Importing Vismat or VRmat in the hypershade

[Phantom-Studio]

Hello everybody,

Well I am glad to see this new Vismat feature in VRay 3.0 for maya, but I'm a bit confused about the fact that we can only edit them through the Vismat Editor...

There is really no way to import them in the hypershade's work area or node graph and then be able to edit them in the attribute editor?

Because for example we love the attribute spreadsheet to massively manage all our shaders... and obviously Vismat doesn't work like this.

Thanks in advance for you help.
Regards

[vlado]

For .vrmat materials we are using shading nodes that do not have an equivalent in Maya nodes and some constructs that we use in those materials cannot be well represented in the Maya DAG.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Phantom-Studio]

Hello Vlado,

and thanks a lot for your explanation!
I'm affraid that vrmats will be to limited for us as we also need sometimes during the process to move the project's location and change files texture path or even texture file's extension (for example from jpeg to tx). So it could just be hell if we need to do this manually...

Hope you plan a solution for those cases.
Regards.

[vlado]

I'm affraid that vrmats will be to limited for us as we also need sometimes during the process to move the project's location and change files texture path or even texture file's extension (for example from jpeg to tx). So it could just be hell if we need to do this manually...

There is that indeed. I don't have a good solution for that right now unfortunately. You can also use .vrscene files for the same purpose - the VRayVRrmatMtl allows you to use materials from .vrscene files and those are regular text files that you can parse and edit, if needed.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Phantom-Studio]

Yep,

We already use .vrscene for that purpose but it doesn't understand VRayBlend, VRay2Sided, VRayLightMtl, etc... All we get after importing is a black brdf...
Thanks again for your help.

Regards.

[Phantom-Studio]

Hello again Vlado,

Just a quick question please :
- Is there a way to get a VRayMtl instead of a VRayPluginNodeMtl when we import material from a .vrscene file?

VRayMtl is more user-friendly (and also compatible with our own scripted tools...).

Regards.

[t.petrov]

Can you share vrscene files that fail to import correctly (with VRayBlend, VRay2Sided, VRayLightMtl, etc)?

The VRayPluginNodeMtl is used when the node in the vrscene doesn't have a corresponding node in Maya.
Keep in mind that V-Ray for Maya and V-Ray for 3dsMax might use different vrscene plugins(nodes) for the same material.
For example VRayMtl in Max is exported as single BRDFVRayMtl, but in Maya the exporter generates several BRDF plugins and groups them together with a BRDFLayered plugin.

[Phantom-Studio]

Hi Petrov,

Obviously when I import a .vrscene that is given to us from Max in Maya it doesn't recognize BRDFVRayMtl so what I get in the Hypershade instead of a VrayMtl is a VRayPluginNodeMtl...
VRayPluginNodeMtl doesn't have bump, so I loose bump texture and also RGlossiness too... weird thing.

Vrmats are really useless for us as we have no way to manage tons of them in the Attribute SpreadSheet. For example, batch convert texture file to .tx and relink them, change material subdivs, etc...

Also one weird thing with importing VrayBlend :
- the base mat goes in the coat1
- the coat 1 goes in the coat2
- etc...
- and the base became blank.

Any idea?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards.

[t.petrov]

Obviously when I import a .vrscene that is given to us from Max in Maya it doesn't recognize BRDFVRayMtl so what I get in the Hypershade instead of a VrayMtl is a VRayPluginNodeMtl...
VRayPluginNodeMtl doesn't have bump, so I loose bump texture and also RGlossiness too... weird thing.

This happens, because the VRayMtl in Max and Maya use different plugins under the hood and they are not 100% the same, so I don't think we can fix this problem.
For the bump, you can always use the VRayBump material.
About the rglossiness, I'm not too sure I understand what the problem is.

Also one weird thing with importing VrayBlend :
- the base mat goes in the coat1
- the coat 1 goes in the coat2
- etc...
- and the base became blank.

This happens because the exporters of vrscene files always put a weight for the base material, but there is no weight control for the base material in the UI.
So the importer is written to be safe and so if it meats a material that has a non-one weight for the base material it will still work.
Probably we can fix this problem if it is bothering you too much.
But there should be no difference in the look of the material.
It will render exactly the same as if the base material is connected instead.

[Phantom-Studio]

Hi again Petrov,

And thanks a lot for your help.

About VrayBlend, it's fine for us.
About loosing RGlossiness connection (texture or value), it's not so problematic.

But using VRayPluginNodeMtl (even combined with a VrayBump) is really not great for our workflow...
Perhaps the best way is to create a script (in MEL?) which will transfert attributes (values and connections) from the VRayPluginNodeMtl imported to a newly created VrayMtl inside Maya...
And doing this for all the VRayPluginNodeMtl in the scene.

What do you think about that?

Regards.

[t.petrov]

It should be doable in MEL or Python.

[t.petrov]

About loosing RGlossiness connection (texture or value), it's not so problematic.

Can you give a bit more details here?
I far as I can see the reflection and refraction glossiness parameters work as they should in the BRDFVrayMtl!

[Phantom-Studio]

Well about the RGlossiness :

When I import in maya the .vrscene, the BRDFVRayMtl give me a VRayPluginNodeMtl instead of a VRayMtl.
And in Max if something is plugged in the RGlossiness or set to a custom value, in Maya I have nothing plugged in the RGlossiness (no texture exported at all) of the VRayPluginNodeMtl and it is set to 1 (default)...

About the script:

To get attributes from the VRayPluginNodeMtl and set them in a new VRayMtl, as far as I can see they don't share same attributes name so it will be not really clean to script...

For example for the "RGlossiness" :
- In VRayPluginNodeMtl : ".reflect_glossiness"
- In VRayMtl : ".reflectionGlossiness"

Damn!

Regards.

[t.petrov]

When I import in maya the .vrscene, the BRDFVRayMtl give me a VRayPluginNodeMtl instead of a VRayMtl.
And in Max if something is plugged in the RGlossiness or set to a custom value, in Maya I have nothing plugged in the RGlossiness (no texture exported at all) of the VRayPluginNodeMtl and it is set to 1 (default)...

Can you send me a minimal max file or preferably vrscene file?

To get attributes from the VRayPluginNodeMtl and set them in a new VRayMtl, as far as I can see they don't share same attributes name so it will be not really clean to script...

For example for the "RGlossiness" :
- In VRayPluginNodeMtl : ".reflect_glossiness"
- In VRayMtl : ".reflectionGlossiness"

Yes, unfortunately you'll have to do a manual mapping between the attributes.

[Phantom-Studio]

Find attachment containing :

- a test.vrscene with a bitmap plugged in the RGlossiness.
- a file with attributes' correspondances between VRayPluginNodeMtl and VRayMtl.

Obviously it will be hard to script for us.

Regards.