Vray Sketchup proxy issue.

[bbergem]

Hi all.

I am working on a project that uses an imported proxy of a tree. I am aware that the Proxies don't embed material information, so after switching out the randomly generated colours with proper materials (bark, leaves, etc.) all is well, while the proxy itself in the viewport is still another separately randomly generated colour (in this case blue).

Now all is well when I am working on the file. However, should the file close, and be reopened later to continue work the Vray proxy materials seem to disappear entirely - I thought this maybe was the proxy not being linked properly or something.. however when I hit render the trees still render properly (as opposed to the proxies version) but they take on the colour of the proxy - ie I have a properly rendered tree that is entirely blue.

I would imagine if I were to convert the tree to a proxy within my model rather than importing a tree I had exported previously I might not have the same issue.. however I am having issues creating ("exporting") proxies anyway. When I go to so, sketchup becomes unresponsive as soon as i hit the export button (I am on a mac) - the tree i am importing was one I had previously on a work computer (PC). In only one instance did I successfully manage to get a 'save to' window open up after about 30-45 minutes of waiting.. though I didnt set an ideal amount of proxy triangles so it became an undesirable proxy to use as I can barely see the tree object other then a few very very tiny faces floating in space - which makes it very difficult to properly position the trees as it is all guesswork.. and there are about 30 trees. Though in other attempts to create a proxy of the exact same trees I had waited much longer without sketchup becoming responsive again.

so basically in summary:

1. Why do my vray proxy materials disappear when reopening files?
2. Any advice regarding the having difficulties exporting a proxy?

Thanks ahead

[Yoshi1099]

Hi all.

I am working on a project that uses an imported proxy of a tree. I am aware that the Proxies don't embed material information, so after switching out the randomly generated colours with proper materials (bark, leaves, etc.) all is well, while the proxy itself in the viewport is still another separately randomly generated colour (in this case blue).

Now all is well when I am working on the file. However, should the file close, and be reopened later to continue work the Vray proxy materials seem to disappear entirely - I thought this maybe was the proxy not being linked properly or something.. however when I hit render the trees still render properly (as opposed to the proxies version) but they take on the colour of the proxy - ie I have a properly rendered tree that is entirely blue.

I would imagine if I were to convert the tree to a proxy within my model rather than importing a tree I had exported previously I might not have the same issue.. however I am having issues creating ("exporting") proxies anyway. When I go to so, sketchup becomes unresponsive as soon as i hit the export button (I am on a mac) - the tree i am importing was one I had previously on a work computer (PC). In only one instance did I successfully manage to get a 'save to' window open up after about 30-45 minutes of waiting.. though I didnt set an ideal amount of proxy triangles so it became an undesirable proxy to use as I can barely see the tree object other then a few very very tiny faces floating in space - which makes it very difficult to properly position the trees as it is all guesswork.. and there are about 30 trees. Though in other attempts to create a proxy of the exact same trees I had waited much longer without sketchup becoming responsive again.

so basically in summary:

1. Why do my vray proxy materials disappear when reopening files?
2. Any advice regarding the having difficulties exporting a proxy?

Thanks ahead

Hy,

Hopefully my answer will suit with your questions,
1. Try to make some square model and tap each of your materials at there eg: bark, leafs, etc..
Now try to safe it and reopen it...

2. I usually do a copy and resize proxy trees as per my wish than import the prime scene to the proxy scene

Let me know the result..

Regards
Yoshi Ikeda

[bbergem]

Yoshi, thank you for you're response.

1. I tried applying the materials to a series of boxes that were off to the side. While technically the materials stayed in the palette this time around, they remain associated with the proxy

2. And I am not sure I follow what your suggesting. I am still having difficulties exporting a model as a proxy. Rather than exporting in the model I am creating a scene in, I would do it within a new file.. downloading a component from the sketchup warehouse, for example, then attempting to export as proxy. I should note - I've only been making proxies of rather complicated models, such as trees.

[eliotbnz]

I think I follow to a degree and have had similar issues, however, can you give a more indepth explanation of your workflow in terms of creating and importing the proxy, start to finish?

How are you applying the materials to the proxy? vrmat? jpeg into diffuse? When I change out the random colours, my proxy will pick up one of the new "proper" materials instead of the random colours and display as such in the sketchup viewport.

My general workflow with proxies and materials is to open the "master" file, say in this case a tree downloaded from 3d warehouse, and save vrmats for the materials of it, in the case of smart trees the jpegs of the foliage, do a relatively parallel elevation render of it so I know what it will render as, and then proxy it.

I make a seperate folder for each proxy - for example my file system might go Proxies > Trees > Pines > 'Pine 24' and within that last folder I will have all sketchup files, materials, images and proxies associated with that tree.

I have found that with the likes of "smart trees", vrmat files will not work for the foliage - you have to save the image file associated with it into the same folder and then place that image into the diffuse of the colour that vray gives the foliage for the proxy - with "use colour texture as transparency" ticked obviously.

This system has worked well for me so far. Like you, I'm still having issues with the actual proxy conversion time, but I see there is a patch for that due.

Hope this might help? Feel free to post a link to the tree causing the issue and I can have a go. With this said, if the tree is fairly complicated, using the proxy creator within sketchup is a waste of time generally, you may have to learn the OBJ GEO PLY to .vrmesh convertor until the patch

[bbergem]

Hello elitobnz

this was the tree: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...34&prevstart=0

When I made the proxy, I simply exported the selected model it straight out of that file into an organized 'resource' folder for use. This was done quite a while back - in fact it was done on a work PC computer - and I didnt have an export time problem. But I am now running a license on my Mac - so I have been using the same sets of trees that I exported at work for the time being.

Now when I import that tree into a model I am working on - the tree's proxy (a reduced geometry version) appears fully as a randomly selected colour - like pink. When I open the vray material browser now there is this proxy material group (I cant recall exactly what it is or called, as I dont have it right in front of me) that clusters the corresponding materials for the proxy together. In this tree model there is a separate material for trunk, branch, and leaves. And they each appear again as the random colours- blue, yellow, red, whatever. I simply add a bitmap into the diffuse channel for each mateiral - these bitmap images are just loaded from a texture resources folder i have saved to my computer. I am not doing any further complications to it (bumps etc) as I tend to photoshop over anything in the foreground that looks to fake.

I didnt use the materials the original model came with - I could have created vrmats from the original model for later use - I just chose to use my own textures.

Compared to you however the proxy tree stay looking pink in the viewport as it seems to have a different material applied to it (though I can change it easily) - might be worth for me to look into where this extra pink is coming from.

Then I hit render and everything looks great and renders quickly.

Now this is where the issue is--

If I close my file, then reopen later to continue work, do another view, that pink tree proxies is still there, and when I hit render they take the proper form of the whole tree... thus is functioning as it should.. however the Vray Material that grouped the proxy materials of bark and leaves is gone. Since that proxy grouping is gone, I seemingly have no way of re-introducing the proper materials to the tree. When I render now the proper trees will simply take the colour of what the random colour was for the proxy - Pink.

Yoshi suggested I apply the bark/branch/leaves materials to a box or something that is off to the side (in my case beneath the ground plane) - and while this technically keeps the materials when I reopen my file.. it does not actually stay as that 'group'. They exist only on those boxes.. still not on the proper tree - they remain rendered as pink.

One temporary fix is I made the proxy inside a component. So when if i reopen my file, I open the component - delete the proxy with missing materials, re-import the proxy inside the component - and fix all the materials again. that way all the trees are replaced simultaneously with the tree. This however, is only temporary - for if I close my file, and reopen it - same issues.

I am not sure how the proxies operate. But I wonder if they work as 'links' and that somehow a link is being broken?

-- hope that is clear. I am generally not to concerned though. If a patch is in the works, maybe something will be resolved.

[eliotbnz]

Well I can't even get that tree to "proxy" in a reasonable amount of time - I left it overnight and it was still going in the morning. I need to figure out this OBJ GEO PLY to .vrmesh convertor until the patch comes along, until then it's smart trees for me!

My suspicion is that the issue is, like you say, that rogue colour in the viewport, and perhaps that is linked to the fact the proxy was produced on another system/OS? I know proxies should be universal (at least from what I have read), but I reckon that is where something is going wrong.

[eliotbnz]

Further to this...

I've figured out the obj to vrmesh convertor, albeit in a rather simplistic manner (dragging the obj file onto the convertor) - the speed is basically incomparable, takes literally seconds compared to minutes/hours in the in-sketchup method. One issue is scaling however - when I convert a skp file to obj, then try and convert it, it either fails or the resultant vrmesh ends up being many times bigger than it should, and at inverted axis. I have experimented with different ways of exporting the obj but no luck so far. Not a huge issue - when I scatter them, I just adjust the scaling in component spray to suit.

I have had to settle for importing proxies and then applying maps to every new project - no matter what way of trying to store them as components or importing them as sketchup files I try, eventually the one or more of the materials stop being associated with it and the tree comes out all in one material - usually the bark of the tree for some reason.

Not a big deal really - I can close and open at will and they remain as they should.

[Jackson_cg]

You can scale and rotate the obj in Meshlab, a free 3D modelling/polycrunching program:

http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

The key to saving out proxies as skp components is to make sure that all V-Ray materials are applied to at least one bit of geometry in the skp component. In theory you could apply the materials to single lines, but I find it easier to visually keep track of materials and proxies by applying them to faces. So my skp comps are vertical triangles with the bark material applied and then a horizontal hexagon on top with the leaf material applied. If there's more than one leaf material, I just subdivide the hexagon and apply materials to the "pieces of pie". When you've done this you even copy and paste your skp comp from one skp file to another and all V-Ray materials and their attributes are automatically imported. Once you've done the ground work it is an unbelievably efficient workflow.

/Jackson

[eliotbnz]

Awesome! I will give this a burl asap. Thanks a lot.

[bbergem]

Just realized what you meant by the vrmesh converter. I dont think OSX version of VRAY SU comes with it, but I found it on a work PC. Agreed - conversion time was remarkably tiny - probably only a minute or so. So - thanks for the heads up there.

One immediate issue I am seeing, trying things out..

I found some free detailed birch trees from Viz-People. The zip file comes with OBJ and MTL files, as well as the original JPGS for materials. It seems to be that they all use the same leaf texture, and there are a couple variations of the bark. Anyways.... These OBJ files are far too large to try and get into SU. So tried out the OBJ to VRMESH converter no problem, only took a minute - then import to SU, no apparent problems yet. Go straight ahead and hit render to see if all worked, and the proper tree appears - but of only one solid colour. (Similar problem I had faced before, though that was due to closing sketchup and reopening to find the proxy materials disappearing and a random colour material taking over) - but now I have no seemingly have no means to re-apply materials as there is no way to differentiate between bark and leaves.

The OBJ files do have their MTL files.. but is there a way to make sure in the conversion process to a proxy that it recognizes that there are more than one material in use (I do recognize a vrmesh it can't maintain the actual materials information.. I just need a way to be able to reapply them individually in sketchup).

One workaround, perhaps, is to use the mentioned Meshlab program, and spearate the tree trunk from the leaves. Then convert them separately to vrmesh, and 'overlap' the two proxies in sketchup.. though i do see possibilities of error in them not lining up nicely.

[eliotbnz]

That's strange - that is the exact workflow I used on the exact same OBJ files.

Are you absolutely sure it is one colour/material? I found that when I imported the vrmesh file, the materials are solid colours that are just very similar. Check the materials dropdown just to double check that there is indeed just one material associated with the proxy. You may have checked this of course

They are great trees to get for free.

[bbergem]

Out of curiosity.. how do you use the convertor?

When I open the file/script I get a lot of information (Arguments and Options) I don't seem understand (hah!). It just seemed to work when I dragged the OBJ file into the script, a minute later the VRMESH was created next to the the OBJs file location.

But I realized... I did something very very foolish, and I did not occur to me till just now. It did import all the materials after all. I imported the newly created proxy into a file I was already playing around in. After I imported it, when I opened my components browser to grab and insert the proxy, I saw I still had all these crappy Sketchup Warehouse trees I was looking into using .. so before hitting render I 'Purged Unused" to get rid of all that 'extra stuff'.. not fully comprehending that it would also get rid of my tree materials as they don't technically appear in the scene/proxy component.. leaving behind only the proxy's display material and me falsely thinking that was the only material that imported. Oops!

[eliotbnz]

Yupp sounds like you have it sorted. I've done it before myself many times so don't be too hard on yourself. Sounds like you'll never be using the horrible 3d warehouse trees again! I used this link http://www.onyxtree.com/gall-valero1.html as a guide to using it.

I don't *really* understand the convertor in all honesty, but I have a couple of different shortcuts to the converter with different options in the properties of them. Eg: the one I generally use for trees has the option to covert into less faces than say the one I use for grass etc.

[bbergem]

A pretty quick test.. a success!

[eliotbnz]

Awesome work.They produce great dappled light/shadows, I use them "offscreen" quite alot to cast their shadows over the building in question - looks awesome