Material questions

[palosanto]

Im using Vray 2.0 for Rhino and I have two questions:

1.- I cannot seem to find documentation describing all the material types shown in the pulldown menu when creating a new material:

- What is the difference between 'Standarad' and 'V-Ray Material'

- And between Skp two Sided and Two Sided?

2.- How can I create a library of materials used in a particular model without having to save each material one by one? There is an option to "load material colection" by pointing to a folder where all the materials in it will be loaded but I don't see an option to 'save a material cllection' ...

Thanks

[fooprobe]

Check out spot3D.com for documentation, including materials:
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/rhino/200R1/

As far as I know, there is no way to save all materials used in a project in an automated way. There is a thread for this here:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...port-Materials

but no solution yet to my knowledge.

[palosanto]

Thanks fooprobe.

[palosanto]

Hi again ... where the heck are the bump and displacement map options when creating a v-ray material ?
I can only see Opacity and Environment override under maps.
Are Bmp and displacement maps only available in the 'Standard' material type ?
The users guide only talks about 'maps' but it doesn't mentioned the missing bump and displacement options ...
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help...aymaterial.htm

[palosanto]

I've done some more searching about the, imo, confusing distinction between new vraymtl and "old" standard (layered).

Am I correct to say that if I need to use bump or displacement maps I could start with a standard material, get rid of the default diffuse layer and add a VrayBRDF layer which has all the parameters needed to define a material. The result would be the new vraymtl + the ability to add bump or displacement.
Like taking the best of both worlds? .... can someone please give me their opinion?

BTW:
Funny enough the "Notes" at the bottom of both pages describing these 2 types of materials in the vray manual
Standard material:
http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help...rams.htm#notes
it says:
"Use the Standard material whenever possible in your scenes. This material is specifically optimized for V-Ray and often GI and lighting is computed much faster for V-Ray materials than for standard Rhino materials. Many V-Ray features (e.g. light cache, photon mapping, render elements) are guaranteed to work properly only with Standard material and other V-Ray compliant materials."

And if you go to the "vrayMtl" material definition page (http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help...rial.htm#notes)

"Use the VRayMtl whenever possible in your scenes. This material is specifically optimized for V-Ray and often GI and lighting is computed much faster for V-Ray materials than for standard 3ds Max materials. Many V-Ray features (e.g. light cache, photon mapping, render elements) are guaranteed to work properly only with VRayMtl and other V-Ray compliant materials."

Ok, make up your mind ChaosGroup ... which one is it?

[fpedrogo]

The Standard material and the V-Ray material are both V-Ray materials that are optimized to work with V-Ray. We do not recommend using Rhino material over the V-Ray materials (Standard or V-Ray Material). However in V-Ray 2.0 we support basic Rhino material(reflection, transparency, etc.) The standard material was in V-Ray since the first version and it is base on layers. If you want reflection, you have to add a reflection layer, if you want refraction, you need to add a refraction layer. The V-Ray material is a compact material very similar how the V-Ray material looks in 3ds Max. All the properties are in the same place and you can not add layer. The V-Ray material is new in V-Ray 2.0 and it is very easy to setup and also have new tools as global opacity, a check box to enable or disable the mapping, the translucency effect is more optimize and faster, two different texture multiplier mode (multiplier and Blend amount), two mode for energy preservation, Fog system scaling option, and much more. Unfortunately we could not use displacement, bump or add an emissive layer with this new material. So, in order to take advantage of all the new features, the easy to setup and the ability to blend more than one full materials, we recommend using the BRDF layer (V-Ray material) inside the Standard material. In this way we can use layers, bum, displacement and emissive.
Both materials are optimized for V-Ray and both produce faster render than Rhino materials.

[palosanto]

Great, Thak you Fernando. That confirms what I suspected, a BRDF layer inside a std material so that I can use bump and displacement.
Best regards.

[fpedrogo]

You are very welcome!

[palosanto]

Hi again Fernando,
It is a pleasant surprise being able to interchange this posts directly with you since I'm a great fan of your videos and your work.
So I dare to abuse a bit your kindness ... here is another question:
I've followed your video about Vray2 https://www.youtube.com/v/bBIhIE5M5t4#t=560 specifically the dome light section at the end.
I'm illuminating a scene as per your instructions but the shadows are far from sharp. GI is off, environment is off for both GI and background. I have a dome light which I had to crank the intensity to 20. I get shadows but very weak and blurry.
I only changed the subdivisions to 32 and left everything else to default. Is there other parameters like 'target radius' or things like that that need to change?
Also how do I make the shadows/contrast darker? Does dome light works only with physical camera (I have it off)
Thank you for your patience
Regards

[fpedrogo]

Hi
Most of the time the problem is that the HDRI is not good enough to produce sharp shadows. You can tweak the gamma setting a little bit (for example to . to try to boost the effect of the HDRI. But even with this you may not have the desire result. In that case you can either change the HDRI or use a real light source to compensate the absent of hard shadows. You can use a physical sun in the case of an exterior, or any of the other V-Ray light.
Can you send me your pack the scene for me? I'll look at it and give you a precise solution.

[thehungryarchitect]

I was getting so frustrated with the lack of bump/displacement map for the new vray material! Glad to know it isn't just me missing something...

[jubonju]

Hello Vray Forum,

I have the first version of VRay (VRay 1) for rhino 4 but never used it. I just started learning how to use it and find it to be a very lovely rendering engine. However, i have realised that most of the .vismats are for the newer versions of VRay so they always indicate 'invalid material'. Does anyone have the .vismats for VRay 1.0 for download? Thank you in advance.

Andrew.
goldsmithghana@gmail.com

[fpedrogo]

We do not support V-Ray for Rhino 1.0 anymore. The reason why the materials are not compatible is due all the new features that we have inside the material since version 1.