To keep everyone updated I got 2 replies when i contacted chaos group.

"Hello Peter,

We do have an error log now in our latest release, which is located in the ASGvis folder, maybe it can shed some light on these issues. The ASGvis folder changes location according to the OS you use:

XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ASGVIS\VfS\vfs_stderr.txt

Vista and Win7:

C:\ProgramData\ASGVIS\VfS\vfs_stderr.txt

OS X:

/Applications/ASGVIS/VfS/vfs_stderr.txt

The error log is wiped every time you open SketchUp, and it won't be fully written out unless SketchUp is completely closed. So as soon as you see a problem of some sort, close SketchUp, and then open the error log file to see what it says. If there's an issue with materials being mismatched or something along those lines, you should see some sort of message about that particular asset in the error log. The most common things we see causing errors are corrupt materials, textures, or components. If you have any Unicode characters in the file paths this will sometimes cause an error too.

We are working on a patch to correct the Unicode issues but for now you can get around it by storing textures, materials, etc in a root folder using only English characters.

The latest version of our software comes along with a few tools to help you if a particular scene (especially older scenes) doesn't render correctly. They can be found in the Plugins->V-Ray for SketchUp->Help->Debugging menu. They are as follows:

Regenerate all V-Ray Materials - This tool will delete any material information that is currently stored in the V-Ray Material Editor. Then it will iterate through the SketchUp scene, treating it as if it never had any V-Ray material data in it before, and it will create a V-Ray material for every SketchUp material. The newly generate material will only have a Diffuse layer. This tool is useful if your scene's materials are preventing you from rendering, and the Force Sync tool doesn't do the job. Keep in mind that while using this tool, any materials you have set up are going to be completely destroyed, so it might be a good idea to back up the scene prior to running this tool. In addition, if this tool allows you to successfully render the scene, then you know that the issue was a material in your scene. So you can just load your old backup scene, save all of your materials, run the tool, and then import that materials back in to your scene. If after importing one of the materials, you notice that the scene fails to render, then you found your problem. If after importing all of the materials back in to the scene, it still renders fine, then there was probably just some data corruption that was floating around from an old version.

Force Sync for All Materials - This tool will iterate over all of the materials in the SketchUp material editor, and then all of the materials in the V-Ray material editor. The two lists of materials are compared, and if either the SketchUp or the V-Ray material editor is missing a material that the other editor has, a new material is created to correspond with the missing material. This tool should not be destructive.

Clear Texture Cache Folder - Every time you open SketchUp, the directory we write textures gets cleaned out. Occasionally, it helps to have that folder wiped during a SketchUp session. This is usually something that isn't going to help unless you're about knee deep in code though, so I don't recommend using it unless directed. If you use this option make sure that you are using a New/Blank scene.

Please send us your error log so that we can look further into your issue.

Thank you,

Chaos Group USA"

AND

"Hello Peter,

A member of our support team has replied to your support request:

Hello Peter,

With Devin and Ted already helping you there is not too much I can add but I do have one trick to share.

SketchUp is always a 32 bit program even on a 64 bit machine. All 32 bit programs have a RAM limitation and as a result can crash when 4 or more GB of memory is required. To get around this limitation we have added a 64 bit V-Ray DR process that you can offload all of the work to.

If you are using a 32 bit machine crashes at large resolutions or with large or complex scene files would be normal and I'm afraid nothing can be done to fix that.

Please try these steps if you are using a 64 bit computer.

1. Open the V-Ray options.
2. Click System
3. Check "On" and "Don't use local machine" under Distributed rendering.
4. Press the "..." under Hosts.
5. In the Window that appears press "Add server"
6. Enter 127.0.0.1. Press OK.
7. Ok on the Distributed Rendering Settings window to close it as well.
8. In the options menu under "Output" Check "Save output" and "Render to VRImage"
9. Under "Output file" beneath this click on the "..." and choose a location to save the file.
10. Attempt to render.

It's not perfect and sometimes you'll have to trim the scene down where you can or split large structures into multiple files on top of the above but it can be very helpful. Unfortunately we have to work within the framework we have and not every scene that can be built can be rendered.

Thank you,
Chaos Group USA

We hope this has answered your questions. If not, please just reply to this email.

Thank you,

#TICKET THREAD#

Date: Tue, May 13 2014 12:55pm
From: Keith Thompson
To: phm@timep.com.au

Hello Peter,

With Devin and Ted already helping you there is not too much I can add but I do have one trick to share.

SketchUp is always a 32 bit program even on a 64 bit machine. All 32 bit programs have a RAM limitation and as a result can crash when 4 or more GB of memory is required. To get around this limitation we have added a 64 bit V-Ray DR process that you can offload all of the work to.

If you are using a 32 bit machine crashes at large resolutions or with large or complex scene files would be normal and I'm afraid nothing can be done to fix that.

Please try these steps if you are using a 64 bit computer.

1. Open the V-Ray options.

2. Click System

3. Check "On" and "Don't use local machine" under Distributed rendering.

4. Press the "..." under Hosts.

5. In the Window that appears press "Add server"

6. Enter 127.0.0.1. Press OK.

7. Ok on the Distributed Rendering Settings window to close it as well.

8. In the options menu under "Output" Check "Save output" and "Render to VRImage"

9. Under "Output file" beneath this click on the "..." and choose a location to save the file.

10. Attempt to render.

It's not perfect and sometimes you'll have to trim the scene down where you can or split large structures into multiple files on top of the above but it can be very helpful. Unfortunately we have to work within the framework we have and not every scene that can be built can be rendered.

Thank you,

Chaos Group USA"

update on the batch render problem. reducing the render image size seems to reduce the chance of this happening although as I progress into more complex scenes (construction stages) it will not get past one with out stopping.

To add to the batch render problem mine seems to go on a rampage after unless I restart sketchup. If I untick include in animation for the scenes that were rendered then start a new batch render it either names them with strange names or if try to just normal render continues to render through the scenes with out saving the rendered image. looks like I wont be sitting back and sipping that tea after all back to baby sitting

45 scenes to go.. if anyone has figured out a fix for this please let me know!!

Thanks
M

@dkendig said:

it is up on our site now and ready for the masses! Enjoy

Thanks dkendig been testing BR out a bit handy for simple scenes. Im having a few problems when I try do a highres and complex scene that I can only use distributed rendering for to avoid crashing SU it stops randomly and gives me a message saying "vray is already rendering" its almost as if it tries to start the next render before the frame is saved or the DR spawners have had a chance to refresh.

Thanks
M

Hi Guys,

For a while now I have been trying to figure the best settings for distributed rendering.

I have no problem setting up all the hardware. I have several i7 4930Ks at my disposal all hooked up on GB switch. I have very little knowledge of the different rendering methods something i need to catch up on. Basically I have been using the vray presets and tweaking them to my needs. The problem is I don't seem to be getting much of a speed increase using DR the actual render passes are over relatively quick. sketchup tends to be a bottle neck as it maxes out RAM very quick so I have tried just using DR which takes longer.

so far my optimal settings have been set dynamic memory limit to 3700 to avoid SU crash (doesnt always seem to work..) Then use DR spawner on all other PCs plus on the local machine.

Can anyone point to some documentation that goes through this in detail? There heaps of info on how to set up DR but I cant find anything on how to use it properly. Is there methods for port forwarding, syncing job files rather than mapping them? Using different render engines? ect.. even more presets available to download?

Thanks
M

@dkendig said:

we were hoping to add hide/unhide support during animation, but I don't believe we were able to add that for this service release. It should be in the 3.0 release though.

If you are teetering on the edge of crashing, I would suggest exporting any "finished" geometry as a V-Ray proxy. Especially if we're talking about a component that is reused many times (like support beams, street lights, etc). If you are running a 64bit OS, the 64-bit workflow is rather helpful as well: http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/distributed_rendering.htm#settings

Thanks for the feedback dkendig. I have a few gripes with VR Proxies.. I have had a bit of experience with them as I was intending to do just what you suggested, convert my complex geometry into proxies then save them within components for quick access with layering and materials. My biggest problem with proxies in SU is that it takes forever to convert to proxy, I would have to copy to a new document then convert and leave it running in the back ground for a few hours, due to sketchups limited processing power, not really ideal. I also did this with some assets I had in 3DSmax, converted them to Proxies (which takes no time at all) re opened them in SU and re applied texture maps then packed them up as components. I spent a fair bit of time optimizing these components, manually removing all unwanted textures and geometry as sketchups built in purge function doesn't work properly with VR proxies.

That all works sort of well sometimes. Sometimes, when I bring in a component with a proxy nested it will drop all materials from it and render the default colour. I have tried removing all traces of that component and proxy from the scene (materials and components) and re importing it to no avail. also I have tried re assigning it to the VRmesh file in the context menu with no luck, it even wont fix it if I manually reconfigure the associated material IDs, its almost as if it forgets its material IDs. Any light on this problem would be great. Saying all this, this is a random and very frustrating occurrence, when proxies work they work really well!!

@tedvitale_cg said:

Hi Monkers,

Devin (dkendig) is right, we don't support hide/unhide during animation, however the newly added Batch Render tool (in the soon to be released Patch) will support hide/unhide functions. So you wont get animated scene transitions, but you will be able to render out scenes with hide/unhide object information, which I believe is how the 4D Virtual builder system works when exporting to Sketchup scenes (http://www.4dvirtualbuilder.com/support/).

Once released, I would be interested to hear back on how it works out, as I've not tested this workflow out. If you have a scene set up and would like to share it with me, I can go ahead and test this work flow out for you and let you know what I find out. In theory it should work fine!

V-Ray Batch Render tutorial: http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/tutorials_batch_render.htm

Thanks TED,

Yeh thats what how I thought it worked, which might cause problems for me with my model size and tip the scale on memory usage. However I always use distributed rendering which is a great way to prevent memory overload during rendering. Do we have an ETA on the service pack or batch feature? This is a much anticipated feature for me.

Thanks guys!
m

Hi everyone,

Just wondering if anyone has had any experience rendering in vray with 4D Virtual Builder. link:http://4dvirtualbuildercom.webhosting.be

My models tend to be pretty large and complicated upwards of 100mb files with lots of high res maps and high poly proxies and components, I constantly feel like I'm teetering on the edge of sketchup bugsplats (they happen often). my understanding is 4DVB would have to replicate each object a number of times to change the texture appearance.

On a side note, I remember reading somewhere that vray for SU 2.1 will support proper scene 'automation' rendering with hide/unhide objects. Super excited for this, does anyone know much about this?

Thanks
m

What I'm asking, next scene is available as a shortcut (page up/down) by default. would it be possible to have a script use this function and render after each scene and dump the render frame to somewhere? vray's method of selecting the scene isn't really ideal.

I have no idea when it comes to programming/scripting of programs.

Thanks.

Thanks for the reply valerostudio and the detailed information dkendig.

I'll have a play around when I have some free time and report back what I find.

Thanks again.

Hi everyone,

I'm wondering if there is anyway to change the default location for saving textures.

I have a large number of textured surfaces which I would like to use the make unique tool as explained here and being a large number or surfaces I have developed a photoshop automation action which I can use to make my changes using batch feature. However my problem is that they are saving into a ChaosGroupTextureCache folder (I should mention that I intend to render with vray 2.0 about now)

This folder is within C:users/me/local data/temp/etc..etc. somewhere that is not ideal. Not to mention that this location fills up with all my textures from previous models as well which gets old sorting though. I am also using distributed rendering so I would rather have these maps set to save to my current project folder which is all networked up. (yes I am being lazy, or efficient, same-same really. As you guessed I would rather not go through and re-map every texture image.)

I have tried to change the location in the window>preferences>files tab to no avail (this directory is different to the one where the files actually get saved.. ) Being in the ChaosGroupTextureCache I presume this is vrays doing however I can't find any documentation on it and searching has not been fruitful..

Thanks for lending me your beautiful minds!

Monkers.

Hi,

I have been searching around and found a few old threads on this but no one seems to have found a solid solution.

So I use scenes a lot in sketchup sometimes ending up with 30-50 scenes, I use them to explain construction sequences and the camera doesn't move around much at all, it's just various combinations of hidden layers and objects.

I was wondering if there is a plugin or a script which could jump to the next scene with in sketchup then press the render button, once complete jump to the next scene and so on. I was hoping with 2.0 they would have fixed this... no dice apparently. The reason I ask is the "layers panel" plugin has a "render" teapot check box similar to what's in 3ds max and I figure this shows there is some sort of customisation for vray with plugins. If there isn't would this be possible to make and how easily? I would be happy to pay for such a plugin as it would remove the tediousness by a factor of 1/(x many renders)

Thanks for lending me your beautiful minds.
M

Figured it out guys, It was a Bug within vray_beta_20023490 with importing materials. just installed vray_demo_20023590 seems to have fixed this problem. time to build me a library

Hi Guys, this is my first post here, it would be great to get some help.

Really exited to fully utilize vray proxies but to do so I am currently trying to build a component library full of detailed and textured components of which I can drag and drop into my scenes. At the moment i'm mainly focusing on trees and vegetation as these are super heavy and make a Landscape rendering look amazing.

So far I have worked out how to export trees which I have for 3dsmax as .vrmesh files into sketchup and reassign the materials for each ID manually, which is a bit tedious but there doesn't seem to be a better way. Once I'm happy with it I simply save it as a .skp into my Library folder alongside the originals and the maps.

This seems to work really well they render perfectly. Even though they are heavy meshes I have managed to render hundreds of them together no problem.

Whats bug(splat)ing me is, sometimes when I import the component into my sketchup model they will load in no problems I can have a few different ones in with no problem. But sometimes it crashes and gives me a bugsplat error. I'm struggling to single out what causes this other than it only happens the instant that I add the component to the model. Is there anything that stands out to you guys? The meshes have been simplified to no more than 50polys so they are pretty light and handling them is quick and doesn't seem to be pushing the system at all.

I did notice that it seemed to happen less frequently once I made sure that my material IDs have unique names although some of them are sharing the same maps as they are variations of each other could this be the cause of the problem?