Material names and material copies

[Robert1977]

Dear team of Chaosgroup,

I have imported a aircraft cabin file into vantage and I have seen that many of the materials have somehow cryptical names:

• door_placards_0011@node_3488_stats (the material's name is not included in this string)

while others have the correct name that was taken from 3D Studio Max.

Do you know where these names come from?

Also, with a large scene imported, it seems that the materials are cloned, duplicated, almost one material per mesh, so there would be no chance to keep an overview about the materials used.

And, Materials that start with a number followed by underscore, are replaced by a alphabet character for the first digit.



Is there a way to overcome this?

Thanks and kind regards

[vladimir.nedev]

Do you know where these names come from?
Also, with a large scene imported, it seems that the materials are cloned, duplicated, almost one material per mesh, so there would be no chance to keep an overview about the materials used.

Some of the Object Properties and V-Ray Properties in 3ds Max are exported as materials.
And these materials are created per object.
The Vantage material UI is under construction still. We will try to find a way around this.
Note that in other software like Maya, these "object properties" can be an actual material created by the user.

Is there a way to overcome this?

The materials you see will be created only if you have modified the object's visibility to certain types of rays.
For example, you have disabled "cast shadows" or "visible to reflections".

And, Materials that start with a number followed by underscore, are replaced by a alphabet character for the first digit.

I think the V-Ray for 3ds Max exporter does this to make the names compatible with the .vrscene format.
The only thing you can do here is not name your objects starting with a digit.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Robert1977]

Thanks Vladimir,

this sounds reasonable.
I could write some scripts on our side to disable per object settings, I indeed switched off cast shadows for the decals in the scene.
Concerning the digits, 1.6 works but 1_6 not. This would also be something we could script on our own.

En enhancement of the material view would be great really. Especially alphabetical sorting, later maybe even small thumbnail previews that would make it easier to select and exchange materials in vantage. And in the end, manipulation of these materials, changing values, but this could be done probably in the source application like 3DSMax, so one doesn't start to duplicate things.

Kind regards
Robert

[vladimir.nedev]

We came up with an idea how to improve the UI a bit.
When loading the materials, we can identify those that have the same visibility options (e.g. only cast shadows is disabled) and the same base material, and the load them only once per scene instead of once per object.

Do you think that will help ?
Are all decals using the same material or different materials ?

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Robert1977]

Hi Vladimir, yes this sounds good, it this would reduce the amount of different materials, because approximately 8 meshes share the same "decal"-material.
We have an individual material per decal pictogram, so we didn't optimize that yet in a way of a large pictogram atlas or similar. But since we do not very often set up individual object properties that differ on the same material, it should be fine. Normally we do it just for thin objects like decals where shadow casting is somehow problematic if not tightly placed onto a wall, especially with irradiance map.

[Robert1977]

Some update:

If the materials are getting the node name or material id attached to their names, then the first letter, if it is a number, is converted to a character from alphabet.

b_2_open_arrow_placard@mtl_19_mtlID

If the material belongs to objects that do not have special object or vray properties, then the material name is correctly displayed, even if it starts with a number.

1.2_open_arrow_placard

If the vray material has an override effect id set, then the conversion creates this name as an example:

b_2_open_arrow_placard@mtl_19_mtlID

If the id is disabled, then the name is displayed like that, which I would prefer:

1.2_open_arrow_placard

So maybe ignoring the effect id in the material would be great as well? But not sure if you need the info for rendering out images.

And this effect with the effect ID only happens if the material is a local material, not, if it is an xref-material.

[vladimir.nedev]

I think this might be because these special materials are missing the "scene_name" property - Vantage uses this to get a "nice" name.
If it's missing, we fall back to the plug-in instance name, which has to abide by the rules of the .vrscene format and can't start with a digit.

If we implement the deduplication scheme I described above, this might not be an issue.
We can use the base material name with a suffix for the modified visibility properties.
E.g. "Material 1 (Invisible to GI,shadows)"

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Robert1977]

I think this might be because these special materials are missing the "scene_name" property - Vantage uses this to get a "nice" name.

Which are the special materials in this case? And where could I set the "scene name" property? Thanks

[vladimir.nedev]

Which are the special materials in this case? And where could I set the "scene name" property? Thanks

You can't do it, the plug-in is missing this property entirely.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

By the way, do you use the material assignment in Vantage or do you need this fixed just so you can have a better overview of what materials are being used ?
Material assignment itself is something that is work in progress, the current system is something we created as a demo.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Robert1977]

Actually yes I would like to exchange the materials in Vantage, that's the main motivation for me to have a better overview of the materials used. Also being able to adjust material properties later on would be great. And as a special case, meshes with Vraylightmaterial that I use as a replacement for mesh-lights, which are currently not supported. If one could adjust intensity and color on them, this would help to fine tune the illumination in the scene as well. I think about in the future to switch complete configurations (meaning to switch geometry-sets, material-sets, or light-sets). Not sure though if Vantage would be the right tool to do that, or if the Vray App SDK to enhance any other tool would be the better choice for that.

[Robert1977]

Dear Vladimir, I have another question:

Grouping of objects. Should I create another thread for this?

[vladimir.nedev]

Dear Vladimir, I have another question:

Grouping of objects. Should I create another thread for this?

Yes, please, better to have a separate thread.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

Actually yes I would like to exchange the materials in Vantage, that's the main motivation for me to have a better overview of the materials used.

Note that our current code would break apart if you change your 3dsMax scene, re-export the .vrscene and then load a .vantage file with material assignments for that scene.
Your assigned materials might get scrambled.
This is something we have to fix before this feature is production ready.

If we implement the deduplication above, this would also break the material assignments, even if you don't reexport the .vrscene.
This applied only to .vantage files created without this deduplication present.

Also being able to adjust material properties later on would be great. And as a special case, meshes with Vraylightmaterial that I use as a replacement for mesh-lights, which are currently not supported. If one could adjust intensity and color on them, this would help to fine tune the illumination in the scene as well.

This is something planned, yes, but not sure when it will happen.
Can't you use the live link for now and have everything stored in the 3dsMax scene ?

I think about in the future to switch complete configurations (meaning to switch geometry-sets, material-sets, or light-sets). Not sure though if Vantage would be the right tool to do that, or if the Vray App SDK to enhance any other tool would be the better choice for that.

We are considering "variations" support in Vantage, yes. It will be native, no need to code it using App SDK.
If you can explain more about your end goal, i.e. how you would like to combine these different sets, it might help us design the system so it fits your needs.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[Robert1977]

We are considering "variations" support in Vantage, yes. It will be native, no need to code it using App SDK.
If you can explain more about your end goal, i.e. how you would like to combine these different sets, it might help us design the system so it fits your needs.

Virtual aircraft walk-through with customers on the Desktop:

• Trigger per button an animation or a switch that opens lavatory doors, turn down seats, open overhead stowage compartments to show the interior.
• Show different seat models, which also switch dependent models of the seats (class separators etc.)
• Switch or animate (back and forth switch) between different light-sets (color and intensity of interior lights, exterior sun and sky)

Design review:

• switch between different model variants (hatrack contours, etc.) inside a scene
• switch between different materials on the models
• switch between different light-sets

Because of the heavy data we have, we organize in 3dsmax a whole cabin with different xrefscenes for seats, sidewalls, ceiling, lavatories and so on.
Because of that, a change in the scene in 3dsmax would require to open the xrefscene and update it in 3dsmax.

We organize everything with layers (geometrical variants and light properties for different light-setups), that are then configured using scene-states in 3DSMax, since we have to switch multiple things at the same time.
A system like scene states support together with layer structure support would probably beneficial in Vantage.

Priority one would be geometric switches (layer visibility), second would be light properties. third material properties.

This is something planned, yes, but not sure when it will happen.
Can't you use the live link for now and have everything stored in the 3dsMax scene ?

Because of our organization with xref-scenes and xref-object-materials, I didn't try that yet, since the update in 3dsmax is a bit time consuming in that case, if we do not want to merge the scene.

If we implement the deduplication above, this would also break the material assignments, even if you don't reexport the .vrscene.
This applied only to .vantage files created without this deduplication present.

What if you don't break deduplication, but filter the material properties to just show the unique materials? Or, not sure, but couldn't you keep the specific object properties at the objects and not in the materials? Probably not possible because of the mesh and material compilation and optimization of the vrscene-format or because of the speed of raytracing? Maybe another solution would be to have a toggle to ignore the per object properties completely during export, since they might be used only for offline-rendering and compositing, but not necessary for real time rendering? And sometimes we even forgot that we have these settings still set.