Transfer Vray scene to Modo

[luis.alcala86]

Hello everyone,

Back on the boards for some knowledge and wanted to pick you guy's and gals brains. Currently working on a project with a team member but we are using different programs. I am on Maya 2018 + Vray 3.6 and he is using the latest version of Modo. He will be getting Vray very soon and I was wondering if anyone had a workflow or suggestions on how to transfer scenes between both platforms if we are both using Vray. Can I export .vrscenes from Maya and import into Modo? Will all my stuff transfer over to his Modo scenes so he can make additional changes and tweaks if he needs to.

Any knowledge on this would be great.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Hey Luis
I own both V-ray plugins in Maya/Modo.. importing vrscenes in Vray for Modo works nicely, it is probably the best V-ray plugin in this
He will still have to do few things manually, complex shading networks for example won't match 100% specially if you rely on Maya native maps a lot.
Another option is referencing V-ray scenes, which works nicely. Say you have an asset that is textured and ready for rendering, you can export it as vrscene. Then referencing it in Modo it will look exactly like how you prepared it in Maya
But thing with referencing vrscene is that you cannot edit materials
Would be probably best if both of you use V-ray Next.. Many things have changed since 3.6 and this might affect your workflow

If you face issues let me know

Best,
Muhammed

[luis.alcala86]

Hey Muhammed,

Thank you for replying. Thats great to hear. Any suggestions that you have or workflow to follow on exporting out of Maya and into Modo? Things to avoid? Problems that might arise?

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Usually I export FBX and vrscene files from Maya, importing the vrscene crashes Modo 13.0 and 12.2, he will need Modo 13.1 or Modo 12.0
Once he loads the vrscene inside of Modo, he will get all the lighting and render settings, then he can replace the Geometry from the FBX
Materials will automatically apply to the new Goemotry, using FBX allows for having quad polygons as vrscene geometry will be loaded as static meshes that is triangulated inside Modo
Another thing about FBX is that it contains all cameras, while vrscene will only have a single render camera..
From there he can do any necessary touches to shading, so it matches Maya's
depending on the scene this should be fairly easy to do. biggest issue is that Maya uses CM as internal scene units(which you can change in preferences) while Modo uses Meters(you cannot change that)
Maybe if you use meters as internal scene units in Maya, this will avoid few more issues.

Best,
Muhammed

[luis.alcala86]

Nice man thank you for the knowledge. We will be doing some testing next week and see how everything plays out and I will update with the results.

[luis.alcala86]

Hello Muhammed,

Another question for you. What is the process for exporting a vray scene from Modo and into Maya? I mean, the process you follow? I tried export a .vrscene from Modo and I imported into Maya using the VrayScene Manager. The Geometry is referenced in, of course, and it renders ok (have to repoint the textures). When I try to import the shaders from the scene it makes everything into a material sample ?????. Does the importer not read materials properly if they are too complex or have images attached to them?

Sorry for all the questions just trying to wrap my head around this,

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Hi Luis,

Feel free to share any questions you have
Moving a scene from Vray for Modo to Maya, I would do the shading and lighting from scratch.. Maya plugin doesn't offer the same accuracy/flexibility you have in Modo, when it comes to importing vrscenes
You can reference scenes, but if you want control over shading or lighting you might need to do it manually

Does the importer not read materials properly if they are too complex or have images attached to them?

As far as I know the only V-ray plugin that can do this is V-ray for Modo
I did try to import vrscenes in Maya before, it creates plugin nodes and it is quite a big mess
I would much prefer to set things up manually from an FBX
So this workflow is only one way to Modo,

Best,
Muhammed

[boyan]

Hey,

Luis, you can export the vrscene file from Modo by using V-ray Standalone menu option. Maya import tool used vrscene reference tool, the same you can find it in Modo too, however V-Ray for Modo has had unique vrscene import plugin allows to get materials,textures, geometries into Shader tree.

Cheers,

[luis.alcala86]

Testing this today guys. Will update later on the day

[luis.alcala86]

Just ran a test with my buddy Dan. Exported the .vrscene to Modo and it brought in the camera, render settings, lights and geometry. It did, however, have issues with my shader. I am running a velvet-suede material in Maya + Vray and the shading network looks like the attached image. When its imported into MODO, the material no longer looks orange, but instead it get a base white assigned. Taking a look at my shading network, are there some nodes that I am using that wont translate into MODO? What are you guy's thoughts?

[Muhammed_Hamed]

The falloff texture has no curve in Vray for Modo, and there is no Remap HSV
These you will need to adjust manually, other than that you will get very close results
are you using Vray Next in both DCCs?

[luis.alcala86]

Hello Muhammed,

Hmmm, that's interesting to know. Yes, we are running Vray Next on both systems. Both are running the latest versions of them. Going to test again tomorrow morning at work and see how close we can get to achieving similar results and getting a whole scene through with your suggestions.

Will post results and findings after we have given it a shot.

[vladimir.nedev]

The .vrscene import functionality in Modo was designed to be used with .vrscenes exported from V-Ray for 3ds Max.
The idea being that a lot of assets around the internet are in V-Ray for 3ds Max scenes.

You will have troubles when importing a scene exported from V-Ray for Maya, since a different set of nodes has to be supported on import.

The Maya place2dTexture won't be imported so your UV placement will not be correct, the falloff curve like Muhammed said, also the Maya layered texture.
Also many other Maya utility nodes that don't have a direct equivalent in Modo/V-Ray for Modo.

I am sorry, but we won't be extending .vrscene import functionality with support for V-Ray for Maya .vrscene files any time soon.
Usually assets are created in Modo and then rendered in Maya, since Maya has better viewport performance and better animation/rigging/hair.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev