Rayscaper New Releases

[pixelcruncher]

Hey, Rayscaper users!

Rayscaper 1.0.2 is available. You can get it via:

• The SketchUcation store.
• Direct download: Rayscaper_Win_1.0.2.rbz.

I recommend upgrading to the latest version.

Glass Presets

The Glass material now has presets for the kinds of glass you model most: Clear, Window Pane, Lightly Frosted, Frosted, Crystal, Acrylic, Water, Diamond and Anti-Reflective. Pick one and Rayscaper sets the index of refraction, the roughness and Thin for you, and keeps your color. Window Pane is for windows modelled as a single face, Frosted for shower screens and privacy glass, Crystal for wine glasses. See Glass Material.

Viewport Background

Post Processing has a new Viewport Background section: pick a photo (PNG or JPEG) and Rayscaper shows it behind a transparent render, so you can see your design on the site photo or a backplate while you work. It's only shown in the viewport, so the renders you save stay transparent for your own compositing, and changing it doesn't restart the render. Turn on Transparent in the Environment section to see it, the section offers a button for that, and Match Render to Image when the photo has a different aspect ratio than your render. See Post Processing.

What Changed?

• Add presets to the Glass material: Clear, Window Pane, Lightly Frosted, Frosted, Crystal, Acrylic, Water, Diamond and Anti-Reflective. A preset sets the IOR, roughness and Thin, and keeps your color.
• Add a Viewport Background to Post Processing: show a photo behind a transparent render to see it composited over a backplate. It's only shown in the viewport, so saved renders stay transparent.
• Fix the GPU denoiser running out of memory, and renders failing, on PCs with two NVIDIA GPUs.

Full release notes: rayscaper.com/manual/release-notes

Help Me Build the Community

If you like Rayscaper, please share your renders (final or work-in-progress, it doesn't matter)! This is motivating and helps me showcase its capabilities to new users.

Follow me on X.

Happy Rendering!
Thomas

[Alattab]

an example

[Alattab]

@pixelcruncher SUPER

[pixelcruncher]

@Alattab Thanks for the example. I'm still not sure what you're missing, because Rayscaper already does some of these things in the settings of an image texture:

• Place as a box: set Mapping to Tri-Planar under Texture Projection. It projects the image from three sides and ignores the UVs from SketchUp, so it works well on imported models without good UVs.
• Turn the texture, scale, move: the Transformation settings (Scale, Translation, Rotation) of every image texture.
• All images of a material at once: the Texture Mapping… button at the top of the material editor moves the color, roughness and normal maps together.

They're all explained here: https://rayscaper.com/manual/textures/#texture-projection-uv-or-tri-planar

Would you like more mapping types there, for example cylinder or sphere mapping, or one picture fitted to each face? Or do you mean a menu in SketchUp itself that changes the SketchUp UVs, like the extension in your screenshot? Those are two different features, so it helps me to know which one you'd use..

[Alattab]

@pixelcruncher Yes, as you mentioned, we need to be able to edit the texture within the SketchUp viewport ; I would also like to see various options added for how the texture is projected .

[Krass]

are you talking about texture mapping?

[Krass]

all this features are available with free plugin SketchUv. And best : Thrupaint by Fredo6

[Alattab]

I think it's a good idea to have the Tracking SketchUp Sun box be able to check out the Rayscaper view window without resorting to it.

[Alattab]

it is good to add color picker to pick color from render screen

[sashapepperspray]

any idea when you are going to add section plane support? it is the only feature I need that you don't have yet. (The only thing I miss from twilight render).

[majid]

@pixelcruncher To my experience, cube mapping aka box mapping, may solve the majority of architectural texturing. What may make it easier and more intuitive, and may speed up the texture mapping, could be a "virtual" box that sets the origin of the texture and its dimensions are the same as the texture tile. Rotating, scaling, and moving it may change the material's origin, rotation and scale.
This virtual cube (maybe just a grayish wireframe box) could work similarly with procedural textures as well. This way the Tri-Planar would be an internal job.

[Krass]

@majid
But that is exactly what has been available in Rayscaper for several versions now—triplanar mapping. Or am I mistaken, and you’re referring to something else?

[majid]

Yes it is there yet could be more intuitive (IMO) maybe like what happens in 3Ds Max mapping modifier (UVW map Modifier)

[Krass]

It was nice having Animator with Rayscaper, but the plugin behaves so strangely that I’m getting fed up. I’ve wasted so much time and haven’t managed to achieve anything. Nothing but unpleasant surprises—it’s completely illogical.
Perhaps if I get some help on the thread dedicated to it...
And yet, I had intended to use it quite seriously.

[Rich O Brien]

@Krass said:

behaves so strangely

Can you share a file that reproduces the error? That would be helpful for Fredo

When dealing with many objects and nested objects in a scene it is easy to 'wrong-pick'

I watched your video but it's not clear to me what it was you were highlighting.