VRayScene with MASH

[MarkWalker]

Hi Guys,

Is there a way to get the Maya MASH instancer to render a vrscene asset?
FYI attached screen shot. Vrscene file renders fine alone but wont render when instanced by MASH.
Any help would be great thanks.

Cheers.

[stezza]

Can I ask first why a VRscene file and not a proxy? Just for some back ground

[MarkWalker]

Hi,
Yeah I just did more testing, it does work with the vray proxy. The reason I like using vrscene is because it keeps the shaders when you make/export the file. Some assets I want to use have like almost 100 shaders. Yes I can spend 10min re connecting them all but I was just wondering if I can skip that using vrscene. Thanks.

[MarkWalker]

Also keeps the base scene clean, if im using proxy, there will be 1000 shaders in the scene if I pull in a bunch of tree/car assets etc. using vrscene for each asset contains the shaders to the vrscene file. If im making sense.

[stezza]

Ok cool, It does work if you create the MASH network with Geometry type set to Mesh rather than instancer

[MarkWalker]

hrm, they are rendering as the proxy display geometry. Just FYI I'm testing this using maya 2025 and vray nightly 70001_maya2025_x64_32816.

[hermit.crab]

hrm, they are rendering as the proxy display geometry. Just FYI I'm testing this using maya 2025 and vray nightly 70001_maya2025_x64_32816.

Try setting the Level of Detail to "Geometry".

EDIT: You can actually make MASH work with instances by setting the .vrscene's Load Mode to "Geometry".

[MarkWalker]

Try setting the Level of Detail to "Geometry".

EDIT: You can actually make MASH work with instances by setting the .vrscene's Load Mode to "Geometry".

Hi, Thanks for the reply.

Not having any luck. FYI attached a simple example. I'm using maya 2025.3 and Vray vray_adv_70001_maya2025_x64_32832.

No luck with MASH and Chaos Scatter. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
Mark.

[MarkWalker]

Additional info (I'm still testing this now), looks like it does work with MASH only on Vray CPU, so no GPU support by the look of it. But no luck with Chaos Scatter. Cheers,

[MarkWalker]

Also by the way, the latest vray 7 nightly (vray_adv_70001_maya2025_x64_32832) doesn't work with MASH on any maya geometry that has vray shaders on it. (so normal geo not proxy or vrscene)

[hermit.crab]

Additional info (I'm still testing this now), looks like it does work with MASH only on Vray CPU, so no GPU support by the look of it.

So it seems.

But no luck with Chaos Scatter.

I'm pretty sure scattering .vrscenes is not supported; however, I will confirm this after I get an answer from the developers.

EDIT: Confirmed.

Also by the way, the latest vray 7 nightly (vray_adv_70001_maya2025_x64_32832) doesn't work with MASH on any maya geometry that has vray shaders on it. (so normal geo not proxy or vrscene)

Tested this with the latest nightly (32835), since the one you are using is no longer available. No issues on my end.

Overall, your solution is to use VRayProxies (.vrmeshes) instead.

[MarkWalker]

Thanks for looking into this for me, very much appreciated. I'll set everything up to use VRayProxies. Only downside is having all the 1000s of shaders in the base scene, does bog down maya a bit but I can work with that.

Just updated to tonight's nightly 32834 and MASH works for me now. Thanks again!

Really looking forward to Vray 7 full release I'm loving it even in beta.

[damaggio]

That's why we need a checkbox option "Do not import shaders and textures" for assets that won't be tweaked.

[MarkWalker]

That's why we need a checkbox option "Do not import shaders and textures" for assets that won't be tweaked.

Yeah, would be good if VrayProxy .vrmesh could contain the vray shaders in the proxy file. No criticism to the devs though I feel vray is in a really good place right now.

[hermit.crab]

Yeah, would be good if VrayProxy .vrmesh could contain the vray shaders in the proxy file. No criticism to the devs though I feel vray is in a really good place right now.

There's an easy way to get the shaders from .vrscenes to .vrmeshes, through the material assignments file. Here's the process on a simple scene of 4 objects, each with a separate VRayMtl:

1. Export a .vrscene (Render Settings > Translator > Export to a .vrscene file) containing only the shaders' data (Separate files checkbox -> choose only materials, textures, bitmaps)
2. Export the objects as a proxy
3. Export an .XML file from the VRayProxy's Object Hierarchy rollout (right-click on the little notepad icon at the bottom left)
4. Open a fresh scene and import the VRayProxy
5. In the Material assignments file (VrayProxy > Material Assignment Overrides) load the .xml
6. in the Post Translate Python script paste the following (make sure the path uses "/" instead of " \ " - its a Maya thing):

from vray.utils import *
appendSceneContent("G:/path/to/scene/shaders.vrscene")

7. Render -> the VRayProxy should get the shaders from the .vrscene

More info on this docs page.