Vray material library

[Filib]

Hey everyone,
i use 3ds max + Vray since a few years now and swapped between a lot of programs like Maya, Modo and Cinema4D and i was always wondering why there is no good way to save or store materials from different scences to use them again later. I really hate the way 3ds max give us the chance to save those materials... is there any good way or plugin or a way chaosgroup can do some small gui with some basic features? Like saving materials with textures at diffrent locations?


THANKS

[sheehan_partners_nm]

I second that. 3ds Max has not the best material library management out there...

[^Lele^]

vrmats should allow most translation (provided one doesn't get too funky...), but be warned, the format is quite old, so perhaps not *everything* is supported.
However, do let us know if it works for what you need.

[Kim Laughton]

A Vray specific material library would be amazing - something that materials can easily be added to and would auto render nice previews.

The built in max tools are nice for creation but bad for organisation and preview. I use the Siger library which has some really nice materials, but the UI for accessing them is frustrating, especially for user presets.

Maybe because simple preview rendering is such a huge part of a material library it's difficult for a third party to add on - maybe it needs to be Chaos Group? I haven't tried the VRscans library, but presumably some UI work has already been carried out there.

[sheehan_partners_nm]

Maybe this idea can evolve in a different all new commercial product from Chaos, a material library/ asset manager, something like that....better than the ones that comes with 3ds max.
I'd be happy to test it and potentially buy it if it would make my life easier and better.

[Nicinus]

There are a number of alternatives that are popping up such as Project Manager, Connecter, and I think iToo has something too or I may be mixing them up with someone else. Project Manager is very capable but somewhat lacking in documentation. The developer is very active though.

What I find surprising is that there isn't more of a market for the actual materials. Companies like Evermotion makes everything from material, textures to complete scenes, but when it comes to materials it is up to sites like vraymaterials.de, which are of very varying quality. There is Siger, which are good, but they are a gazillion variations of pretty few base materials.

[sheehan_partners_nm]

There are a number of alternatives that are popping up such as Project Manager, Connecter, and I think iToo has something too or I may be mixing them up with someone else. Project Manager is very capable but somewhat lacking in documentation. The developer is very active though.

What I find surprising is that there isn't more of a market for the actual materials. Companies like Evermotion makes everything from material, textures to complete scenes, but when it comes to materials it is up to sites like vraymaterials.de, which are of very varying quality. There is Siger, which are good, but they are a gazillion variations of pretty few base materials.

I agree with everything you said! Would be ideal for my needs, a brand new material editor made from Chaos , optimized for V-Ray, where you can see the materials you create with nicer previews compared to the one from max, and specially a better library management. I hate how you need to create a whole new library just to save a single material if you want to share it with a friend. That's non sense to me...

[Filib]

yeah that's what we need!

[caypiranha]

mh, strange, I amusing Maya and Max and I must say, that I am very satisfied with Max?s possibilities to keep Materiallibaries organized. They load automatically everytime I open a Maxinstance and i can
read even whole scenes to seek all materials ozut of it. Wonderful and very useful. Also wile there are changes to some of these Libs, Max is asking you if you like to resave them as well again! Thank yes plz... ! =)
In comparison to Maya there is: NOTHING like this... Importing and exporting .ma files with materials inside.. its totaly unhandy. Working Years with Maya there is no such comfortable way to work like in Max (other Progs I cant say, since I haven?t worked with them)

Other Programs I don?t know, but I have nothing to moan about the Max?s Matlibs.

[caypiranha]

I agree with everything you said! Would be ideal for my needs, a brand new material editor made from Chaos , optimized for V-Ray, where you can see the materials you create with nicer previews compared to the one from max, and specially a better library management. I hate how you need to create a whole new library just to save a single material if you want to share it with a friend. That's non sense to me...

But you have to save a Material anyway! And therefore you just save a lbary and drag?n?drop that mat for your friend inside... and maybe there will be another one as well... so you already are having a matlibary for this purpose! Thats great! You/we are already spoiled with this Funktion wich is already like a hug in your workflow compared to other 3D Programms... =) (do it in Maya and you know what I mean... this is awful!)

[Dave_Wortley]

The interface is awful but you can save to material library files easily in 3dsmax.

[Kim Laughton]

Perhaps a useful partial step would be improved material previews? Hate to mention the C word but it seems they have had useful material previews inside the Max interface for ages where as for V-ray you really don't get any idea what a material will look like until you render.

(edit - just seen from another thread that this is being improved...)

[sheehan_partners_nm]

Yea...look at those previews! Just compare them... Cant wait for this feature to be improved. Vlado mentioned smth similar to Vray for Sketchup and Rhino.

[Dave_Wortley]

Yea...look at those previews! Just compare them... Cant wait for this feature to be improved. Vlado mentioned smth similar to Vray for Sketchup and Rhino.

They may look prettier but if you are looking at a material technically. you will understand much more from the standard max shader ball.

The exceptions would be depending on how the light travels through the object and casts caustics etc...



For me having an advanced shader ball is more than just having a checkergrid around it... I want it to be easier to set the scale as certain materials work completely differently at different scales. I would like to have a Plane Object with thickness that I can specify in world units how thick it is so I can try to get the fog colour working predictably between the preview and my render.

[Morne]

You can always just set the scale (size of the shader ball) in the material editor. If I remember correctly the default is 3 meter (for glass thats a bit much). Just change the size of the ball to something like 20mm or even 10mm. This works great for seeing the effects of fog