Problems with vray proxy

[mpcz]

Hi everyone,

got some problems with vray proxies. Im working on a project which includes several small officies and land (72mx80m) at scale 1:1. I had to shrink the whole project to a much smaller scale cause of performance. The Fur in new Vray is working well (Although my laptop doesnt like it at all), but when I try to export or import a .vrmesh file, the model dissappear. It shows on rendered image, also in geometry settings like its path of a file and imported materials. BUT I cant see any proxy object in the scene. When I tried to make the same in new rhino file in default, it worked well. I have no idea where the dog could be buried.

Any idea what am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

[Peter.Chaushev]

Hello,
Keep in mind that some V-Ray parameters (in V-Ray Fur or Displacement, for example) are set in cm, so it is always advisable to work with proper unit scale.
Regarding the V-Ray Proxies, when exporting do you choose to replace the original material with the proxy? Are Proxy objects present in the V-Ray Geometry list? If so, try selecting one (Right-click > "Select Object in Scene") and then use View > Zoom Selected. Perhaps the proxies are not scaled according to your scene? They should be scaleable though, so this can be easily fixed.

If are not able to rescale them or make them appear in your scene, you can send your project (packed using V-Ray > Export > Pack Project) for investigation at support@chaosgroup.com .

Kind regards,
Peter

[mpcz]

Hello Peter,

thanks for answer. I didnt know that about those units. I always work in millimeters because of technical drawings and ground plans. I dont know what do you mean by replacing the original material. I just set materials on the object and exported it into the proxy. It was also presented in the V-Ray geometry list and when I tried to select the proxy object in layers and zoom it, nothing happened. So I decided to import the whole previous scene into the new Rhino scene in cm and it worked well until the next open. The proxies were placed in the scene as before, but when I tried to render, proxies were randomly deployed over the scene and also had different colours (like purple, tyrquoise) in the rendered image.

Im so confused by these proxies.

[mgibeault]

When you insert a proxy in a scene, it come with a "MultiMaterial" applied to it. It will be called "v-ray proxy name Material"
If you check the properties of this material, you'll see "v-ray proxy name Material sub material 0", "v-ray proxy name Material sub material 1" etc
It's these sub-materials that have pastel colors.
You have to do a test render and note which pastel color should be replaced by which material.
You then import your real materials (you can do this quickly by assigning these materials to simple objects (an array of cubes for example) in your original scene where the proxy was created, copy these cubes and paste them in the scene where you inserted the proxy.
You now have to edit the material "v-ray proxy name Material" by replacing all the sub-material by the real ones. And you can then delete all the automatically created sub materials from the material editor.
I don't know if there's a better way and if my explainations are clear... Should I create a mini tutorial with images?

[lfertig]

Is there any way to make it load a multimaterial saved as a .vismat along with the proxy (same folder, same name for example), instead of loading the pastel colored ones, so you wouldnt need to reassign the materials by hand and erase the original?

[mpcz]

Thank you for answer. Im sorry to writting with a slight delay, but I had another acute things to do. I didnt much understand the thing with importing and quick application of real materials. Also I still didnt get why those proxies as I wrote, after reopening the file are scattered over the scene. So may I ask you for that mini-tutorial? It would help me a lot.

[georgi.georgiev]

Hi mpcz,

V-Ray Proxies only store the geometric data of a mesh and its face IDs. When you import a proxy, V-Ray automatically creates a Multi material with as many sub-materials as there are unique ID numbers stored in the proxy (.vrmesh) file. The sub-materials have randomized diffuse colors and no other custom parameters. Their only purpose is to show which faces of the proxy object have different material IDs applied to them.

As described by mgibeault, you will need to do a test render of the proxy to check which sub-material is applied to which face of the mesh. Then you would need to manually replace each of the placeholder sub-materials.

Regarding the scattered proxies, could you share the project with us so we can investigate the issue and advise accordingly. Please send us an archived copy (V-Ray > Export > Pack Project) directly to support@chaosgroup.com or through a file-sharing service of your choice.