VRAY plugin under development

[jwilhelm]

I recieved the following reply from ASGVIZ regarding a Vray plugin for Revit:

"Hello. Yes we have been developing a V-Ray plugin for Revit. Currently we are on hold with the plugin development. We have not yet set a release date. We will keep your contact information and e-mail you more information as we make major decisions."

[niki_funky]

This is great news. Keep us informed.

best regards
niki

[truevis]

This is great news...

What part of "Currently we are on hold with the plugin development." is great?

Meanwhile, we can drool over the images in http://www.vismasters.com/gallery.cfm?Professional=1 -- most of which were made using V-Ray.

[hand471037]

They could be waiting for the API to catch up to what they want to do. If they wanted to make a full rendering add-on, with toolbars integrated into Revit and such, or make it so that you could 'swap' the Accurender engine for their Vray engine, well, currently the API wouldn't really allow for that (as far as I understand it).

[Andre Baros]

I agree, maybe they know something from Autodesk which we don't. I have a (perhaps optimistic) feeling that Mental Ray for Acad was just a test run and they're working on it for Revit. Maybe not. But either way, if they're going to change the render engine in Revit, they would probably make related changes to the API at that point. Maybe Vlado is just waiting for the Revit Team to finish their work so his Vray team doesn't have to do things twice.

[Arnel Aguel]

That's great news for revit and vray users but I wonder how that plug-in will work as revit doesn't have that deep material control to tweak like in max/viz material editor? Unless the plug in will also bring in some material editor on top of the rendering engine plug-in plus animation control interface.

Well lets just wait and see.

[Joef]

I wouldn't be holding my breath. How long has Revit been around? How many plug-ins exist at the moment? Pretty close to zero in my count. I would love a plug-in for Piranesi, but The Informatix people have said :

"Revit is not "open" enough for us to be able to write a plug-in for their renderer. This means we are reliant on the Revit people to provide the functionality themselves."

That was in 2004. Still no plug-in.

I suspect that this is the same difficulty the Vray people (and anyone else writing a plug-in) are having.

Joe

[hand471037]

"Revit is not "open" enough for us to be able to write a plug-in for their renderer. This means we are reliant on the Revit people to provide the functionality themselves."

That was in 2004. Still no plug-in.

I suspect that this is the same difficulty the Vray people (and anyone else writing a plug-in) are having.

To be fair, it wasn't until R8 (2005) came out that there was even an API to begin with, and a lot of changes occurred with R9 (2006) for the better. If things stay on this track, by next year or the year after the API should fully support whatever these folks want to do, if it doesn't already (which in my limited experience I'm guessing that it can with R9).

There are plenty of Revit plug-ins, they just mostly for Structure folks. I've seen a Revit Building plug-in for Navvisworks, and another for a cost estimation software, for example.

Assuming it takes a year to develop and bring to market a plug-in, and that only in the last year has it really been feasible because of the API, add in that it's probably better to wait a year or two and get all that you want then re-do things (especially for vray, who's making plenty of money off their existing products that I'm guessing this isn't a big priority) well, I'm not too surprised that there simply aren't too many out there yet...

Sheesh the level of negativity around these parts is a little silly...

[Joef]

Must you always resort to pejoratives?
If you want to argue that the Revit API is a great success and has produced many time saving and useful features please do so with the examples. It was announced with great fanfare and much discussion, but to be honest hasn't amounted to much. If as you say it takes two or three years to get a decent plug-in off the ground then I will concede to your expertise. That would mean a Vray plug-in sometime in 2008 or 2009.

[hand471037]

Must you always resort to pejoratives?

Huh?

If you want to argue that the Revit API is a great success and has produced many time saving and useful features please do so with the examples.

I never said that, nor argued that it was a 'great success'. What are you so bitter about to over-react so? I was just saying that the API exists now, and has grown. Trying to give a little insight for those who might not have had any time to look into the API.

It was announced with great fanfare and much discussion, but to be honest hasn't amounted to much.

OK, so I guess all that stuff those structural folks I know, who are making heavy use of some Revit plug-ins, and the Navvisworks one we're testing currently, 'isn't much'. Could have fooled me, it looked pretty cool from what I've seen.

If as you say it takes two or three years to get a decent plug-in off the ground then I will concede to your expertise. That would mean a Vray plug-in sometime in 2008 or 2009.

Concede? You remind me of the Black Night from Monty Python's. We weren't even fighting. I was just pointing out that to be so overtly negative about plug-in development when it is (slowly) happening, and to use an e-mail from a company that was written prior to an API even existing as evidience that 'nothing is happening', is, well, a little bit off. That's all. But I guess it's easier to go back to thinking that Autodesk is screwing us all over in some way that it is to be rational about things.