom are about as different as you can get--it's not even apples and oranges.

Greenlaw

[Greenlaw]

I just tried using the demo on a different computer, this time the 64 bit version, but got the same error.

Just for kicks, I attached my dongle and tried the plug-in...now it asks for a license, but there is no way to tell it I just want to run it in demo mode.

Looks like the demo is bugged at the moment. I'm going to contact the developer about this; I really want to try this out.

Greenlaw

[Ernest]

I think the decisive factor should be: which plug-in do you actually need? Jimmy Rig and vRoom are about as different as you can get--it's not even apples and oranges.

Greenlaw

They are actually almost identical in both functionality and "need". They both make the background items of the viz animations to look nicer with minimal effort. They just speed up the enhancement of different background elements. Therefore, they are both equally necessary and desirable.

[Anti-Distinctly]

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

[calilifestyle]

I have a question. This doesn't work with hd instance right

[Anti-Distinctly]

I haven't gone through all of the videos yet, but can you make your own interiors to work with vRoom? And if so, how difficult is this?

You certainly may. I created a tool to make the interiors which is available for free on the website too (probe unwrapper):
http://www.euriskostudios.com/es/plugin_pages/free_plugins.php
I created the interiors by taking pictures of a mounted chrome sphere at several different angles and different exposures. I searched high and low for a cheap alternative to a ball bearing but couldn't find anything satisfactory and in the end had to buy a ball bearing. This was about £40.
The images taken were also balanced with a grey card so the interiors would look as consistent as possible. They then have to be merged together in photoshop, unwrapped in Lightwave using the probe unwrapper, then edited again in Photoshop to remove people and sort out other artefacts.
One of the things I found harder to do was just a location to shoot in. It took quite a bit of organization to do this. However, if you have any CG interiors you may be able to get a fisheye render of those using the advanced camera.
In short, I'd say it's quite time consuming to say the least.

[Anti-Distinctly]

I have a question. This doesn't work with hd instance right

Alas, you are correct. I can give you the technical reasons if you'd like, but the end result is the same.
So no instancing, including Kray instancing, but I've had reports that it works with the Kray renderer and FPrime.

[Greenlaw]

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Hi Anti-Distinctly,

Thanks for joining in! I'm very eager to try vRoom but, as described in an earlier post, I can't get the demo to run. I tried both the x32 and x64 versions on two different machines.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. :)

Greenlaw

[Anti-Distinctly]

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. :)
I sent you an email about an hour ago. Reply to that and we'll see if we can get this sorted out :)

[Greenlaw]

I searched high and low for a cheap alternative to a ball bearing but couldn't find anything satisfactory and in the end had to buy a ball bearing. This was about £40.

My wife was teaching a lighting course at Gnomon recently, and she was looking for a cheaper alternative for her students. What we found was a giant plastic 'chrome' Christmas tree ornament, which we got at Big Lots for a couple of dollars. We mounted it to a stick and it worked just fine.

When I compared the ornament to the 'chrome' ball we use here at work, it looked like the same exact item. (Mine was just newer and less scratchy) :)

I'm sure this is a seasonal item for local merchants, but I would think somebody must sell it online year round.

Greenlaw

[Greenlaw]

I sent you an email about an hour ago. Reply to that and we'll see if we can get this sorted out :)

Thanks for the quick response! I sent you the data your requested by email; hope it helps.

Greenlaw

[Anti-Distinctly]

Well this is interesting then...

I was thinking of creating 3D interiors (in LW) and using THEM for the vRoom interiors. You would have quite alot more control and it would probably end up being easier (once you have the room of course) than going on location. And... if you're working on a sci-fi or fantasy setting... you can't go on location. ;)

Yep. You can create them any way you like. There's nothing special about the format apart from the fact that it's an image of 6 squares, each one representing a wall, ceiling or floor. You can see examples on the image pack page here:
http://www.euriskostudios.com/es/plugin_pages/vRoom_image_pack.php
As long as they are in that format, it's doesn't matter how they are created.

[gordonrobb]

You can get big chrome balls from garden suppliers, they work a treat.

[Anti-Distinctly]

You can get big chrome balls from garden suppliers, they work a treat.
I did try those, but unfortunately I didn't think the quality was good enough. Lot's of scratches and striations that caused bright lights to streak across the image.

[Greenlaw]

Got the demo running. Thanks to Anti-Distinctly for fixing things so quickly for me!

The plug-in seems to work well, although, rendering in LightWave Discovery mode makes it difficult to see clearly what's going on. NewTek needs to come up with a better watermark for Discovery mode; the checkerboard over the entire image is just plain ridiculous! Also, I wish I could test this in FPrime 3.5.1, but Discovery mode doesn't allow me to use FPrime.

In spite of all that, I'm sold. I have just the right project for this and I may be ordering mine as early as this evening.

Greenlaw

[gordonrobb]

Cool. If you can, share some output. And let us know if it does work iwth Fprime too.

[Greenlaw]

Wow! vRoom does work with FPrime. (I'm using FPrime 3.5.1.) What I'm testing is pretty simple (basically a box with 48 'window' polygons), but it's rendering very fast in FP with all raytrace features enabled.

I don't have anything worth posting yet, but I'll see if I can whip up a decent test image in the next day or two.

Greenlaw

[gordonrobb]

That would be cool.

[Anti-Distinctly]

I just added another video tutorial explaining how to control lights with gradients here (http://www.euriskostudios.com/es/plugin_pages/vRoom_demo.php)
If people want to know anything in particular let me know.