I've looked through the plugins forum and can't find it: is there a plugin that combines materials? I import a lot of models (I like to save out components and work on them in a separate instance of SU) and I often get duplicate materials: "Blue glass", "Blue glass1", "Blue glass2"...

The Global Material Changer plugin works for me when I'm paying attention, but not when I'm working on a model with multiple people who don't care. Even just a juiced-up version of Global Material changer would work: I'd love to be able to choose two or more materials as the "OLD Materials to Replace" and then select the NEW Material to Add. How difficult would this be? (I don't Ruby Script...)

I just installed FredoScale and Joint Push Pull and suddenly it takes FOREVER to open my models. Has anybody experienced this? SU v7.1. Does anybody have suggestions for how to troubleshoot it?

I use ipowerweb.com for hosting my website and email. The service is very good, complete, and the few times I've needed tech support, they have been very helpful. I can't say I know how to do what you're asking, but I think honoluludesktop's advice is good if you don't want to do it yourself.

I apologize if these are silly questions, but I don't even know where to look to figure these out.

IT just gave me a new computer, so I have a new installation of Vray for SketchUp 7.1. First, I assume it is a newer version of Vray because the icons look different and I can't find the version number. So that's my first question: how do I find my Vray version number? Nevermind, I just found it: 1.48.89, the newest version.

Second, I hit render on a simple scene of three objects and it worked great. Then I opened a model I'm working on, hit render, the status bar says processing... and then nothing! After a few seconds, I can navigate my model, the frame buffer never opened, no rendering, nothing! The model is relatively simple--a few floor plates, some glass walls, an a couple escalator components (that I built from scratch... everything is from scratch). I haven't applied many materials, one with a texture (png, 800px x 800px).

Any suggestions?

I searched the forum and found a few posts discussing overlapping faces. I've been encountering this only recently (SU v7.1) in only one of my models. Almost EVERY time I subdivide a face by drawing a line, it creates 2 or more overlapping faces. It's easy enough to see when it happens. It's relatively easy to fix. It's definitely annoying and it's definitely killing my efficiency.

I see that the Cleanup plugin has a delete duplicate faces, but I don't want to clean up a problem I shouldn't be having. Does anybody have any suggestions?

I agree with David_H: add a sky with some clouds and reflection in the windows. I'd also make the road asphalt much lighter. Older roads are always sun bleached. You also could add some noise to it to give it a little more texture. More people and a few more cars would liven it up some more, too.

Finally, I'd lighten up the whole image. It might not be as true to the setting, but representation is not always true to life, right?

I created a bitmap texture from a photo in Photoshop. Every time I try to render (or even preview render in the Vray material editor) SketchUp crashes. I've seen this complaint before and I tried searching for the solution, but no luck. Anybody know what makes some images cause Vray and SketchUp to crash?

So I finally got my model to render. I deleted all the materials and added them back one by one. One with a texture image caused it to crash. And applying a material to the big group really did slow down the pre-render Vray processing even though I have v1.48

But now I have a different problem if you'll see the image below. I can't show the whole image, but the white spots are pervasive. Here are the Vray settings (everything elsse is as it is default):
Camera: physical camera on
Output: 1024x703
Environment:
GI with physical sky and light set to Default (no lights added)
Background same as GI
Image Sampler: Adaptive Subdivs, -2 min, 1 max
Indirect Illumination:
Primary Engine = Irradiance Map
Secondary Engine = Light Cache
Irradiance Map:
-4 min, -1 max
Light Cache:
Subdivs = 1000, Sample Size = 0.01, Adaptive checked

Any suggestions?

So I'm told that I have VfSU version 1.48 by IT. (In SketchUp in the Vray Options > About, it says 1.05... is that the Vray render engine?) So it's probably not the materials applied to groups/components. Any other suggestions? I've been cleaning up my model incrementally and I still can't get it to render (left for lunch, came back, still processing). What else could it be?

The model isn't so big: 14MB model, 2.16m edges, 71k faces, 1.8k component instances, 988 groups, 166 component defns, 10 layers, 24 materials (half have bitmaps in the form of jpgs and pngs).

My system is OK:

• Windows XP 32-bit, DirectX 9.0
• Dell Precision T3400, Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM
• NVidia Quadro FX 570 (CUDA 16)

I replaced the motherboard and CPU myself. This is the second machine I've built, but the first time I've installed the CPU myself. The heatsink and fan came with the processor, so I'm confident they're OK. I guess I'll get it checked out and make sure the connection is good. Thanks for all the help thomthom. I'll let you know how it turns out.

So I've installed SpeedFan and here are the "base" settings with only it and my browser (and any background services) running:

(flame) GPU: 57C
(check) Temp1: 46C
(flame) Temp2: 55C
(blue dw arrow) Temp3: -2C
(blue dw arrow) Temp: 0C
(flame) HD1: 64C
(check) HD0: 42C
(flame) Core 0: 60C
(flame) Core 1: 59C

When I load SketchUp, a few temps up, including Core 0 and Core 1 to 70C and settle back to 63C and 61C.

When I start Twilight, for example, just to do a "Low" rendering, the Core temps jump up to 100C! The Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 specifications list max at 71.4. My CPU usage is only at ~26%, so I'm going to guess that overheating is the problem. Does that sound like a reasonable conclusion? Fan 2 and Fan 5 are at 0 RPMs, but I know I don't have 5 fans. I'll have to take a look to see how many I do have. Any suggestions for cooling down my machine?

I've worked with Vray for Rhino before, but am now using it with SketchUp. The problem I'm encountering is that when I hit render, the status bar reads "V-Ray is currently processing your scene, please wait..." and this processing takes much longer than the actual rendering. I'm just trying to get some small, 640x480 test renders. The file is relatively small, less than 5MB and about 50,000 faces. Any thoughts? Is this common for VRfSU? Are there ways to optimize this?

Thanks for all the suggestions. It's pretty isolated to rendering, so I don't think reformatting my hard drive would necessarily help, but that might be a last resort.

thomthom, I'll check out the CPU temp and run a memory test as a start. I'll let you know what I find.

The most recent attempt was with Thea, Unbiased T1, only 800x600px.

My SketchUp model statistics read:
17234 edges
52802 faces
5416 component instances
36 materials

Not a crazy model.

Whenever I render an image (Vray, Thea, Kerkythea...), my computer crashes; it completely shuts down. It has something to do with the complexity/resolution of the model/scene and therefore probably memory. I can render simple models/scenes or very low resolution of more complex models. I don't think it is SketchUp related, since Thea and Kerkythea are studios and because it also happens when I render with Vray for Rhino.

Anybody have any guesses or suggestions for how to figure out the cause?

Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 4GB RAM, WinXP SP3, NVidia GeForce 7800GT 256MB.

First, does VRay support SketchUp section cuts? I'm thinking not, since my SU is frozen trying to render one.

Second, how do people render section cuts? Do you physically cut your model? That's distructive and time-consuming with a very complex model. Any other ways?

Thanks.

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to bring it back... I work on a team and our models get messy. We work on individual pieces, then reload the component in a base model. Even if materials are named the same thing, we get duplicates. After awhile, nobody knows what is what.

The GlobalMaterialChange script works well to a certain point, but with our heavy model, doing a single swap can take 5 minutes. With over 70 materials, that's half a day's work. Anybody have a way to do this in batches? We could just delete all the materials and start again, but that's not a viable, reusable solution.

Any thoughts?

I searched and found one brief mention of using the animation export to batch export 2D images. So my question is this:

How do I make sure to get one image per scene? I'm using the largest export size, 4096 pixels wide, and using PNG format. In the export options, the frame rate is grayed out. Does that mean I won't get interpolated frames?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

lewiswadsworth,

Thank you so much for your response. I am giving the Rhino to SketchUp exporter right now. Hopefully that will solve my problem. I don't actually want any of the textures/materials from the Rhino model. I wouldn't mind it all just going to default.

For future models, I'll keep your tips for materials in mind and I'll start using the ExtractRenderMesh command as well! I bet that will make life easier.

I'm trying to transfer a model from Rhino to SketchUp for graphics reasons. I'm exporting from Rhino as a 3ds. When I import into SketchUp, it starts fine, but then starts parsing materials... and there are thousands of them, one for each surface, I think!

Does anybody have a solution or a work-around?! Please help, I need to finish this today and this is only the first of two models.

Thanks.