Materials or what
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Hello
I'm a beginner and I was wondering since its my very first time using vray for sketchup, should I add materials first and then start rendering, or should I add them while rendering?
Any tip or tutorials would be very helpful!! -
In a nutshell, you apply materials as you normally would using SU, and vray will use these to render.
However, as you are a beginner, I would strongly recommend that you view the video tutorials available on the Chaos site (under 'support' - V-Ray for SketchUp Tutorials) and start off with simple renders until you build up your skill level.David
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My workflow is to model 85% of my scene and then start to work on materials, whether this is importing vismat files or making them on top of your SketchUp materials. In most cases, A SketchUp material may only need some glossy reflectivity, so the process goes very quickly. If you are using the latest 2.0 version, you can now create SketchUp material libraries that already have the V-Ray settings applied to them. Now, as you learn and create and load V-Ray materials, save them into your SketchUp libraries for efficient workflow.
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"If you are using the latest 2.0 version, you can now create SketchUp material libraries that already have the V-Ray settings applied to them."
How is this accomplished? This would be amazing.
edit: I think I just figured this out. THIS IS AWESOME.
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Yep, it is. 1.49.01 used to purge out any saved material settings when you loaded a material from the SU material library. It also purged all of your material settings on a copy and paste and importing a component. Those days are over! 2.0 keeps these settings.
So, when you create a material you like, just drag a copy of it from your material browser in SketchUp into a V-Ray material folder. That way, you have all your favorites ready to go. I have a library with glass, a few plastics, grass with bump, concrete, etc. Things I use all the time.
Another tip is make a library with a generic gray diffuse and a reflection layer at various glossiness levels and save those as a starting point for making plastics. For example, I have a library that has Plastic 90, Plastic 80, Plastic 70, etc. Then all I have to do is apply this from my library to my model and adjust the diffuse color right in SketchUp and I already have my reflection layer setup.
NOTE - that any maps such as reflection or bumps are not saved along with the SKM file, so you need to have a network library location that keeps them organized and in a central location.
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