@monkers said:

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

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

You should be able to just change the file extension on the material to be .vismat. This will work on the Glass Standard material, but yes, The VRayBRDF material is incompatible with 1.49.

Hi Don, Try this glass material out: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tglh7ibhafkpacj/Glass.zip

I saved out both a simple standard glass material as well as a more advanced VRayBRDF material. The VRayBRDF is for more close up thickened realistic glass. The Standard material will work on thin single face glass, like what what you would be using on a large building.

To get more metallic reflections bump up the IOR value in your Fresel settings, I find 2-3 gives you a nice reflective glazing appearance.

Try theses different glass materials and let me know how things go!

To make the exports available in the Presets drop down you can manually save them to their own folder here: C:\ProgramData\ASGVIS\VfS\Presets\Options and it will generate in the drop down menu (as long as you've added it to the new folder you created). Be careful not to overwrite the existing defaults though. V-Ray does not overwrite the Options folder on a re-install, so if you overwrite anything you'll have to download it from the Chaos Group website and manually re-install it.

Check out the tutorial here:
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/sketchup/150PB/tutorials_preset.htm

I'm working on a recent build of V-Ray now, it doesn't seem to make a difference if it's installed or not. But I'll remove it and see if the issue persists. It hasn't been causing problems, however somthing in the most recent nightly may be doing it. We shal see.

Hi Tom,

Have you played with your Dynamic Memory Limit settings? I was having trouble with Displacement doing strange things as well, and after some testing I've found that having your dynamic Memory Limit set to somewhere between 1024 and 4096, I seem to be getting better faster renders.

@andybot said:

I'm curious - did you try rendering with the material override? I'm curious if it was able to render that way.

It would do it no matter what, even if material override was enabled. Essentially Sketchup was inventing a fictitious material that didn't exist anywhere in the scene (weird little bug on SketchUps side). V-Ray just couldn't figure out what to do with it and would spit out an empty scene. It was very weird, but we've tracked down where it came from and have since fixed the bug. We will be releasing a patch that takes care of it very soon.

Hi Uri,

Where are you downloading the Demo Version of V-Ray from? It should just auto install to what ever version you're working on. The best way to go about doing this is to sign up on our website and download the 2.00 Demo build here: http://www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/downloads.html?s=v-ray-sketchup#demox32

If that doesn't work please email us at vraysketchup@chaosgroup.com and we can get you up and running!

Also, you should check out the V-Ray for SketchUp Forums as well: http://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum.php

Good luck getting started and let me know if you run into any more issues with the install!

@sketchuh said:

I downloaded around 20 models from 3d warehouse for an interior living room scene. The models are not complicated at all. But vray won't finish the render unless I delete some models. I wonder is there a poly count limit that ... Does anyone know why???!! Thanks

Sketchuh,

Check your debugging window; Plugins>V-Ray>Debugging>Open Debug Window

You should see some text in there that will give you a hint as to what material is causing the issue. You can add that material to your scene in Sketchup and this should fix it. Essentially V-Ray is looking for a material that Sketchup creates but doesn't actually exist (its very strange).

Join the V-Ray for Sketchup forums and take a look at this post: http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread.php?74667-Missing-geometry-II
It elaborates a bit more on the solution and should be pretty helpful.

All the best,

Ted

3D Artist | Trainer
ChaosGroup USA

Hi Arail1,

So if you go to your plugins> V-Ray> Debugging> Open Debug Window youll see a bunch of techo jubber jabber. But part of it should say this:

"In __handleReferencedPlugin for Unknown param asset::Unknown param plugin, could not find asset with url /glass_basic"

Essentially V-Ray is stuck looking for a material that doens exist and is freaking out. The fastest way ive found to solve this (so far) is to make a material named "glass_basic". It doesnt need to be applied to anything, just in your materials pallet. Once its there. You should be good to go.

In the meantime, were working on a solution to this bug. If you ever have any other questions you should also check out the V-Ray For Sketchup Forum: http://forums.chaosgroup.com/forumdisplay.php?126-V-Ray-for-SketchUp-forums

Best,
Ted V.

Hi joseark,

Could you post a link with your scene, I'm not sure why its doing that and If I can see how your material was created I might be able to help.

Ted