In addition to rendering to the 3ds Max Rendered Frame Window (RFW or
VFB), V-Ray allows you to render to a V-Ray specific frame buffer, which has
some additional capabilities:
- Allows you to view all render elements in a single window and switch
between them easily;
- Keeps the image in full 32-bit floating-point format;
- Allows you to perform simple color corrections on the rendered
image;
- Allows you to choose the order in which the buckets are rendered.
The V-Ray VFB also has some limitations, which are listed in the
#Notes section below.
![[V-Ray VFB options]](vray_for_3ds_max_manual/frame_buffer/vfb.png)
Show last VFB - If you have rendered to
the V-Ray VFB, but have closed it, this button allows you to open it again.
The same can also be achieved with the showLastVFB()
MaxScript method of the V-Ray renderer.
Enable built-in frame buffer - Enables the
use of built-in V-Ray frame buffer. Due to technical reasons, the original
3ds Max frame buffer still exists and is being created. However, when this
feature is turned on - V-Ray will not render any data to the 3ds Max frame
buffer. In order to preserve memory consumption we recommend that you set
the original 3ds Max resolution to a very low value (like 100x100) and turn
off the 3ds Max Virtual Frame Buffer from the common 3ds Max render
settings.
Render to memory frame buffer - this will
create a V-Ray frame buffer and will use it to store color data that you can
observe while rendering and afterwards. If you wish to render really high
resolutions that would not fit into memory or that may eat up a lot of your
RAM not allowing for the scene to render properly - you can turn this
feature off and use only Render to V-Ray raw image
file feature.
Get resolution from 3ds Max - this will
cause the V-Ray VFB to take its resolution from the 3ds Max common render
settings.
Output resolution - this is the resolution
that you wish to use with the V-Ray frame buffer.
Pixel aspect - specifies the pixel aspect
for the rendered image in the V-Ray frame buffer.
Render to V-Ray image file - when this is
on, V-Ray directly writes to disk the raw image data as it is being
rendered. It does not store any data in the RAM, so this feature is very
handy when rendering huge resolutions for preserving memory. If you wish to
see what is being rendered, you can turn on the
Generate preview setting. You can specify either a
.vrimg or an .exr file
for output:
- If you specify a .vrimg extension, the
resulting file can be viewed through the File > View
image... menu of 3ds Max, or converted to an
OpenEXR file with the help of the
vrimg2exr tool.
- If you specify an .exr extension, V-Ray
will write out a tiled OpenEXR file that can be used directly by 3ds Max
or other compositing applications. The file contains all render elements
for the image.
Generate preview - this will create a
small preview of what is being rendered. If you are not using the V-Ray
memory frame buffer for conserving memory (i.e.
Render to memory frame buffer is off), you
can use this feature to see a small image of what is being actually rendered
and stop the renderer if there is anything that looks wrong.
Save separate render channels - this
option allows you to save the channels from the VFB into separate files. Use
the Browse... button to specify the file. This
option is available only when rendering to a memory frame buffer. If
rendering is done only to a raw image file, the render channels can be
extracted from that file after rendering is complete.
Save RGB and Save
Alpha - these options allow you to disable saving of the RGB and
Alpha channels respectively. This can be useful if you only want to generate
other render channels. Note that V-Ray will still generate the RGB and
Alpha channels, however they will not be saved.
There are some additional parameters of the VFB, which are not available
in the interface, but are accessible through MaxScript. These may be useful
in certain situations. Below are listed the MaxScript names of these
parameters.
output_renderType - This allows you to
override the render type, specified in the 3ds Max settings. Possible values
are:
0 - use 3ds Max render type (default);
1 - render the full image;
2 - region rendering;
3 - crop rendering;
4 - blow-up rendering.
output_regxmin - The left coordinate (in
pixels) of the region to render (for region/crop/blow-up rendering);
output_regxmax - The right coordinate (in
pixels) of the region to render (for region/drop/blow-up rendering);
output_regymin - The top coordinate (in
pixels) of the region to render (for region/drop/blow-up rendering);
output_regymax - The bottom coordinate (in
pixels) of the region to render (for region/drop/blow-up rendering);
 |
This will save the current frame data to a file.You
can turn this on and of on-the-fly while rendering. |
 |
This will create a 3ds Max virtual frame buffer copy
of the current V-Ray frame buffer.You can turn this on and of
on-the-fly while rendering. |
 |
This will force V-Ray to render the closest bucket
found to the mouse pointer. Drag the mouse over the V-Ray frame
buffer while rendering to see which buckers are rendered first. You
can turn this on and of on-the-fly while rendering. |
 |
This open permanently the info dialog which will
give you information about the pixel you right-click the mouse
pointer on. If you right-click the mouse pointer over a pixel
without turning this setting on - then you will see the info dialog
only while yuor mouse button is down |
 |
This will open a so called "levels control" dialog
which will let you define color corrections of various color
channels. It will also show the histogram of the currently contained
image data in the buffer. Click and drag your mid-button in the
histogram to interactively scale the preview. |
 |
Clears the contents of the frame buffer. Somethimes
helpful when starting a new render to prevent confusion with the
previous image. |
![[V-Ray VFB window]](vray_for_3ds_max_manual/frame_buffer/tn_vfb_window.png)
