I finally got around to watching this tutorial. I'm only a quarter of the way through but so far I think it's an excellent overview. My rendering knowledge is spotty and inconsistent so I expect I'll come away with a much better grounding in V-Ray.

I notice also that they've added a Twilight tutorial for those who are interested.

Some comments on lynda.com for those who haven't used this service before (I'm not in any way affiliated - just a subscriber):

lynda.com is a website that offers a very, very wide range of tutorials for many types of software. Subscription is $25/month and you can watch as many videos on as many subjects as you can cram into the month. They make it easy to unsubscribe. I think they expect you to subscribe and unsubcribe often depending on your needs.

So a strong thumbs up for this one. Well worth the $25 and after the V-Ray video I think I'll have time to brush up on some of my modo skills, take a look at the Twilight video and maybe even scan through some of the SketchUp videos to see if there's anything new to me.

This setup seems to be working for me. Make sure to save as an EXR to take full advantage of this workflow. I ran a test with an interior scene lit only by a small 4"x 6" hole in the wall using Skylight. Rendered clearly with minimal tweaking.
LWF Setup.JPG

@andybot said:

Here is some further discussion about using HDRI for interior - and explains my answer above.
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbulletin/showthread.php?69182-HDRI-interior
(registration required)

thank you for this link 😄

Well, if you wait a little while (or a long while, still not entirely sure 😉 ) The next version of vray for sketchup is supposed to have proxy support. I am very curious to see what sorts of new goodies will be implemented next.

Andy

Hi Rich,

Yep, I'm running the latest Sketchup v8 and I uninstalled Vray and installed it again. I've removed Maxwell Render in previous attempts when installing Vray and it makes no difference. I have a paid license of Maxwell Render this time and I'm hesitant to uninstall it!! There is obviously something on my laptop that doesn't agree with Vray. And I'm no closer to solving this issue. Vray support team were uselss.

Thanks
Anita

@valerostudio said:

It's buggy but I dont think 1.05.30 is a better product. Just the ambient occlusion, IES files, and transparent PNGs are enough to convince me to deal with the bugs. As for the debug menu, you have to go to Plugins - VRay - Help - Debugging. There are a few options in there. Beware that this will reset all materials in your file to defaults.

Yea - 1.05.30 is more stable - but the features of 1.49.01 is so good that I can't ignore it. Fortunately a new beta should start soon. 😄

it works when i put some boxes and lights. I'm guessing it may the 1. the file size; 2. overlaping surfaces in the model.
i decided to do it all over again, since none of the mentioned solutions worked for me.
shame tho, if it's about the file size, SU developers should deal with that 😄
ty for your help, though 😄

@valerostudio said:

Dont forget to set your subdivs high on that refraction glossiness (30 or more). Render times will be a beast but the results are worth it.

👍
the subdivs setting will control how smooth the frosted glass looks, the higher the number the smoother it looks (but at significant cost in render times)

@stefanq said:

John, follow this link http://www.lithonia.com/photometrics.aspx and download all photometric data files.
As you can see, there are some categories for different type of applications, indoor, outdoor,commercial,
etc. Use that free viewer and browse only the category of ies files that you need. The viewer is quite fast, it renders the cone of light in a sec.
Cheers,
Stefan

thanks 😄

and about ies lights , do you ever change the power or the size of IES lights? i'm trying to adjust lights in one scene of a showroom, and they are giving a burnout kind of look. [i'll post a view of it soon]. if i lower the intensity to 100,000, the scene becomes dark, if i increase the intensity to 300,000, the scene looks like lighting of fireballs in the dark. i'm not able to get the lighting as seen in various photos like this apart from IES should a rectangular be also used? a rectangular light interferes with my abstract ceiling pattern . 😞

Eh, you are right about exploding Andy, i got carried away with one of the previous posts, what i meant is that rendering of displacement goes faster with saved IR and LC maps 😄

Welcome!
You could try adding a studio setup, like explained here:
http://nomeradona.blogspot.com/2011/10/lighting-with-vray-sketchup-definitive.html

Or you can make a room with furniture and context, etc. and light the room as you would normally.

Andy

i encountered this problem once and if i remember right, it was due to the fact only the billboard tree image on front face casted shadows, not the backface.
so try to turn your model monocrome and make sure the front face of the billboard is facing the lightsource..

http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/3762/complain2.jpg

@fuzzion said:

@john2 said:

i'm trying to create pebbles. just a jpg file and a bump map produces tiny ugly mountains in the render. can anyone help?

Over 3400 free vfsu mats. But if you use them and like the mats, pls donate. He also sells you the entire collection on a dvd
for cheap $.

http://luzindirecta.luxisessentia.com/

I used cobblestone, road1 and gravel mats found on his site. Excellent quality , no low res limitations.

[attachment=0:p5z5wutc]<!-- ia0 -->Sample_roads.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:p5z5wutc]

yeah i'm aware of it. 😄

that looks very nice. I wonder if playing with the parallel/ perpendicular slots in the fresnel settings (adding a flake map) might do the trick with adding flakes. I'm curious to see how this compares with the Chaosgroup vismats - like thomthom, this is what I've been using as a starting point.

Andy

Reverse question - is there a way to exclude 100% transparent material from the material ID render ? Say I have a texture of a tree where the foliage is opaque and an alpha channel masks what's not needed. Material ID still considers the transparent surface as a different material.

When a lot of objects are in background, selection is not optimal.

Thanks

render preview

material id preview

Thanks guys. i finally got my IES light working

did you save your file, close completely out of sketchup (no other windows of sketchup open) Then open back up and try rendering again? Sometimes the vfs cache gets corrupted and you need to close out and try again.