Here's a scene I was testing some night lighting with. I used an invisible rectangle light in the windows and an omni in the box. Night lighting depends on a lot of things....render settings, glass material settings, light settings. Check some of my settings in the scene and see if that helps. Turn up the intensity of the window lights to get a brighter cast outside. The outer plane is to get cast on the wall and needs to have "affect reflection" turned off. You can do without the outer plane, but the wall will be totally dark. Also check the "shadow settings" in Sketchup.

vray night test.jpg

vray night test scene.skp

I don't remember all the details of displacement now. I'd suggest you set up some small test cases to see.
But I don't think you can have different material on different sides of the face. certainly not different displacements. Face normals matters greatly with displacement. (how the faces are oriented. You should verify that all your face normals are oriented properly - the front (default SU colour white) should be pointing outwards.) In general you should always have full control over your face normals, especially when rendering. Now and then, switch the SU style to display the faces in SU's default colours, you might even set the backside colour to a bright colour to make it easier to spot faces oriented incorrectly.

Hi, thanks for the help!

But I still have some trouble with my grass materials. I use the Grass Plane.vismat material that I have downloaded from the ASGVIS homepage. Please have a look at the attached image. I can't see any bump and the grass looks so small?! I have tried to increase the texture inside Sketcup paintbucket by editing the texture to 2 x 2 meters, but it looks very unrealistic to me in the render. Is there any other options that I have missed that I can change in the materials properties to get a more realistic grass?

Is there any better method to create grass instead of using a texture like this? Is there better grass materials to dowmnload somewhere else?

Preciate som help? Thanks!

forum1.jpg

i know how to overcome this prob.. u juz save the file after u set all the colour n materials. then off the file.. n then open it back.. then u start render using vray. it works for me since i faced the same problem as well bfore.. give it a try.. n good luck!

Guys,

I'm creating a library with .IES lighting files for vray 1.48. They are available at:

http://cid-b15d752486d2e557.skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?resid=B15D752486D2E557!886&authkey=plYvz2uEXnQ%24

For each file I'm creating a preview. For each IES there will be a JPG file, which will demonstrate the effect of light.

the number between brackets in the filename represents the power of the light used in vray

http://dnh7xa.bay.livefilestore.com/y1p9UPHy78ojhEqJyFlyYwoJ31k-df-walTM-cW4z7XuPvzHutZAjI-kQv_FlHTs6NNuC8I2KPREqBhHFuGYdEA14cmlUXNTHJo/ColorBlast6_clear%20%5B15.000%5D.jpg?psid=1

http://dnh7xa.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pfmXjUth3WMdM5NC0pI7MYvZxCzWY0kqNhvE9_jt84LQLv8XzOfeP--CMbJuixLlBqfqDJHLkqhfVdRk7QOX-gcIqoS-6aNOA/ColorBlast6%20%5B15.000%5D.jpg?psid=1

good work!

oh my! u r super good! thanks alot!

Yea, you don't normally get sharp shadows with HDRIs.
I think I've heard of people who made a blend map for the GI and made a mix with the HDRI and Sun/Sky...

V-Ray doesn't make use of the SketchUp shadow toggle. You mush go to VfSU's Option window and under the Environment section remove the Sun/Sky maps.

@tomsdesk said:

Try setting the image transparency to 98%...sure helps my tree png's.

Thanks to you both.

Tom - im at work so I dont have access to my programs. By transparancy do you mean adjusting it within the transparancy option thats next to the diffuse option within the materials editor in Vray? ie sliding it from white into the black by 2%?

I've been having the same problem. I tried lights off, materials overriden, no physical camera, minimal render size, nothing would work.
Finally I noticed I had the options set to auto save the render on the server path (which is not my machine). This was working before, but I guess if the ip adress changes(or something network related, I'm not an IT expert) vray just doesn't know where to save the file, and produces this kind of bug. No error message, no log entry, nothing besides a black render which is proccessed extremely fast.

I guess this may not be the only cause, but it worked fine with me.
Hope it helps.

Cheers!

that was totally what i want
thanks a lot

Yes, you are right. That's what my perfectionist brain can't handle.

this just happened to me as well. the solution is to click 'include frame number' under the output tab

@thomthom said:

When you use the Sun/Sky system as light source you will get clear shadows. (you can soften by increasing the sun's Size)
But when you use HDRI as light source you have no control over the shadows.
You can use HDRI as background and Sun/Sky as light source - but you might very well end up with lighting that doesn't fit with your background.

Thanks...what about how to add the vegetation? Any idea where id find information or tutorial on how to do this?
Thanks again

@thomthom said:

That is just a link for yourself.

Refer to these page on how to share Dropbox files:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/16
https://www.dropbox.com/help/167

hello just to check if links are working.. let me know, thanks!

OOpps...sorry I thought I posted once, Thanks you.

Good to hear.
Note that the multiplier must be increased as such when you use the Physical Camera. If you turn it off you must re-adjust the multiplier of the HDRI and all your light sources.