Fixing blended materials in older model

andybot · 25 Oct 2010, 15:15

I've been having trouble with correctly updating some models that had materials created in Vray 1.05 (which uses alpha blending) I don't have 1.05 installed anymore and currently use 1.48.89. What happens when I open a model is that the material map disappears in the sketchup model. When I go to the vray material editor, the material is there, but once I change from blended to normal, the UV scale I had in the original file is lost. What's the best way to bring an older file up to speed without losing the texture scale?

Thanks!

thomthom · 25 Oct 2010, 15:55

hm... it disappear? that sounds like a bug. I'd recommend you contact ASGVis.

andybot · 25 Oct 2010, 16:54

No - the material does not disappear. It's still in Vray as a blended material (TexBlend), but since it's not a simple diffuse layer with map, SU doesn't recognize it as a textured material. Therefore the texture disappears in Sketchup material editor. (same kind of thing as having only a bump map but with no texture map in the diffuse layer.) It reappears of course if I set the material to TexBitmap in Vray, but the scale is lost from the original. Same thing if I add texture image in SU.
I don't know if that's a bug - maybe there could be a fix in the way Vray updates materials from older versions? I guess I'll post on forum.asgviz and see if any answers there. I hate to call it a bug until something is really broken...

thomthom · 25 Oct 2010, 17:03

It's a bug. It's breaking existing models. And VfSU should be keeping the texture available in the SU view and SU's material editor. I believe I've run across it in an earlier beta, thought it was fixed. (though I rarely use SU textures with adjusted colours, I always tweak them in PS.)

andybot · 25 Oct 2010, 17:21

yes, these models were created before I knew better!
I'll see what reply I get at asgvis and if there's no workaround then I'll post a few files for them and see if they can fix the material update issue.

thomthom · 25 Oct 2010, 20:14

@andybot said:

yes, these models were created before I knew better!
I'll see what reply I get at asgvis and if there's no workaround then I'll post a few files for them and see if they can fix the material update issue.

Alternatively, you could try my Material Tools plugin and run the Apply Material Adjustment method when VfSU isn't loaded.
(backup your file first as the function isn't fully tested)

andybot · 27 Oct 2010, 14:38

Thanks for the suggestion, but no dice. I've tried a few things, and so far the only thing that has sort of worked is that I was able to run a copy of 1.05 on another machine so I could at least edit the original. For some materials I was able to edit the blended material to bitmap, however, not for all my materials. I guess the only way around this I've been able to do is open the original file without Vray and write down the texture scales of the materials and when I open it with Vray, change blended to bitmap and set the scale. So far the UV coordinates seem to be OK.

One idea - is there a way to run the "regenerate all Vray materials" without the rest of the material editor running... is that possible?

thomthom · 27 Oct 2010, 15:14

Could purge the V-Ray data from the model... I should have a snippet somewhere on my computer
If you save your render settings, then purge the model for all VfSU data, then you can start over with the materials.

andybot · 27 Oct 2010, 17:05

hmm. If there's a way to purge vray data without opening vray, that may be useful. I would lose reflection and bump map info, etc. so there would still be some conversion one way or another. So far in playing around with this, I've found that once I have the original scale information, I can change blended to bitmap, then set the scale in the SU material editor. The materials are back to normal, and the UV coords are still there (one model I had was a curved roof with shingles texture painstakingly mapped so the repeating patterns worked out.) Regarding the visopt settings, half the time the old one doesn't work anyway and I load a new setting that I've saved from current models.

thomthom · 27 Oct 2010, 17:31

Have you tried to contact ASGVis? This whole thing doesn't sound like it's working as it should.

andybot · 27 Oct 2010, 18:06

It's sort of working too accurately... The main issue is that current vray only maps to SU with a bitmap on the diffuse layer, whereas the old version mapped bitmap and blended. I remember having lots of trouble with the old version where any change to the material in SU messed up changes to material blend in vray. I like the way things are handled now so I wouldn't want to bring in the old way of doing it. Like I said, the materials are still correct in Vray, it's just since the scale is no longer tied to the bitmap hidden in the blended material, SU loses the scale. Now that I think I understand more what's missing, I'll contact asgvis and see if they have an import method for old models that can transfer the scale.

andybot · 3 Nov 2010, 19:58

Problem solved!
I was able to select all and copy (ctrl-C) my model and paste it into a new drawing (all with vray plugin disabled.) The blended material problem is gone and the textures show up (and render) correctly when I open with Vray (1.48.89) enabled.
Now, however, I can't find where I read this suggestion to copy and paste into a new file (I thought someone had posted here, but I guess I read it in a different thread. Whoever you are, many thanks!)