"you need to make sure the folder where your model and vray materials are, is shared with all the other machines"

thanks, thats actually very important to know... (I never bothered to check it before)

I'll try to explain clamping to get things started. Maybe others will chime in. Although since it rendered OK before, I don't know why it wouldn't be OK now.

In any image, there is a range of colors from black to white. Let's say the colors go from 0 to 255, right? Well, your camera may only be able to handle a range of 240 colors, so you could set the exposure to see 0-239 or 15-255. In the latter case, if there are areas of subtle shadows, you'd lose detail because the camera can't see it. In the former case, if there are bright areas of white or almost white, all that will get washed out.

In your case, this is what is happening. If you have the colors clamped, anything from 240-255 is shown as white. If you unclamp the colors, the Vray frame buffer represents 240-255 with solid colors from yellows to reds to black.

If you don't want any part of your image burned, then you need to adjust your exposure like you did until there is no difference between toggling the color clamping on/off. I'm not quite sure what you mean by:

@unknownuser said:

...but when I increase the exposure (at -0.27 its TOO dark), the SAME AREAS where the bad reflections appear, also appear when I turn the Clamped Colors layer/mask of the render window.
Can you post some images?

@khashayar said:

@thomthom said:

Make sure you don't have faces overlapping each other. Kind of looks like z-fighting.
Also, make sure your mesh normals are correct, that it's the front-side of the face that's pointing outwards.

thanks thom. i know it may sound silly but i don't know where can i check the normals?

Set the Style to display Default Material, and set the back-side color to a brightly coloured one so you can easily see the difference between front and back.
By default it's white for front and blue/gray for back.

I'm betting you are using an old version of Vray, you need to explode for it to show.

Upgrade to current version.

@ledisnomad said:

Yup, that sounds about the same as me. I lose reflection layers, too. I seem to get the error rendering most often when I have Photoshop or another instance of SketchUp open.

Really hmmmmmmm
Thats prob the same with me too. I'll start testing with PS and other SU closed.

@unknownuser said:

Biggest drawback is that I am unable to transfer materials with copy and paste between models like I used to do with 1.48. Am I the only one with this problem?

No - it's a regression bug. 😞

Try this: http://www.vray.com/vray_for_sketchup/manual/transparency_mapping_in_vray_for_sketchup.shtml

It's not exactly what you need, but it takes you through the steps.

Can you upload the models?

There's lots of buttons not working within VfSU. They where added by ChaosGroup core - and not the VfSU department.

Thanks for the responses. I'll take a look at those, although I'll have to wait until I'm home... mrcad.com is blocked at work.

I'm glad to see I'm not alone with this problem. I tried out the latest version of V-ray, to see what it would make of all the vegetation I do with alpha transparency. The load time for SU increased from around 5 secs (even loading the previous version of V-ray) to nearly a full minute (or so it seemed). Needless to say, I uninstalled it again. Maybe I'll give it another chance with V-Ray Toys installed.
I've also noticed that I get error reports generated if I quite SU8 after a V-Ray render...especially if I quite very shortly after. It tells me that SU has stopped working; of course it has...I just closed it. 😒

make sure you don't have photon map selected as a primary rendering engine. it can render unexpectedly dark (black) results in your primary render, when it shows up fine in the secondary. if that is not the thing causing the problem... make a ticket at support at asgvis dot com.

Hm. I'm a bit late to reply. Anyway; you might have seen the model used on their website at material downloads > vray 1.48 only as a testscene

@ledisnomad said:

Do you have Vray 1.49.01? If so, in the Vray Material Editor, right-click "Scene Materials" in the Materials List and choose "Sort Materials Alphabetically."

yes i have vray 1.49..thanks a lot..! 😍

The latest build 1.49.01 will not let vray materials come over with a component if you copy or import the file in. So you are hosed even if you found a resource, which I have not yet found one. Flyingarchiecture.com has some good stuff, but it's modeled for Rhino w Vray, but they share the same material files and I believe he has 3DS files of his models, so you could import them into SU and reapply the materials.

There is an old trick to do this. Just replace the floor material (make it white), render and save the irradiance map(there is an option/button to save it) then, put back the desired material, load the irradiance map that you just saved, and render the final image.
Cheers!
PS: For speed up things, check in "Global switches" under "GI" , "Don't render image". In this way, only GI will be calculated.

you could try pre-saving in the options -> output panel

please someone come with an alternative man... 😒

Things are all good once again. I was told that they are in the process of moving computers around and they are trying to limit downtime.(phones must be down too) I got my serial number today, vray is pretty amazing. Thanks for the response.

baherzi

@thomthom said:

@arthur87 said:

my colleagues are using version 1. what about their problems.?

They also have crashes?

When you say "version 1" - do you mean the very first version where materials weren't even automatically synced?

yeah..