VRAY Proxies without material

[Snoen]

Hi
I am trying to replace a RPC in Revit with a Proxy that I have saved from 3DSMAX. The table & chairs in MAX are one Editable Poly with individually material ID's, and when I pick material from object, the material looks fine in the Material Editor. But when I render it, no real material are shown (see attachment)

Thanks in advance

//Niels

[Ana Lyubenova]

Hi Niels,

I'm pasting my response here as well:
Once you override an RPC with .vrmesh in V-Ray for Revit, the geometry will appear in different colors representing the material IDs. I.e. there will be no materials. You need to drag & drop .vrmat materials over each color.
You can export the V-Ray materials from 3Ds Max using the vrmat converter (https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...Rmat+Converter). And then drag&drop them over the RPC proxy materials in V-Ray for Revit.
Note that the vrmesh format doesn't keep any other material info besides the material IDs and UV mapping.

Revit does not allow us to place any external objects in the viewport (proxies are external objects). Therefore, we use RPCs as stand-ins. We attach vrmesh files to the RPCs and get the result only at render time. There is no way to see the proxies in the Revit viewport the way we see RPCs.
A suggested workflow would be: place RPCs at the places where you want the proxies to stay. Run V-Ray Interactive rendering. Override the RPCs with proxies and adjust the proxies to match the scale of the image.

Best,
Ana

[Glenn Arne]

Hi Niels,

I'm pasting my response here as well:
Once you override an RPC with .vrmesh in V-Ray for Revit, the geometry will appear in different colors representing the material IDs. I.e. there will be no materials. You need to drag & drop .vrmat materials over each color.
You can export the V-Ray materials from 3Ds Max using the vrmat converter (https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...Rmat+Converter). And then drag&drop them over the RPC proxy materials in V-Ray for Revit.
Note that the vrmesh format doesn't keep any other material info besides the material IDs and UV mapping.

Revit does not allow us to place any external objects in the viewport (proxies are external objects). Therefore, we use RPCs as stand-ins. We attach vrmesh files to the RPCs and get the result only at render time. There is no way to see the proxies in the Revit viewport the way we see RPCs.
A suggested workflow would be: place RPCs at the places where you want the proxies to stay. Run V-Ray Interactive rendering. Override the RPCs with proxies and adjust the proxies to match the scale of the image.

Best,
Ana

Is it possible to achieve a random variation of the height of .vrmeshes/proxies? Specifically, it'd be nice to have when rendering trees, so that each tree doesn't have the same height.

[Ana Lyubenova]

Yes, here is how:
1. Have a few RPC trees of different type
2. Override them with the same .vrmesh
3. Use the proxy scale and rotation parameters

An example: if you have 3 types of RPC trees and you override them with the same proxy, you can setup 3 different heights etc.

Best,
Ana

[Glenn Arne]

Yes, here is how:
1. Have a few RPC trees of different type
2. Override them with the same .vrmesh
3. Use the proxy scale and rotation parameters

An example: if you have 3 types of RPC trees and you override them with the same proxy, you can setup 3 different heights etc.

Best,
Ana

That's not very convenient, especially with a larger group of trees. First, it's a manual process so it's not true random. Second, it also won't work if I have a model where there's a group where the trees need to be the same kind, unless I create various types of one kind of tree. It'd increase the complexity of the model (which is used for construction drawings and detailing, so needs to be accurate) just to improve the quality of the render. Not really a viable solution.

Appreciate the quick and attentative replies though!

[Ana Lyubenova]

Currently, that's the way you can make it. And it's enough to do it only once, then export the V-Ray Proxies settings and simply import them in further projects.
No matter how many RPCs you will put, you can always hide them from your Revit drawings ; )

[Glenn Arne]

Currently, that's the way you can make it. And it's enough to do it only once, then export the V-Ray Proxies settings and simply import them in further projects.
No matter how many RPCs you will put, you can always hide them from your Revit drawings ; )

Yes, but say that I want to create a forest, which has say, 15 birches, 15 alders and 15 oaks. When making construction plans (landscape work), I would tag each tree with a code, to indicate it's species and to keep the model simple in Revit, I would keep each tree species a single type. However, in the renders, I wouldn't want each oak to be the same height, as that would look very unnatural, but I'd like some variation, so that every oak is, for instance, between 14 and 18 m tall, and a similar approach for the the other two species of tree.

The way you describe is I'd need to create subtypes for all the different heights of trees I'd like, and that not only becomes cumbersome, but also messes up scheduling. So, consider this a feature request then, a way to randomly vary the size of a vrmesh when linked to a specific RPC/family type in the Revit model.

[Ana Lyubenova]

I agree. We have considered it some time ago. It's a matter of time until we implement it and the workaround until then is the one I told you.
Thank you, Glenn!

[Glenn Arne]

I agree. We have considered it some time ago. It's a matter of time until we implement it and the workaround until then is the one I told you.
Thank you, Glenn!

Has there been any update regarding this in upcoming V-Ray for Revit-versions? Still can't see anything related in v.3.7

[Ana Lyubenova]

Hey Glenn,

This is in the beta (v.4.0) which is currently available to all our V-Ray 3.x users.

Best,
Ana