Exporting and Importing vrmats in scale

wenclav

Hello,

I would really appreciate the help from you. I couldn't find the answer for this and maybe it is just designed that way. The problem concerns the scale of the imported vrmats. Since I was doing architectural vizualisations in vray it didn't bother me because whenever I import material, for example brick ( looked like a proportion of 25cm x 6cm x 12cm brick ) that is already prepared by ex. chaos group, and it was offscale I just rescaled it to achieve proper dimensions.

Now I have a task to prepare our own base of materials in the office. And they have to be in scale already. So, when I load our material, and click apply, it should be in scale in the scene. (ps.we are working in metric system, centimeters).

I create a scene, Model info -> Decimal -> Centimeters. Create my desired material ( let's stick to the brick: 25cm x 6cm x 12cm ), scaling, creating textures, setting all parameters. Checking with tape measure if the scale is correct again. Everything seems fine. I pack material and save it. (I try to make textures in 1200x1200).

When I load material in a fresh scene, with Centimeters, material is rescaled. In paint bucket menu texture size is 25,40cm x 25,40cm ( I know the inch issue, and all parameters in vray are in inches ). Do all new imported vrmats materials have that size? I remembered that this material looked good when it was 80cm x 80cm. Why vray is not remembering that? My boss thinks that I'm an idiot that it should be a basic function program, maybe I am, but I don't know how to do it

Thank you in advance.

valerostudio

This happens in inches also. All imported diffuse textures come in at 10"x10" as that scale is a SketchUp parameter and not saved in the vismat. I think the way around this is to import the vismat, edit the texture size in the SU material dialog, and then save these materials to a material library in SU, called V-Ray, that way you know those materials already have their settings applied. Just make sure that all the maps exist in a place that will stay put as you will lose your links if you ever move their location.

wenclav

Thank you for the reply. I have created a new list of materials in paint bucket, named "V-Ray". Made a new material, using only diffuse map from my vrmat. I edited the proper texture size and saved in the material list folder "V-Ray" as Brick.skm. (Doing this in macosx felt broken). Checked in Finder Library if material really had created, everything was ok.

I opened a new scene, created simple plane and assigned the brick material from new V-Ray list and ofcourse it was in scale as suspected. But what should I do next? I opened Vray material editor, the Brick material was already there with Diffuse map checked. Material renders flat obviously. I clicked on Brick material in vray material editor and thought that I should just import the Brick.vrmat and overwrite it. But that changed the scale again... I tried to import vrmat first and then apply the skm material from paint bucket from V-Ray list with the same result. Each time the scale was changed.

Normally I would apply all channels and parameters by myself, but I have a task to create a material library that after you load a skm+vrmat, everything is in scale. It has to be as easy as possible.

So now. We have packed vrmat with all textures and parameters in zip format, and scaled skm material to be put in Sketchup library. Any thoughts? Thank you.

valerostudio

To make a VRay material library in SU.

Create new SU material and map the diffuse texture to it.
Edit the scale to real world dims.
Open VR Material Editor and apply all settings, such as reflection, refraction, bumps, etc.
Save that material from the SKETCHUP Material editor to a new or existing 'VRay' material library.

The SU library making process is outlined here
http://sketchucation.com/resources/tutorials/528-how-to-create-your-own-sketchup-material-libraries

This is only available in 2.0, 1.49 did not save the material settings with the SKM file.

wenclav

Thank you valerostudio but I have done this step by step as you have written and it does not solve my problem yet When I apply saved material from VRay material library, texture is in scale, but renders flat. When I add vrmat with the same diffuse but with other layers and parameters texture is rescaled again (25,40cm x 25,40cm not 80cm x 80cm). The other way around is the same (first load vrmatt, then apply material from paint bucket). Tested in macosx and in windows.

"This is only available in 2.0, 1.49 did not save the material settings with the SKM file" I have 2.0 so that is not an issue.

Once again, I have vrmat (with all layers and parameters) and skm (textured properly) files. I open a new scene, want to load them both to work properly, not to make additional moves in SU. Especially when we make a new scene on different SU on different machine.