@thomthom said:

@hsrhdrehre5654654 said:

Also, in my case, i need to use Artisan instead of SubD because with SubD i keep getting invisible "edges touching more than two faces" and it wont let me to subd.

Got an example model to share?

Unfortunately i dont have the model, since i started from scratch again , using Artisan. But i asure you that the cuts were pretty clean (i made sure of it) with no edges between and weird things, and still i was getting that error.

@thomthom said:

@hsrhdrehre5654654 said:

I cant find the option "Convert Connected Mesh to QuadFaces". I know there are 3 connect options, but none of em are the one im looking for. At least that option is commented in the documentation but in the plugin itself, i cant find it.

That's probably the old name of "Convert Triangulated Mesh to Quads" - looks like docs are out of date. New version is coming though.

Btw, if you plan on using Artisan for subdivision then converting to QFT quads won't have much use - as it will treat QFT quads as two triangles instead.

Oh, i see. I didnt know Artisan manages faces as triangles and not quads.. i was trying to make all my faces as quads, because as i understand, they create better geometry and honestly dealing with triangles is an odyssey. Triangles are giving me a lot of trouble to create the correct geometry. Thats the reason i wanted to just pick a plain model and make quadfaces without the need to do it manually (it could take ages). Or probably since im new to Artisan and organic modelling i dont even know what im doing lol. Maybe is there a basic tutorial about organic modelling in sketchup ?

Maybe the whole approach im taking is wrong. And i dont even know where to start with dealing with organic modelling. The tutorials i found are based on relative basic models and all of em assume that the user already created the original mesh (control mesh i think its called). Well, i need to first get there...

What im doing is, i just create a cube and is tart adding quadfaces and extruding until i get the geometry i want (more or less). Then , in the curved surfaces i want to achieve i just join the quads creating the smooth geometry i want to get. I mean, is that the correct way or i am doing it wrong?

In the past , in some of my projects, for example, if i am modelling a spaceship what i do is to create the side profile, and the top profile. Then i create the geometry from that, i extrude and i mix the two parts to get the final form. Sometimes instead of that i just use the join faces plugin (cant remember the autor) to join the side and the top (slighty inclined to get the aspect of a hull wing, for example). And other methods depending of the type of the model.

In cases where i need to almost copy a image of a model, thats the best way i found. But i cant do it dealing with organic modelling because the faces it generates are too different in size/number of faces and in the end is a chaos.

So, i imagined that the best way using quadfaces + artisan is starting with just a cube and start making faces and extruding?? the problem with that is, to achieve the form from the original image is really hard. Talking about more complex models.

So any ideas on how to even start making an organic modelling? i am doing it right?

If thats the prcedure, how can i divide the surface of the cube, lets say into visible quadfaces??

Thanks in advance and sorry for the text wall. Amazing plugin Artisan and a great one Quadfaces, if i figure out a method to apply textures without losing distorsion / size i will definetly buy it!!. But at this rate im afraid i will not have time to even test the plugin before it expires lol!!

@jql said:

@hsrhdrehre5654654 said:

Any ideas, sugesstions?? how you guys texture organic models in sketchup??

Use blendup and texture it in blender with UV unwrap.

Use Whaat's UV tools and export/import to Blender or other UV mapper.

(you're using artisan anyway and Whaat is the developer of artisan too)

But with thousands of faces (probably far more).. dont you think its going to be a chaos???? i mean unwrapping my model into blender... i remember time ago i used to do things on blender. I used a lot the uv mapping feature of blender (probably the only thing i like of that modeling app)but i remember that you need to separate the faces you want to map, and honestly in a model with thousands of faces and a lot of parts that need to be maped.. it could take me even days just to do that.

Hi, great tool, trying to figure it out since i started organic modelling just yesterday.

I cant find the option "Convert Connected Mesh to QuadFaces". I know there are 3 connect options, but none of em are the one im looking for. At least that option is commented in the documentation but in the plugin itself, i cant find it.

Im trying to convert a simple regular model to a quad faced model (to ensure all the faces are at least quad based), and that would be the option to use. Is it not implemented yet??

Recently i started learning organic modelling, and so far so good, using Artisan and trying to decide if i buy it or not. One of the reasons i still didnt decide is that im having a lot of trouble texturing in organic models, and if i am not going to figure this out, it is not worthy to buy it (since i will probably forget about modelling organic things..).

Since i have A LOT of faces, it is almost impossible to texture face by face , not only that, the textures appear distorsionated of course, this will be not a problem if the model was not so big and with so many faces. In a regular plain-model i will just paint face by face and project the textures i need. In an organic model made with quadfaces/triangles i dont see how to texture it. Im completely lost.

Is there any plugin or any trick to efficiency texture organic models? already tried thrupaint from Fredo, and even if it is a great tool, it will only work as intended on quad faces, leaving any other face without the UV projection. And since in a organic model is basically impossible to keep all the faces as quads, i really dunno how to do it.

Any ideas, sugesstions?? how you guys texture organic models in sketchup??

Thanks in advance.

P.D.: I was going to post a screenshot, but i started from the beginning again and right now i dont have any screenshots. But i think everybody knows what im talking about ...

Also, in my case, i need to use Artisan instead of SubD because with SubD i keep getting invisible "edges touching more than two faces" and it wont let me to subd.

With Artisan, smooth as hell. So i will say that Artisan is more flexible when dealing with geometry. I just needed to discard subd because it was making me to waste even more time, instead of the opposite..

Well, since it seems that nobody is able to give me advise.. so i wasted several hours and watched 4 tutorials (until if found one that gave me some clues..) to find a solution.

The "trick" (just in case someone want to know) is to lower the color saturation of the parallel reflection until that effect dissapear. At least thats the only thing i could find to fix it. In the end, i dont get the reflections i would want in some areas (i really dont get vray lol, why is evrything so hard.. xD) but i prefer that instead seeing white dots without reason or "painted" areas with white for no reason.

So, in the end didnt get anything clear. I just removed almost completely the hilight on those materials, and lowered the fresnel reflection to 1,55. I think i will never be able to fix it so.. If i use higher values than that, everything goes to hell (go figure).

Now i have a similar problem

Cant get reflections to show up as they should. The only thing i get is a line of crispy irregular renders around the supossed reflection ->

I dont understand why this is happening. I even used reflection 1.0 (full) and nothing changed. Used no bitmaps, not hilight and still happening. Ideas?? Btw, yes, im using a fairly high number of subdvs.

Hi guys. I have a problem i never figured it out. A few days ago i decided to experiment with reflections/highlights to try to make renders with more reflections and realistic results. Well it doesnt matter what i do, i cant resolve this ->

I tried everything already.

These are the values of the material options ->

GENERAL - Reflection -Fresnel IOR 6 Refract IOR 1,55
GLOSSINESS - Hilight -> 0,96 Reflect -> 0,45 Shader Type -> Blinn Subdv -> 45

I am using Environmental settings without the background, and the sun as primary source of light.

Im also using the physical camera.

The Hilight should be even stronger, but already with this small value things go really bad, i cant imagine how it would be with stronger values..

All the materials involved in this "problem" have the same characteristics (it doesnt matter anyways nothing seems to work).

The material has no bumpmaps (i removed em since i thought that was the problem, but it wasnt).

I tried to change the shader type, adding more suvd (i even tried with values of 100 and something like that...), nothing seems to work. And i am totally lost.

Thanks in advance.

Using VFS 2

So, nobody encountered this?? or nobody knows anything about it??

Hi, well, my doubt now is that rendering a model, in some materials the vray info window is showing me the message "material produced overbright or invalid color..".

What this means exactly?? are the reflections / highlihts not being rendered correctly? how to fix it?

I dont see any noticeable problem in the model after the render, but im not sure if some materials are rendering correctly because of that message.

@tedvitale_cg said:

@hsrhdrehre5654654 said:

But still i dont get why vray is so problematic dealing with these surfaces. Hell, not even a 640x480 render can be done.

You're using the demo. I've done the best I can to teach you how to make your rendering look the way you want it. Good luck in your efforts.

No , im not.

And i thank you for your help, but again, the main problem is the time it takes. Of course you understand, i am not willing to wait days to render just that.. (nor i have the time, nor im willing to).

@peerman said:

Hi, I took a quick look at your model. One thing I noticed is that the model has a couple of problems. There are open faces so it's not a solid model. And there are also some extra faces inside the lamp. These two can give problems when rendering transparency/refraction. I will try to clean up the model and post back the results here.
So just don't give up V-Ray yet

Regards,

I checked a million times, there are no open faces in the model as far as i know. Maybe they were just hidden (i do that all the time when modifying the model). But that should not be a problem anyways. As i said, i tried to do another test building just 3 half transparent cylinders and i had the exact same problem. In the moment vray finds a translucent surface, it gets stuck or it takes hours and hours to just render 2 inches of the screen. Of course if i change the options to test valus the process is faster, but that will not serve me as test since it will not show me the real aspect of the final model. Anyways, im just tired lol, i wasted about 1 month trying to figure this out and i am really out. I will never understand why vray gets stuck rendering translucent materials.

I just parked for now the zpm model because i cant get realistic results similar to the image. But specially because i cant make proper render tests, since the render time gets crazy no matter the settings i use. I tried to see over your example materials TedVitale but it is the same. Cant get em to work on my model. Using refraction layers the results is worst than using trnslucent materials but using translucent materials it takes ages to render.. so.. im out of luck. Anyway, thanks for the help. I will need to try to squeeze kerkythea to see if i can get it done in any way.

I cant download anything from the chaosgroup page. When i click on "express" nothing happens.

About the tutorials, thanks, but i already saw three or four of em.., thats not the problem. I know how to build a glass, the problem i have is specifici of this model. Using refraction layers, the colors must be vivid, and plain (meaning just orange, red or watver, not shades..)to assemble the translucency effect of the original image. And using fog, i cant achieve that. At least what i tried. Of course im not expert, and im probably doing something wrong, but im almost sure that i am not missing anything.

Tried your model but i cant notice any translucency in the model for some reason. So it really doesnt help me much. It is the bottle supossed to be translucent?? i didnt notice that you are using transparency in the materials. Why are you using a BDdrf material anyways??

Thanks anyways for trying to help, vray is really tedious working with translucency. I know that translucency must be calculated, but other rendering engines dont have such problems. Go figure. Of course i only tried with free ones, like kerkythea or a couple more, but those actually can treat the translucency faster. The problem is, i was not convinced with the results, i always loved vray due to the realistic touch and great finish it puts on all renders. But still i dont get why vray is so problematic dealing with these surfaces. Hell, not even a 640x480 render can be done. lol.

And one thing i still dont get it. If i deactivate lights, shadows and so on, the render time is still the same. So, what is vray calculating in there???? as i said, i also tried removing the vray lights with the same result. Honestlly i think something else is going on, because it really surprises me that a single translucent surface with no shadows, lights, or anything "extra" cant be rendered really fast. The only thing vray must render is the object through the surface. But with no shadows, lights or other things. Why vray still cant do it in a decent speed???...

@tedvitale_cg said:

@hsrhdrehre5654654 said:

But still i cant understand why we cant use high density translucent materials in vray. That will be the exact way to simulate the effect of the image.

You're confusing transparency and translucency. They are calculated very differently. Translucency, when done correctly, is far faster than transparency.

Probably is the case. But the only thing i was trying to achieve is to get a slighty transparent material, for example when you move the transparency bar from the sketchup material to 75. As simply as that. When a material stops being transparent, it becomes translucent, or i am missing something? (at least in my country translucency means that...). As far as i noticed, for vray, a material is transparent or it isnt. There is no middle ground...

Also as i said i tried using transparent materials with a refraction layer and the result was almost the same. Long render times and a final result far worst than just using transparent materials because the exact colors of the image were impossible to achieve. But the problem is by now im totally lost xD. I tried so many combinations (in the end just because of frustration without even knowing what i was doing..) that i dont think its possible..

Already tried to sketch another model, this time just 3 tubes straight up to simulate the shape of the image, i mean, the most simple shape possible... Placed the transparent material on em (from sketchup, not from the material editor of vr), and almost the same result lol.

Anyways, im downloading your attached file and i will look into it, and i hope to learn something. Thanks.

@peerman said:

Could you share the model? I'm happy to have a look at it if you want.

Regards,

Yup. I gave up, the final render, even if it is closer to the model, its far from being similar.. lol. Cant find a way in vray to render structures like this lol, just because it wont let the model to have transparencies closer to opaque. Heres the model, see if you can do something with it... the main problem is, doing tests is a pain in the ass, because it will take a lot of time no matter what settings you use... sigh.

ZPM.skp

You guys are forgetting the main problem. The render time.

Giving the model more thickness will only increase the rendering time, and that is the main issue im having with this model. Not to mention the inmense work that it is to do that, now that the model is composed. I could do that in the beginning.. but now... impossible. Unless there is a kindy plugin to do something like that..

About achieving the effect of the image, it is possible, i already aproximated a littleh using just ranslucent materials and a smooth light ambient (to make the translucent traisition more opaque), but the problem is still the render time. I still cant get a full rendered image because it takes almost 2 days!! (or more probably) to render it!!.. wtf.

But still i cant understand why we cant use high density translucent materials in vray. That will be the exact way to simulate the effect of the image.

I checked all the models faces/edges to see if something was causing the render to get stuck without success. I used a clean plugin to remove everything the model dont need just in case. Sometimes, rendering the model from another camera speeds up the process, but its almost not noticeable.

The problem with the refraction layer is that i am using very similar colors and the refraction layer is too sensitive to color changes making impossible to achieve those exact ones i want to use.

And i keep wondering, nobody did something like this, ever?? i guess nobody uses rough translucent materials in vray?

Tried to do what you said, and i can get some colors ok, but others are impossible. From a slighty dark orange i get a totally opaque brown, and others seem to lose the translucency for some reason. In the end, its worst than my first option (probably because i dont have a clue about using refraction materials to this purpose). I think im doing something wrong but it played with almot every single option on the refraction layer without success.

Trying again to get a 75% transparent material but vray cant handle it. I think thats the only solution, or just find another rendering app at this rate.

@valerostudio said:

What do you mean when you say you are using SketchUp version 2? I assume you are on 2015 64 bit SketchUp?

You will want to make the material 100% transparent, add a refraction layer with glossiness set to something like .85 and then add Fog color to create the color of the material.

http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY2SKETCHUP/V-Ray+Material#V-RayMaterial-Refraction

Yup, sketchup 2015 xD, dunno why i wrote "2" (probably i was thinking on the vray version).

Thanks for the tip, i will try to do what you sugessted. But i think using a complete transparent material will not make the same effect as the image. Also, why i cant use transparencies of 25%, for example, in vray??? the perfect method to simulate the image will be to reduce the transparency effect.. but its not possible if i use vray to render.