Is there a way to export the SU viewport that matches the Safe Frame view of a renderer (in this case, Vray)?

I'm trying to export linework from the Sketchup viewport to overlay on a rendered image. Naturally, I want the linework to align w/ the rendered image. In the past, due to the discrepancy between the rendered view and the SU view, I'd use Thom's Vray Tools plugin to export the safe frame, but that is apparently no longer an option. Vray for Sketchup can display the safe frame itself, but there's no option to export from the Vray plugin, and no options under Sketchups 2D image export that reflect the Safe Frame boundary. (Any searching I've done for this topic lead me to threads about the related issues of the 'gray bars' that Vray's safe frame inflicts on SU's 2D export.)

I've used Sketchup's safe frame plugin, which "Fails to Save Image" every time I attempt to export, regardless of settings. I've used the viewport resize plugin, which does work, but the aspect ratio gets screwed up every time I try to resize the window to a usefully large resolution. I can successfully export an aspect-ratio-locked view from that plugin, but only at a resolution of 1280x720 or so.

Any ideas? How are people accomplishing this with the latest version of Vray?

Is there a way to export the SU viewport that matches the Safe Frame view of a renderer (in this case, Vray)?

I'm trying to export linework from the Sketchup viewport to overlay on a rendered image. Naturally, I want the linework to align w/ the rendered image. In the past, due to the discrepancy between the rendered view and the SU view, I'd use Thom's Vray Tools plugin to export the safe frame, but that is apparently no longer an option. Vray for Sketchup can display the safe frame itself, but there's no option to export from the Vray plugin, and no options under Sketchups 2D image export that reflect the Safe Frame boundary. (Any searching I've done for this topic lead me to threads about the related issues of the 'gray bars' that Vray's safe frame inflicts on SU's 2D export.)

I've used Sketchup's safe frame plugin, which "Fails to Save Image" every time I attempt to export, regardless of settings. I've used the viewport resize plugin, which does work, but the aspect ratio gets screwed up every time I try to resize the window to a usefully large resolution. I can successfully export an aspect-ratio-locked view from that plugin, but only at a resolution of 1280x720 or so.

Any ideas? How are people accomplishing this with the latest version of Vray?

Well, uh, it seems I've solved the problem by shifting the entire contents of the model to the -x,+y quadrant w.r.t. the default origin. Why this works, I don't know... nor do I know why the cutoff was where it was before, because it did not occur along one of the default axes, but at something like a 45 degree angle between -x and -y.

Thanks, filibis. Here are the material settings:

Nothing in the manual has clued me in to a solution, yet. I am going to try disabling Effect Shadows now.

Hello, everyone. I've got a basic water material w/ displacement for caustic refractions. This seems to be working, in general, but I'm seeing an unexpected 'cutoff' where the lighting on the bottom of the pool suddenly changes along a line.

In the past, I've had issues w/ the caustic Photon Radius setting, where the entire model needs to be relocated to the -x,-y quadrant with respect to the default model origin. In those cases, where part of the water surface is out of that quadrant, and part is in, I've seen this line. But obviously the caustic effect is being applied to both the lighter and darker ends of the pool in this image...

I've got a dome light (spherical HDRi sky) and the Sketchup sun at .3 providing the light.

Any ideas? Let me know if more information is needed.

Thanks!

what an exciting thread!

@ely862me said:

What software do you have ? Photoshop can help you with both. There is a Diffuse Glow Filter which you can play with and also a Lens flare effect under the Render filter.

And perhaps you want it done inside Vray, then, I am sorry for my misplaced answer.

This is the first image retouched with those filters in photoshop. If you have a well formed eye you will make it way better.

Thanks for the reply. I've never used the diffuse glow filter in PS, but I'll give it a shot. And yes, I was specifically referring to understanding how to adjust the Vray glare/bloom effects inside VfS.

And imabzeous, thanks for the link. I'm not really sure what to take from those images, and all the accompanying text is in a language I don't know... I know how to turn the effects on, and how to alter the weight, size, etc. That much is apparent from the sliders. What I'm trying to figure out is how to control the source of the effects, to limit them to the brightest areas of the image, and to perhaps set what that threshold is myself, if possible.

At the moment, I'm just working around this by saving the effects-heavy image and then raising color clarity in Adobe Camera Raw to cut down on the 'vaseline on the lens' appearance...

bump... anyone know of any documentation/tutorials for bloom/glare effects?

What was the issue w/ 2pt Projection before? I'd definitely had my share of wrangling with it, but I want to be clear on what was the source of that, and how it's now fixed! I too ended up using lens correction filters or tilt-shift guessing when the FOV/aspect ratio/projection type got too confusing...

Hey everyone,

Been fiddling w/ the bloom and glare lens effects in vray 2.0 for SU Pro 2014. I'm sort of puzzling my way through the various options, since I can't seem to find any good documentation or tutorials? I've seen the breakdown of the parameters listed here: http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY2SKETCHUP/VRayLensEffects , but it's pretty limited... I'd like to know how to determine how to set the lens effect source... the VFB channel for lens effect source shows that glare is being calculated for the majority of my image, which I'm assuming is part of why bloom and glare is affecting the entire view, yielding a very glowy, vaseline-on-the-lens effect anytime I raise the 'weight' or 'size' parameters to be noticeable.

Here's a simple scene w/ the effects disabled, then enabled...

It seems like these effects should be more restricted to the brighter parts of the image, but I can't determine where this cutoff is, or how to manipulate it. For all I know, this isn't even an option, but I can't tell because I haven't found any good documentation or tutorials for the feature.

Anybody know where I can find some good instructions for using these effects? I'd also like to try the Glare Mask or Bloom Mask options, but I don't know how to determine what the Material ID or Object ID are for the objects I'd like to use to mask... nor do I even know if I'm correct about what it will do

Any pointers?

thanks, Andybot. I had been putting it in the wrong spot... in fact, you made me realize I've been tweaking the parameters on my fresnel reflections wrong, until now! No wonder it felt like such a guess & check process to get the results I wanted...

Thanks, Andybot, will try that. Are you referring to the filter for the diffuse bitmap, or for the Reflection Filter bitmap?

addendum: I put the alpha map in the reflection filter slot as well, and it's a big improvement... though now there's a slight black tint over the open areas as a result... any ideas? If I have to, I can settle for this result, but it's not ideal.

Hey guys,

Trying to achieve a simple perforated metal effect in Vray for SU. I've got a basic diffuse bitmap :

to which I'm trying to apply the following clipping / alpha map:

when I do this with no reflection layer, the results are good...

but when I add a reflection layer, although the results are still ok, you can see that the reflection is visible even in the 'open' spaces, the holes, that I'm trying to cut w/ my alpha map.

the results get worse when I increase the blurriness of my reflections (glossiness ~0.5)

or when I use a glossiness map

My question is basically: is there any way to have a diffuse layer w/ a transparency map like this, and then add a reflection layer without having the transparent portions reflect?

Thanks!

oy! Thanks, andybot. Much appreciated

Hey guys,

In the past I've followed the workflow described in this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3-TxEzW4sQ for using an hdri environment map and then getting hard shadows by adjusting TexSky settings in the Environment Reflection slot...

Does this still work in 2.0? I've been trying the same process to no avail... all I can see is the GI from the hdri, no shadows from the sketchup sun. The process described in the Chaos Group vid involves un-checking the Environment Reflection Slot... and each time I re-check it, and open the settings window, "Enabled" has automatically been un-checked...

Sorry if this is a mess of a question. At root, what I'm asking is, does the hdri + sun workflow described in the Chaos Group tutorial still work in Vray 2.0, and if so, are there any changes to the process I'm missing?

Thanks!

I switched hardware acceleration off briefly and didn't notice the effect... but anyway, I started noticing a couple other weird graphical issues outside of SU, so I figured it was a graphics driver issue. I had already tried updating the driver, but this morning I did a full wipe and reinstall of it, and it seems to have worked. Thanks for your help, Dave.

Hey,

Been having an issue for a few days now where I'll start to see weird visual artifacts where faces will appear to extend out way past their actual edges, sometimes infinitely. See below:

and here's how it ought to look:

obviously it's happening in each instance of that component... and when I open the component for editing, it disappears. I can't select or interact w/ the apparently extending face at all.

It's possible this has something to do w/ my graphics card... an nVidia 560 GTX Ti. I've updated the drivers (released on Sep. 18, 2014) to no effect. This skp file has 3509 edges, 1102 faces, 25 component instances, 11 groups, 10 materials. All geometry is on Layer 0. I've run thomthom's CleanUp plugin, which also didn't solve the problem.

Any ideas? Thanks!

@jbjdesigns said:

The "branch" part worked okay; but when I applied the leaves, they all drooped (no matter what settings I used... and I really tried to make this work).

I seem to be having this same issue... all the leaves point downward, generally, and so the overall appearance is 'droopy.' There's doesn't seem to be a parameter to adjust this, though? Any thoughts?

just left click to continue the growing process, then use ctrl+click (as you know) to add leaves and shift+click to finish