ah.. ok.. i quick googled it and found the "official reseller" edit: removed the pirate torrent link (sure.. i didn't want to promote it, just kidding.. anyway..)

If you are loading a vispot from the internet, I would say thats the culprit. You should stay away from these things because some are from the older 1.05.30 version and there are lots of changes between the 2 versions and will cause errors.

@vizfellas said: Try this Make modeling in mm scale. When you add light in VRAY option increase power to 1000 of the IES file. OMG! Thanks so much for this info, it was such a simple fix, my IES lights are showing now. Thanks!

FIXED! I guess I deleted the plant while batch render was in progress. I just had to stop the rendering process, delete it again, purge unused materials, save and close. When I re-opened the model and did a test render, the plant was gone... hopefully forever. Thanks anyway... hope this can still be helpful for someone Thanks, Ed

@jonedvard said: oh and regarding the spheres. my approach would be to increase the number of segments when creating your sphere - providing a smoother surface. an arc with about 48 segments is what i generally use for a fairly adequate smooth surface. hope that helps! It's called the "terminator" problem @ATLAStudio - good info, thanks! For me, I just keep re-loading a working water vismat, so I didn't remember off-hand which setting it was...

That most likely can be fixed by changing your irradiance map settings. There's an option to "Check sample visibility" that you can enable. You can also increase your "Max rate" to -1 or 0. Lastly, you can increase your HSph. Subdivs to 70 or 90 - which helps with splotchy shadow areas. Worst comes to worst, you can enable Detail Enhancement, but that means longer render times.

Have you tried the Advanced Camera Plugin. See here It might be of use to you. Rob

thanks guys. i'll look into it. now i know what the subdivide tool functions as. all this new terminology by way of v-ray! i did acquire sketchuv recently - and really need to sort & figure out it's features. all the best!

Yep- thats the trick. Right now, its the only way other than figuring out what numbers to use for tiling the bitmap in the parameters. You can do it that way, but the method above will allow you to see the map in SketchUp.

the vismat format is very limiting in that it doesn't allow you to use the thousands of materials for VRay Max. The other downside is that with each new release of V4SU they make significant changes to the material setups so importing an older material might cause issues.

so interesting - with regards to the faces. i've developed a bad habit of painting both sides, which i think was the case with this particular model. that should stop - as in this example, which i'm uncertain and now riddled with a problem.. and it didn't occur to me that the increased intensity was the issue. i just assumed there would be some basic illuminations from the get-go. i'll toggle the model later today will post the results. thanks!

There's also this thread that could help! http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=20999

Ok so for everyone having the same problem, This is my solution. Forget the hdri in the envrionment slot ans make a huge circle around your model, apply the texture on it and uncheck the "Cast Shadows" option in your material. That's it. Will work when the HDRI don't work for i know what reason.

Yes i have to.

@valerostudio said: Sunlight is controlled by GI. Here are some recommendations to help you on your learning path. I wouldn't use this file or the tutorials that go along with it. It's from an older version of VRay and if you are using 1.49.01 these tutorials, although helpful, are outdated. Go to the Chaos YouTube page and watch all of the videos for VR4SU. These are very informative. The link is in the stickies of these forums. Review the VR4SU manual http://www.vray.com/vray_for_sketchup/manual/ Thank you very much, very good recommendations, now I feel I`m going to improve my learning process.

it is actually a challenge...but the only thing that Lumion is missing are the ''correct reflections....what i am trying to combine is Lumion's materials, water, tress and 3d sky with the reflections rendered in Vray so the rendering will complete one another....it's a huge challenge i know, but maybe someone can figure it out

@valerostudio said: The most powerful rendering engine is NOT V-Ray, it's Photoshop! Kind of agree with Valero statement here.. regards, vd

I see what you're saying, I would only tend to adjust individual textured surfaces after painting everything depending on what sort of final export/output needed, never had any bugs using this method, must be luck!

in the upcoming beta, you will have the ability to just right click on the light group and convert it to a component. So that will make this a little easier to do in the future. A light list would be helpful though, I can understand that request.