::sprinkles V-Ray on everything::

for reference, for anyone that comes across this post from a frustrated user, we do have support options available. I understand the frustrations of technical difficulties, and that's why we offer support for our products: http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/support.html

the upcoming patch will add the ability to find external file references that are used in imported skp files which are used a component definitions. This should help with a number of missing file reference issues.

there was some sort of compatibility issue with it at some point in 1.49.01 development, and it was left out. I believe the issue was resolved, but we didn't have time to add it for 2.0. We have essentially doubled our developer staff in the past year, so we will be adding a lot of missing features in upcoming releases.

2.0 beta is over, it's fully released. We have a material library on our website that is available for download, and although it is possible for some older vismat materials to have issues, we do have backward compatibility. Keep in mind however, that there have been a number of changes in workflow and performance, which older materials are not set up for. So in many cases, you can find a new version of the material you are looking for, that will out perform any older materials you may have or find.

we should hopefully have it in 3.0, no ETA on that release date though, we are currently working on a stability patch for 2.0.

the 1.6 beta is over, the 2.0 version has been released. Does resetting the light cache get rid of the watermark in the 2.0 demo? The 1.6 beta should be expired and always have a watermark at this point, is it still possible to get rid of the watermark by resetting your light cache now?

how much memory is being used during the render process? If you are approaching 4gb of memory usage, the crash is probably due to running out of memory. If you have a 64bit operating system, there is a workaround that will allow you to render and use more than 4gb of ram: http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/distributed_rendering.htm#settings

if you are able to send us the scene file, we could try to reproduce the issue on our end in a nightly build, where this issue has already been addressed. Alternatively, if you are interested in testing a nightly build on your machine, send me a PM.

no, the dongle is required in order to use our GUI or render.

we would like to examine the scene file and fix the issue if you are able to send it to us, but to work around the issue, you might have luck if you go to system preferences->general, and check the box for "close windows when quitting an application". This ensures that opened docs are not reopened when the app is opened.

Alternatively, we only attach or plugin to the most recently opened model, so you may have luck opening another su file by double clicking it. The problematic scene file should still load, but we won't attach to it, process it, etc. You should then be able to close it without an issue.

We have resolved some issues that would cause complex/large scenes to crash in this manner on OSX in a nightly build. If you are interested in testing your issue out in one of those builds, send me a PM.

@andybot said:

I don't believe there's any way to increase rendertimes in vray...

Hey, there's a nice quote

We are doing side by side development of VfR and VfS, so by the time you get to purchase the upgrade, you might be looking at some vast improvements over even the 2.0 version currently out there. For example, in the upcoming patch, I was able to speed up proxy creation from taking over an hour to create a proxy that has 10k faces for the preview mesh (which is absurd btw)... down to about 3 minutes... Also it appears we have squashed that nasty empty render bug as well. Hang in there, we'll make the product better while you wait

if you contact support, we can track it down

what's wrong with DR?

I would recommend contacting support@chaosgroup.com about this. The error you are seeing is letting you know that there is an invalid value of some sort... but it's impossible to tell exactly where that value is. I would assume it's something in a material setting somewhere, but there is no reference to the offending asset. We will need to examine the scene file.

can you also post a screen shot of the sketchup viewport? From the look of that render, it appears that the bump is on the horizontal surface, but not the vertical. This is the opposite of what you stated in your original description. A viewport screen shot will give us an idea of what/where materials are applied to the model.

sorry, I get a lump in my throat when I hear any sob stories about 1.49.01. It was a very difficult release, many emotions involved, and sometimes I get a bit defensive.

what happens when you enable "clamp output" in the color mapping options? http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/render_params_colormapping.htm

Don't get me wrong, I would love for everyone to be able to continue to get free updates of our product as it continues to grow. We want the SketchUp community to use our product to create images that the SketchUp developers never thought could ever come from their product. Business comes at a cost though, and we needed to charge for the changes that were made in the 2.0 release. What did we do with the money?

-We hired (and are hiring) more developers
-We no longer halt V-Ray for SketchUp development so that we can work on V-Ray for Rhino
-We hired an additional in-house artist that is helping us test our product and catch bugs before it goes out in to users hands.

We appreciate the community's support, and look forward to making V-Ray for SketchUp even better as we move forward.