simply use a png map with a transparent background in the in the diffuse slot. make sure to tick the "use texture transparency" checkbox. you can use the same diffuse png map to get bump/displacement/reflection/whatever map just with a little photoshop.. hope this can help..

@maeglin1 said: Vray 1.6 You really should be using vray 2.0. Vray 1.6 is beta build that has expired. There have been a lot of improvements anyway since 1.6 @unknownuser said: and it works as it should. I have even located the Vrimg Converter which is very handy.... a plugin I would never have discovered if I did not have this problem. Glad to hear you've fixed your installation and were able to follow the tutorial

@neeharikavijayrao said: doing the exteriors feels daunting!!! I'm not so sure about that. Just start with the default vray settings and you are most of the way there. You can remove texSky from the GI color, increase the GI multiplier until you have enough light in the shadows, and turn on default lights in your global settings (to keep the sun on) You might need to increase your camera shutter speed or f-stop to get the correct exposure as you increase the GI. Hope that helps. Andy

Hi guys, I tried exploding the walls (since I have grouped them into components earlier) and it works out well! Although there are still faint splotches on the 2nd & 3rd blocks from the left. I am guessing that it might have been a SU bug? I have another question: how do i make the yellow roof (supposedly perforated metal roof) more porous? cause it seems to me now that they are still somewhat opaque from far. (not much light passing through) I have included the bump map for rendering but whenever I have changed the porosity sizes (on SU paint material setting) I would have to alter the corresponding bump map on photoshop before loading it on vray material editor. Is there a faster way of doing this? Many thanks! -) [image: LYpV_Compare.jpg]

Hello, if you render with HDR on GI and BG, take a look at this VIDEO. It will help you for your shadows parameters...

very cool!

looks like "z-fighting" to me. (when more than one face is co-planar) Here's one thing you can try: "unglue" your image from the plane that you have it attached to. move the image forward away from the background plane by .5 mm (and move those floating boxes in front of the plane, yet another .5 mm -- sometimes the glass renders incorrectly too if you have it coplanar.) Andy

Make sure you are using Fresnel reflections and turn up the IOR to something like 1.85 - then make your reflection glossiness something like .75 as suggested above and turn up your subdiv to 22 or higher or you will get a lot of noise.

@valerostudio said: That makes sense! Thanks Thom! As you found out, setting an aspect ratio in SketchUp and matching the VfSU view usually works. (Though I've had issues at some ratios...) But I find it generally best to set an aspect ratio in SU as the scene can then be rendered on any machine and still be matching. Without the different size of the monitor will mess things up. I also found that rendering Photo Matched scenes doesn't work well. But I recreated the scene as a normal scene with the Ruby API and then it would render. It will be in the update of VfSU Tools 2.0 which I am working on.

I didn't find anything in SketchUp's EULA or License regarding weapons / nuclear weapons. What evil things SketchUp makes possible!

For those attending the BaseCamp 2012 in Boulder, I have a license for Spread3DPro and it is my intention to bring a laptop with it installed for anyone interested trying it out.

@fletch said: I would like to create a nice endless knot lamp to print on a 3D printer. That would look neat I bet!

Don't forget the free plugin... Gk Postscript Plot which Dave R talks about on his blog...http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/47135/printing-patterns-for-templates

Seasons contest winners - Forum post The "Seasons" contest has finished and we are happy to announce the winners. We would like to thank all the artists who participated with their renders - they gave life to this contest. We would also like to thank our sponsors for the prizes they offered to the winners. It is worth mentioning that the final decision for the winners came by considering the concept, originality of the idea, the technical details (quality of materials and textures) and the overall render quality. Choosing the winners was not easy, since there were a lot of very nice renders. At the end, such decisions are taken based on personal criteria as well. Finally, we have also decided to give a smaller prize for a 3rd winner. In addition to these prizes, we will also give a single Thea Render license to two participants of the contest that were not licensed users but contributed with noticeable renders. Congratulations to the winners and to all participants! You can see below the results. 1st winner: "Recipe for Seasons" by Rafael Sanchez (aka Rosco) [image: Recipe_for_Seasons_thumb.jpg] 2nd winner: "The Unusual Suspects" by Sandro Sorce (aka SandroS) [image: LineUpFINALFontFix_thumb.jpg] 3rd winner: "Living in Hanoi" by Adona Nomer (aka nomeradona) [image: Hanoi_thumb.jpg]

shame it doe snot support Max 2012.

@notareal said: Have you read trough http://www.kerkythea.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10866 Also you will need to have X-11 installed. Thanks mate. Did the manual extraction and works fine. Seems it's the installer, not the app itself that's the problem.

Thea Render is one of the few commercial renderers that can offer both biased and unbiased render engines. Biased/unbiased is a question about accuracy of render algorithm, biased rendering do make some shortcuts for faster results that are needed for animations and so. With it user has a control on every aspect and parameter of render engines. Unbiased rendering is progressive by it's nature, it does offer a easy, parameter free and highly accurate, but slower rendering. You can use the same scene no matter witch engine you choose to use. Thea and SU both do use OpenGL for displaying the workspace, so one can say that even reasonable "light" GPU can handle the burden (even integrated display adapter might be enough). Later Thea will have GPU accelerated rendering, but at the moment just your system should work just fine with Thea. With i7 and 16 GB RAM it's hard to choke Thea as it does benefit from 64-bit OS - you can render more complex scenes and use more freely some features like relight (as available RAM is the main limiter). You can freely test Thea, with resolution limited and watermarked version. If you want to compare render time for 720p or higher, it will raise linearly related resolution change. So even with a smaller test render you can estimate how long it would take to render some higher resolution image... Please, be free to join to Thea Render forums for further questions. ps here is some interesting music & relight experiments by Wax http://www.youtube.com/user/wax78/videos?query=relight

@thomthom said: That limit the size of your render to the size of the viewport. If you need highres images, but in the same aspect ratio of the viewport use the "Get view aspect" button and then lock the aspect ratio. Then you can increase the output size and still be relative to SU. So if you save out a 3000px wide image in SU and then render out a 3000px wide image in VfSU they match, no problem. as it indeed, I was wondering if there is a vertical correction for the camera as in 3d max vertical correction at a vray camera or Guess vert, I've tried 2 point perspective but it changes the camera position and if I move it back the perspective changes . so my question is: is it posible to correct verticals (easy way) without moving my view?

What are your global Displacement settings? Have you tried playing with edge length - setting it to 1 or 0.5? (warning! very detailed and slow setting!)