V-ray .mat vs .vismat?

jonedvard

i recently stumbled across http://www.vray-materials.de/ and discovered a slew of amazing materials.

i gave it a shot and downloaded a grass texture. however, v-ray via SKP did not recognize. i took notice of the extensions. v-ray for SKP ext. is (.vismat) whereas the material downloaded from the site had the ext. (.mat)

are these still usable? i would imagine so - i'm just missing an obvious queue, i think.

jon

reymond

+1

andybot

sorry - not compatible... One day vray will use vismat for all flavors of vray, but not yet. You can use the maps if you have them and re-create the texture in vfsu, but you can't directly use the 3dstudio material.

jonedvard

argh! i was afraid of that. oh well..

thanks.

jonedvard

so - as far as recreating the texture via vfsu. how does one go about doing that?

can you edit the .mat file directly?

andybot

@jonedvard said:

so - as far as recreating the texture via vfsu. how does one go about doing that?

can you edit the .mat file directly?

no, the mat file is only edited in 3dstudio.

valerostudio

If you don't have access MAX to open the .mat and see how its setup, I would say that you are going to have to make it from scratch. Most of the time the materials from this site will have maps that come along with the download. You will have a diffuse, maybe a bump and specular map. Take those and try to replicate it the sample. It might take a few minutes depending on your experience, but then you have it for your library.

I recommend using the test ball that is on Nomer's site that we came up for testing materials. Also, there are some great materials on here.

SketchUpVrayMaterials

This blog is all about SketchUp VRAY Materials or Vismats.

(sketchupvraymaterials.blogspot.com)

jonedvard

indeed! i guess this is a good opportunity to gain some experience in editing materials.

and thank you for the link - would be great to see this site grow!

valerostudio

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.