And share those proxies when you're done. wink wink

My suggestion is to not use displacement on brick. You really want to reserve displacement for things that are

1. close to camera
2. have a lot of 3D relief and detail (stonework, etc.)

Bricks can be rendered much faster with a bump or normal map. Try plugging your diffuse map into this website and create a normal map, put that in your bump slot.

http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/

+1 All kinds of issues signing in. Sometimes it works, sometimes no...

I get the message, "Authentication Error ! Something went wrong during the authentication process. Please try signing in again."
Even after deleting the file as Pixero suggested.

Solution - open IE (I use Chrome by default) and log into Extension Warehouse there, then open SU, go to Extension Warehouse, then I can log in again and it worked.

What are the OpenGL settings on the Pro version? Having Use Max Texture Size ticked on kills SU performance on large models.

Nice resource! Thanks.

I always just exported my shadows by themselves and changed the color in PS and multiplied them on.

Will we be able to add the critical UV Channel needed for Unreal Engine importing?

It seems that it was my components window. My history had a network location that was hosted on another machine in my home network so it was taking a killer amount of time loading that... i think. Once I removed it from the component browser history, it starts up in less than 5 seconds.

Just ran a test

with network - 2min 19sec to start
without network - 23 seconds

This is insane!

When I start SketchUp on my Win10 laptop, it takes easily 3-4 min before SU even opens. If I go to my Processes, I see SketchUp.EXE there. If I disable my internet connection, SU starts right up.

This only happens on my laptop with Windows10. I have 4 other workstations all with the same plugins and setup, and I do not have this issue. Any ideas?

I have had this same issue in the past. Make sure there are no characters in your file name at all, even the folders. We had an "&" in our project name that VR did not like that at all.

Now I also render all finals into a folder on my desktop to shorten any issues with folder structure as well.

Make it an emissive material would be the best way in VRay. I always put these items in post though.

My understanding is that you should use CUDA with an NVIDIA card. I would also say that RT on GPU has a few bugs in 2.0 for SketchUp unfortunately.

Isnt the point of a render farm, to be able to handle the high res / high quality stuff? Your settings dont seem too crazy to me. Pretty normal for a final render.

What kind of farm is it? You're rendering out a 14,000 pixel wide image so the expectation should be that this will take a good amount of time.

Reload defaults and try to setup rendering again.

Make sure you have the latest release.

Why would you ever manipulate a texture outside of the engine? Is that what you are suggesting? You should never have to correct them outside of your engine, my understanding is that you have to tell the engine to correct them because VRay is using 1.0 Gamma.

I just read this tutorial and it is all starting to make more sense to me.

http://www.aversis.be/tutorials/vray/vray-20-gamma-linear-workflow_01-old.htm

Based on what is being said here, my guess would be that you should NOT tick those on as long as you have Input Gamma set to 2.2. Although maybe you need to tick them on for Correct RGB? I guess it might be worth a couple of test renders with it on and with it off. If you test it, post your results.

I just have never understood it. All I know is that if I export to EXR and use Linear mapping with clamping turned off, I can get what I need from Photoshop as far as correcting lighting goes.

Its a good question and I think you have not received a response because most SketchUp/VRay users are not using that workflow. I have yet to understand how LWF works in a SU environment because we are missing a critical component that MAX has, which is the LUT/GAMMA options in the preferences. It's those settings in Max that 'correct' the textures as you bring them into the Mat editor.

I have always just used linear color mapping with clamping off and save to 32 bit EXR files and have not had any issues, but I might have been doing it wrong the whole time.

http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/1552-linear-workflow-the-whole-shebang-3ds-max-v-ray-misc-after-effects-by-daniel-dye-render?page=3#.UG3nP000V8E

I don't think the purpose of LWF is that it gives more realistic renderings. I think you can still make a crappy rendering with LWF, there are a lot more things at play there then just your color mapping.

As a rule, I would highly discourage the use of displaced grass.

1- It renders slowwwwwww

2- It just doesn't look great

I would encourage you to look at a demo of Skatter. It's one plugin that you will not live without as far as grass goes.

Your bump isn't working because using just a straight color from SU will not apply any UV mapping to your faces. I typically create a texture using the bump so I can see the UV tiling. Then in the VRay texture, just make a duplicate diffuse layer, set that to your color, then add a AColorTex to the diffuse with the bump on it and set they to pure white (This hides it from VRay but not SU).

Its my understanding that RT using GPU in SketchUp is currently not working in 2.0

I'm not sure if Chaos allows you to transfer your license like that. Contact a reseller and buy through them.