vray proxy materials

[janko22]

Hi,
Is there a way to export assigned materials when converting mesh to vray proxy? When I convert my textured mesh to vray proxy and load it, it doesn't have any materials assigned. Is this a bug or should it work like this?
Thanks

[vladimir.nedev]

The materials are not stored in the vrmesh file, only material tags(and optionally part and selection tags), so you can assign new materials when you load the proxy in a new scene.
If you chose the "Auto create V-Ray proxy items' option, the materials should stay the same with a few limitations :

- if you are merging many items in a single vrmesh file and have shader tree masks on these items (or on groups that contain them) these masks will no longer
affect the new V-Ray proxy item in the scene
- if you have instances in the scene and convert them to a V-Ray proxy, their material won't be affected by shader tree masks on their source mesh

One possible workflow if you are using the vrmesh file only in MODO, would be to create a preset material from the materials that affected the proxy when you exported it.
A material preset in MODO can have many masks with all the materials for the different parts of the proxy (and textures).
In any new scene you can use the material preset to directly apply the materials, and possibly modify them in the local scene copy of the material preset.

Note : When you are viewing the proxy in the MODO OpenGL view-port, the materials won't always be assigned correctly, although the V-Ray render will be correct.
This is something I need to fix eventually. The fix will only work when you have chosen the "Render geometry" preview type.

Also when a vrmesh file was created from source geometry that had more than 1 UV map, the OpenGL view-port might not use the correct UV map when showing textures
I am not sure whether that is a MODO bug or I did something inccorectly.

Finally, if you want your geometry back, you can right click on the "V-Ray Proxy" item -> Change Type -> Mesh. You need to select the "Render Geometry" preview
type first. Also note that internally the vrmesh file splits the mesh into convenient "voxels" for rendering, so when you import it as a MODO mesh it might be disconnected.
Also the above problem with materials not being assigned to the correct faces, will also be present when you convert to MODO mesh.
In any case, it is best to have a backup of the original mesh, and not rely on being able to convert the vrmesh without problems.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[vladimir.nedev]

Some other notes on V-Ray proxies :

- if your proxies disappear from the GL view-port, you probably unchecked "Show Locators" in the Visibility -> Item visibility options for the view-port

- hair and particles are only visible when you select the V-Ray proxy item, this is for performance reasons mostly

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[janko22]

Great. Thank you.
And thanks for implementing vraymesh creation in modo.

[pixelwerk]

I've tried with around 100 different methods, but it seems I'm too stupid for the mentioned workflow Mesh -> VRmesh ->Material Preset -> Proxy Load.
I've added a small video with my workflow. What am i doing wrong?VRAY Proxy Workflow

[vladimir.nedev]

The "Create proxy" command is broken in the 3.00.05 build, it won't export materials tags and preview geometry, that might be the problem.
I'll watch the video once it finishes downloading, uploaded.net seems quite slow for me, it seems https://www.wetransfer.com/ works much better.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[pixelwerk]

That's probably the "solution", because with the previous version it worked for me. Didn't know that it's broken and thought i had something like a stroke, because it didn't work anymore

Btw. It would be nice if the export-proxy-dialog, similar to the MAYA-version, would already fill in the name of the selected mesh or folder-name as prefix for the .vrmesh-file if saved as single file.

[vladimir.nedev]

So the "Create proxy" command exporting .vrmesh files with no preview/no material tags issue is fixed in the 2015-03-05 nightly build, as well as for the coming 3.00.06 open beta build.

For the auto-naming - do you mean changing "combined" to the name of the first item to export in the current selection ? I have to check if that would be possible.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[pixelwerk]

Yes, I found this really useful. As well as the information above, about how many objects were selected. I don't know if this is possible, but these two things i found really helpful in the past

[kubbek]

In modo 10 you can now drag V-Ray proxy to a new scene and materials associated with this proxy will move with it. You can also save a V-Ray proxy item as an assembly and when you drag it to a new scene it comes with materials. It works also with deffered meshes. It was a very important discovery for me as it wasn't working this way earlier so maybe someone finds this information useful.

Best,
Jakub