@unknownuser said: Krisu, MAT files are for MAX Vray. There is a converter but you will need 3DMAX to convert those files and it is really not a smooth process. Your best bet is to use .vismat files that are made for Vray for Sketchup. There are many available in the downloads section at the Vray site. Your can also download the material editor and make your own which is truly the best option. This way you have full control over the materials you are using not to mention they will be custom materials that you created so your renders will have that custom look. Good luck. Scott Thanks for the info. I am a bit unsure about purchasing Vray as there are free renderers out there like indigo (too slow on my duo core lappy) now... It is a lot of money and I am right now a student so I can't afford it. I bought a license for Podium but don't really like it as much as Vray that I used from my office. What am I supposed to do? There isn't a Educational copy of Vray for SU is there?

Well, at first I'm creating the city to be used in Google Earth. And it's all done using Sketchup. But at a later date, I'm eventually going to use the assets in a game engine. But that's pretty far ahead in time. During the work with Sketchup and Google Earth, some buildings will probably be repeated. But just a few since this is city that's evolved from scratch about a thousand years ago. Meaning that the buildings aren't even mathematical correct at all. So I thought I'd use a smart way of texturing to save memory and thus, increasing performance that way. That's why I'm tiling as many textures as possible. The models will be quite simplified and won't have a high polycount at all. At a later date, I'm going to take pictures of the buildings and use CrazyBump to create the bump-maps etc. I've already done some testing on this and the results is very nice indeed!

I don't use other 3d apps too much, so if there is way to clean up SU models, that could be cool. But I think its a common problem where one program that works one way will always export a little bit less than perfect to another program. CAD to SU is another example. It works, but it takes some cleanup in CAD and SU. There are definitely examples of people doing very high poly stuff in SU, then texturing it in SU (I think) and exporting it succesfully to a renderer and getting inredible results. So I wouldn't call it completely useless. But I think it does get a little bit clunky, because of the way faces are turned into triangulated geometry. But for sure there are people who know a lot more aboutt he technical details of this than I do.... Chris