Autodesk Material support in VRay 2?

[cgrant3d]

I keep hoping that I'm going to see something posted somewhere about Autodesk Material support in VRay 2. So much of the work we do comes from Revit (which when using FBX exports Autodesk Mats) now that it's become a pretty big hassle to *have* to convert materials before any renderings.

Any word on whether this will be supported?

[Nicinus]

Was this discussed elsewhere? I'm also interested in a solution for simplifying material management between Revit and Max.

Would it be impossible to do it the other way around, making some form of library plugin to let Revit use Vray materials? Better yet, ever considered a Vray for Revit?

[dmf-123]

I imagine it would be inefficient to render the Arch & Design materials with Vray, since the Vray materials are optimized and built specifically to interface with Vray. But I agree something should be done. Having to constantly manage materials throughout the project is messy.

The simplest solution in my mind would be some sort of link between materials. So that when Vray sees an Revit materials, it substitutes a corresponding Vray material at rendertime, that the user specifies. That way you could set it up once and be done with it.

Seems to me this would be much easier for the Chaos guys to code, than any other solution...does that seem a plausible to others...?

[Nicinus]

I've searched but haven't found anything official (or inofficial) on terms of a Revit strategy from Chaos. On one hand I can understand that Vray may be more focused on professional visualizers and considered too complicated for the average Revit demographics, but the problem is, the traditional workflow AutoCad -> Max will eventually be replaced by Revit -> Max. I for one thinks this is good, as there will be less monotonic work in converting the drawings to 3D, but without a Vray workflow it will be very hard in the long term to justify another platform than Mentalray. The more CAD operators and architects gets up to speed with Revit, the more they will want to be involved in specifying basic materials.

[dmf-123]

Well said.

[vlado]

There are two approaches to that; one is to try and use MetaSL to get the exact rendering of the materials. This might be slower than the second approach, which is to convert those materials on the fly to V-Ray equivalents (perhaps not exactly the same but, looking similar enough, like we do for the Arch&Design materials). Which approach would be more useful? We have done work towards both of these, but eventually we will have to choose one way or the other.

Best regards,
Vlado

[cgrant3d]

I'm guessing (maybe a poll is in order to get better results) that for most of us who work with Revit files we're not getting very complex shaders from the Architects/Designers so an "exact" MetaSL based shader might not be necessary. But it's getting to the point where so much work is being done in Revit and materials are being setup / tested by the Architects in Revit that getting the file into 3ds Max (and re-linking/updating several times before deadline) has become a significant production problem.

[vlado]

But it's getting to the point where so much work is being done in Revit and materials are being setup / tested by the Architects in Revit that getting the file into 3ds Max (and re-linking/updating several times before deadline) has become a significant production problem.

Yes, we understand this... Which is why we are looking at what options we have to make this easier A poll might be a good idea actually...

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

So I created a poll here: http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...materials-poll

If you can put your vote, it will be very helpful.

Best regards,
Vlado

[AbnRanger]

There are two approaches to that; one is to try and use MetaSL to get the exact rendering of the materials. This might be slower than the second approach, which is to convert those materials on the fly to V-Ray equivalents (perhaps not exactly the same but, looking similar enough, like we do for the Arch&Design materials). Which approach would be more useful? We have done work towards both of these, but eventually we will have to choose one way or the other.

Best regards,
Vlado

Vlado, I thought Autodesk converted most of its standard materials to MetaSl in Max 2011...as I recall some mention of this in the feature list, last year. If that is the case, then it seems to make the most sense to go the MetaSl route.