REQ: For VRAY users, Material Grabber ===>

[silver_shadow]

Hi there, i want to know if its possible, to make me a rubie like get bump. See Vray works like this, if i set up my materials on one machine, and go home, i need to re apply all the bumps because its now not linked anymore to my works server.

Now here is what id like.
A command that says get material, that will grab all the textures linked all over the place, even bumps and displacement maps, and then a button dump material )like the silvershadows export all materials ( and save it to a file.

See i can make it work, by just copying the file, take it home and use my silvershadow export materials and it will work perfect, but its missing the bump files.
So i just thought it would be great to have a tool that can grab all linked materials and dump it in one lacation

[thomthom]

That would be useful.

However, there's a snag. The V-Ray data is not easily available. They've stored all properties into one attribute in binary format.

I've been looking at this, while I making tools to VfSU, and the only data I've so far been able to reliably read is the data of the light objects. The materials is where I got stuck last time, because the structure of the data changes greatly depending on the settings for it.

However, I've been planning to contact ASGVis with some ideas for VfSU v2 and how I, as a scripter, would like to be able to interact with it. At the same time I was going to ask if they'd give me some insight to their data structure.

If they give that info I should be able to make something like this. But if not, it'll be a whole lot harder. I'm not sure the idea of going back to the hex editor and analyse more binary data appeals to me...

[silver_shadow]

Thanx, now you have a challenge lol
I mean, this program is all cool, but it sometimes is a drag re mapping materials ect when you move fro mone computer to another. This plugin coud be really useful. Anyone got a better idea how to go, feel free to speak. I love what Vue again do, when you save, there is a tick ,icorporate textures. That makes the file bigger, but stores all the data in the file. If you look again at sketchups structure, in a way...does sketchup store its textures on the model. It would be great if vray and su communicate better, when you move from pc to pc.

[thomthom]

I made a request at ASGVis that the texture paths where relative if they where located under a sub folder of the SU model. Also a package function which would sort out transferring to other computers. it's a pain, yes.

The only thing I can think of, is to make sure you keep your files in exact same location across computers. (If possible that is. I can't for instance take models from work home to work on them because the textures are located on a network drive...)