THANK you for the "double sided" feature of VRayDirt!

[Art48]

Just want to say thank you for that!
I just had this messy black areas again with CAD geometry and I saw this checkbox by accident and it wasnt documented in the online help yet. checked it. Whatever it does exactly - it fixed my problem and gave me a perfect AO rendering! Thanks!

[super gnu]

good to know

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Just want to say thank you for that!
I just had this messy black areas again with CAD geometry and I saw this checkbox by accident and it wasnt documented in the online help yet. checked it. Whatever it does exactly - it fixed my problem and gave me a perfect AO rendering! Thanks!

When double sided option is activated VrayDirt is calculated even if the normal of the surface is facing away.
If that option resolves any issues then surely some of the faces in the scene are flipped away.

[super gnu]

the more tools and techniques we can get that help vray deal painlessly with flipped/double geometry the better. cleaning up damn cad and sketchup models is a pain in the arse.

related to this, does vray for sketchup deal with double faces differently? i ask because ive never met a sketchup model that wasnt modelled with double faces everywhere.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Fortunately V-Ray has a lot of tools for resolving such issues

[vlado]

related to this, does vray for sketchup deal with double faces differently? i ask because ive never met a sketchup model that wasnt modelled with double faces everywhere.

Yes, I think the guys over in the US spent some time to figure this out and it should work fine.

Best regards,
Vlado

[super gnu]

be good to transfer any extra bits they fixed over to the max branch of vray.. be great if it just worked fine in all cases with double/flipped faces.. i know its bad form to have a crap model, but sometimes i get given horrible stuff exported from sketchup, and even if it looks ok in the viewport, i invariably have to remodel, cos i know its never gonna render nice.

[eyepiz]

be good to transfer any extra bits they fixed over to the max branch of vray.

That would be awesome! I deal with imported CAD geometry all day, and overlapping and flipped faces are by biggest issue, I spent hours flipping faces.

[alexyork]

That would be awesome! I deal with imported CAD geometry all day, and overlapping and flipped faces are by biggest issue, I spent hours flipping faces.

SketchUp = FlippedFacesSimulator. Maybe 60% of my projects involve importing skps or exported models from SketchUp and it's always an incredibly painful process, for this main reason of the flipped faces. According to some very direct sources, Trimble have basically zero interest in improving this situation with max... and naturally every time they release a new version of skp the importer for max gets broken, so you have to backsave to 2014 etc... it's painful.

[Vizioen]

SketchUp = FlippedFacesSimulator. Maybe 60% of my projects involve importing skps or exported models from SketchUp and it's always an incredibly painful process, for this main reason of the flipped faces. According to some very direct sources, Trimble have basically zero interest in improving this situation with max... and naturally every time they release a new version of skp the importer for max gets broken, so you have to backsave to 2014 etc... it's painful.

I draw most of my models in SketchUp, and never have flipped faces, that's because I know how to draw in SketchUp and I draw in monochrome mode, which means that in the rare occasion that I have flipped faces I can flip them in the right direction. There's only one case in which SketchUp doesn't import well and normals are messed and that's when objects are flipped along an axis (aka. Sketchup's mirror), which translates into the mirror tool of 3DSmax when imported and we all know what that does to your normals. I agree on the skp importer getting broken with each new version. I was already looking for a save plugin which saves to old versions, didn't try it out yet: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=33441

[alexyork]

I draw most of my models in SketchUp, and never have flipped faces, that's because I know how to draw in SketchUp and I draw in monochrome mode, which means that in the rare occasion that I have flipped faces I can flip them in the right direction. There's only one case in which SketchUp doesn't import well and normals are messed and that's when objects are flipped along an axis (aka. Sketchup's mirror), which translates into the mirror tool of 3DSmax when imported and we all know what that does to your normals. I agree on the skp importer getting broken with each new version. I was already looking for a save plugin which saves to old versions, didn't try it out yet: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=33441

I wish my architecture practice clients would work in this way but they all use SketchUp's double-sided material "feature", which is the main issue I've found. I'm slowly but surely educating them on how to model cleanly to avoid these issues, because ultimately if their model is a mess it will take us longer to produce the images, which costs them more money, so it's in everyone's interests to optimise.