I am testing out the Vantage export, and have some questions

[edub]

First of all - excited that I might finally (hopefully!) be able to use Corona+Vantage on a project!.
just bought a month of vantage, for testing purposes, but my deadline will be almost immediately after that so I am already behind the curve.
here are some questions, and things I noticed already - please help me out with understanding how to improve my file setup, or what else.

I am using Corona 12(hotfix1), and C4D 2024.5.1 Windows 11 Pro, AMD 2990WX, 64.0 GB RAM, (2x) 2070 RTX

Right out of the box I open a file I want to test. 

- "Open Scene in Vantage"...  crash after about 75% through.
- Export to "Corona VRScene"...  crash after 75%

The scene is not really that complex (relative to my usual Corona projects)...  What are the limitations of what is supported in "Open Scene.." and "Export to VRscene", if any?...  not sure if I need to trouble shoot any particular objects, plugins?

Is there a limit on filesize?, or any other limitations?  where can I see the documentation in this regard?

Can someone point me in the direction for some best practice guidelines, or youtube videos that show a successfully working setup?

Never fun to have a total fail as your first experience

[TomG]

Sorry to hear you are having problems :( Best if possible would be to send the scene via ticket https://support.chaos.com/requests/new

The only time I've experienced a crash on export is when the scene will exceed the GPU's VRAM, and I believe a 2070 is 8 GB so that could be what is going on here. If you can send in the scene, we can test it on systems with more VRAM and see if it loads without crashing (and see how much memory Vantage is using on the VRAM too). As a troubleshooting step I'd suggest deleting things a bit at a time and try re-exporting. Things like 8K texture maps could be problematic, as could things like scatters (as those would, for now, be processed as separate objects). You might also try 12 Update 1 and not 12 (HF 1), since the Vantage export had improvements in the latest release (alongside having Live Link too).

For seeing it working, you can see our videos like

And between those you can see several different scenes of several different kinds and complexities working.

[edub]

Thanks Tom - I have updated to the "update 1" version (I thought that's what I had with the Hotfix1...  my bad, although that's confusing naming, LOL).
I see there's a new Vantage Menu within the Corona dropdown. 
It is working for me now!

but I got these warnings in the console - doesn't seem critical though:

10:42:19.745 [ERR] Cosmos RPC AsyncWaitForImport response error #2: Stream removed
10:42:19.746 [Wrn] warning: Cosmos RPC channel closed. Retrying connection...
10:42:29.839 [Wrn] warning: Cosmos thread can't establish connection to service. Retrying...
10:42:39.897 [Wrn] warning: Cosmos thread can't establish connection to service. Retrying...
10:42:49.953 [Wrn] warning: Cosmos thread can't establish connection to service. Retrying...
10:43:00.015 [Wrn] warning: Cosmos thread can't establish connection to service. Retrying...
10:44:24.301 [Wrn] Warning: Disabled RTXDI resampling because it's not supported on multi-GPU setups.
10:44:25.453 [Wrn] Warning: Disabled RTXDI resampling because it's not supported on multi-GPU setups

[edub]

so...  just to confirm all textures must be UV mapped - no cubic mapping support?2

[Stefan-L]

i also see it seems textures that use a mix value in the texture slot (like in diffuse/base color channel) arent exported yet.

it is great to have that export and live sync but i think a few tunigns need to be made yet to be more close to the export from vray c4d.

best
Stefan

[TomG]

Oh yes, this is definitely our initial release of Live Link, as noted in the blog and release video. Further refinements are yet to come, plus of course getting animation from the DCC renderable in Vantage as well :) TY for all the useful feedback!

[edub]

I wanted to continue this thread with additional observations (not sure if they need to be reported as bugs):

- when exporting from C4D file that has 3D people assets from the Cosmos Browser, the UVs are messed up once inside Vantage...  but if the same assets are imported from within Vantage, from the Cosmos Browser, then the the UV's are fine.  Just wondering if this is a known issue, and why this might be happening, since the assets should be the same (coming from Cosmos).

I also have some decals created in Corona, but when exported the materials are not correct.  I see in the documentation that the decals are supported, but do they need to be created inside Vantage?  If so, how can I use my Corona material that was set up inside C4D?  I'm looking at the material lister, and can't even find the material, because the names have all been changed to random alphanumeric values that don't make sense.  What's the best workflow for decals?

Another issue with the materials, in addition to the naming mentioned above - I also see many material previews that have a 50/50 (vertical line separation) showing 2 different materials - I'm not sure what this is supposed to indicate, and I'm having a hard time verifying if it's applied somewhere in the scene.  I'm guessing it could be a material that is applied to a polygon selection?