Can't Pack Project as expected

[andy_smith]

When I do the "Pack project" option and then open up the SKP file it creates, I check the file path editor or the materials tab and it is still looking to random folders/drives/subfolders for the individual assets. Surely the idea of packing the project is to have Vray copy all of its referenced assets into a single, new folder tree and update all the references to point to these assets?

How can we claim that the project has been "packed" if it's still referring to random drives? In my case, one of the objects I brought in but have got sitting outside the view of the render is an object with a material containing a map that is still looking to some unknown person's own computer: C:\Program Files\@Last Software\SketchUp 5\Materials\glass-tinted.jpg

I've NEVER had a folder in Program Files called "@Last Software" so:
1. How can my Vray be rendering it OK without access to that asset? and
2. How can we say the project is packed if this is happening?

If we all create every material from scratch then arguably this problem doesn't happen, but in reality, we all tend to borrow objects with materials from the 3D warehouse or other files, etc and they all refer back to random locations.

How can I take a SKP file with multiple meshes, materials, textures/maps and have VRay move/copy them all into a single folder structure and reference them there? This should be a basic function of the pack project process.

Thanks,
Andy

[Martinch]

Piggy-backing on Andy’s post. This happens to me, too. (Also when uploading a file to Chaos Cloud—it warns of a ton of broken links, like to someone else’s J:\ drive folders.) It would be great if packing a project worked exactly like Andy said above. File Path Editor shows a lot of red (broken) links, and yet it renders. From where? Cache? How does V-Ray find those files and yet fail to update their paths or pack them?

It might be a problem with SketchUp’s means of handling textures from 3D Warehouse or other imports, but I think the Pack Project command should take it into account.

Martin

[Martinch]

After a little more experimentation, I think it works as anticipated, but I needed to deal with file paths first.

Before packing I went into File Path Editor: Extensions Menu > V-Ray > File Path Editor.

I looked at what was green, yellow, and red. I selected all of the materials in yellow and chose [Archive & Repath] to move their location from the cache directory into my texture folder.

The red materials are missing. I found a workaround for some. I believe SketchUp is caching materials elsewhere, so for textures that were not rendering or appear to be missing in V-Ray, find them in the SketchUp materials palette. Edit that material in SketchUp. That brings up the "name" box and a link to your editing application; open it in the application and save that file to your texture folder. Then in the V-Ray File Path Editor, [Repath] that texture. If a texture is completely missing from SketchUp materials and causes V-Ray errors, find which V-Ray materials/channels it is assigned to and delete those paths. I had to do this with a Normal map that didn't import but still appeared to be assigned.

After all that, I packed the project to a zip folder on my desktop. Opening the SketchUp file from that project folder linked the textures to those in the folder, with the exception of some of the native V-Ray materials.

[andy_smith]

Can a ChaosGroup rep comment on the above? Do we need to manually repath all maps/proxies for every material that we copy/paste into a new SKP model?

Surely if V-Ray can render a map/material even when it says that the link is broken, it must have some kind of access to the asset, otherwise how does it render the material if it can’t see the maps?

Secondly, should this scenario work?:

• Multiple SKP files on my HDD with multiple proxies, meshes, materials and maps in each. All SKP files are open and can render happily.
• Maps are scattered randomly across my HDD in various drives, folders and sub folders but all are present and accessible to V-Ray.
• I copy and paste objects from each SKP into a new SKP project. V-Ray should bring in the objects and materials into the asset editor and should have file paths to the maps located in all the hundreds of folders and sub folders I mentioned below.
• The scene in the new SKP should render fine, correct?
• I should be able to pack the file and V-Ray should reach its tentacles out and vacuum up all those individual BMPs and maps and pack them up, correct?

Thirdly, is there some kind of button/action in V-Ray that allows you to take a material with texture slots and settings from an SKP file (where those BMP maps are scattered around the HDD) and save that material to a new location? It should allow you to name the material and it should save all the settings and maps into a new folder/sub folder structure. Essentially you’d be consolidating a material whose maps are spread far and wide, into a single file/folder so that you can ignore/delete the maps that were all over the place.
When I buy a new material from Poliigon or similar, the maps paths are all nice and tidy: I extract them all to a single sub folder within my materials folder. I then create the material in V-Ray and point V-Ray to the maps/BMPs in that one location.
But when I import an asset from another user’s SKP or from the 3D Warehouse or online, the maps for the materials are all over the place: they render fine but V-Ray claims not to have access to the maps. How is this possible and how is V-Ray rendering if the links are “broken”?

Thanks,
Andy

[andy_smith]

I looked at what was green, yellow, and red. I selected all of the materials in yellow and chose [Archive & Repath] to move their location from the cache directory into my texture folder.

Martin, let’s say your SKP file had 20 materials with a total of 100 maps (bump, displacement, diffuse, gloss, refl, etc), when you hit Archive and Repath, did V-Ray just vacuum up and dump all 100 maps into a single folder? Did that create a huge mess? Most folks probably keep the maps for a material in a sub folder for that material alone, not all in one big bin.

What happened in an example of a material where, say, the diffuse map and gloss map were in green but the bump map was in yellow? Did it leave you with a single material whose maps were scattered around your HDD: some that were accessible on your D drive and a bunch that - as you put it - V-Ray “moved” into the texture folder?

Andy

[georgi.georgiev]

Hi and apologies for the delayed response!

Kindly note that we cannot account for 3Dwarehouse assets and the way they have been uploaded. However, cached textures (yellow status) are part of the SKP file and V-Ray does not have any issues reading them. Essentially, they are not missing unlike assets with red status. Also, the Chaos Cloud message can be ignored in respect to cached textures and rest assured they will be rendered as expected.

Regarding the Pack Project function, once the archive has been created and it is opened on the same computer, it is expected that the initial filepaths are preserved and V-Ray uses those. If however, the project is opened on another machine where the same directories and assets do not exists, V-Ray's auto-resolver looks for the missing assets in the parent directory of the project file and re-paths them (in this case the unzipped folder).

[Martinch]

Andy- I’ve vacuumed up files using the Archive and Repath several times now on a large project. It copied the yellow and green files into a single directory intermingling all of them, and I think it turned the yellow cached files green. It also seems to me that, though painstaking, one could select specific files and Archive and Repath them to unique subdirectories (so taking multiple steps), while packing the project will lump all of them into one zipped folder which is useful for sharing. I am actually straddling MacOS and Windows machines—Mac for most of my pipeline except for getting to Unreal, and so far I’ve found having all of the files in a single directory extremely helpful because, of course, the path changes between the two OSes and it’s much simpler to re-point at one directory.

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi guys,

There are a couple of things you should know when archiving projects:

1. The Pack Project function does not change the file paths in the archived .skp.
   It just packs everything in a single folder and then zips it.
   This is done intentionally since changing the file paths will require the currently loaded skp file to be modified and then saved.
   It will change the Undo queue and change the active model paths, breaking texture links.
   We might try using a temporary file that we modify, archive and then discard once the archive is created but it's currently not the case.
2. When you open a file V-Ray first tries to find the textures at their original location and keep the existing file paths.
   If the files are missing V-Ray will search for them using our automatic file path resolution logic.
   If the file is located next to the skp file (or in a subfolder) V-Ray will find and update its path.
   This basically means that if you archive a project, rename the folder where textures originally were and open the archived model - the file path will get resolved to the archive folder.
3. The File Path Editor lists correctly resolved files in green, missing files in red and textures stored in the .skp file yellow.
   If a file is yellow this means that it's original file path is invalid, the auto-resolver can not find the file next to the .skp but the texture information is stored in the model itself (as a raw bitmap buffer).
   This is a native SketchUp behavior - SU stores all the textures visible in the viewport in the model...
   This is exactly what's going on when you download something from the Warehouse:
   The file path editor shows that the textures are missing on disk but V-Ray will use the buffers when you render.
   Another important note here is that when you archive a 'yellow' map using the file path editor, it'll be saved as a physical texture on disk and referenced this way.

Secondly, should this scenario work?:

• Multiple SKP files on my HDD with multiple proxies, meshes, materials and maps in each. All SKP files are open and can render happily.
• Maps are scattered randomly across my HDD in various drives, folders and sub folders but all are present and accessible to V-Ray.
• I copy and paste objects from each SKP into a new SKP project. V-Ray should bring in the objects and materials into the asset editor and should have file paths to the maps located in all the hundreds of folders and sub folders I mentioned below.
• The scene in the new SKP should render fine, correct?
• I should be able to pack the file and V-Ray should reach its tentacles out and vacuum up all those individual BMPs and maps and pack them up, correct?

Should work as described.

Thirdly, is there some kind of button/action in V-Ray that allows you to take a material with texture slots and settings from an SKP file (where those BMP maps are scattered around the HDD) and save that material to a new location? It should allow you to name the material and it should save all the settings and maps into a new folder/sub folder structure. Essentially you’d be consolidating a material whose maps are spread far and wide, into a single file/folder so that you can ignore/delete the maps that were all over the place.

Not at this stage.
You can on the other hand select any maps you like in the File Path Editor and copy them to a folder (Archive).
Archive and Repath will first copy them to the folder and then change the paths in the material.

...when I import an asset from another user’s SKP or from the 3D Warehouse or online, the maps for the materials are all over the place: they render fine but V-Ray claims not to have access to the maps. How is this possible and how is V-Ray rendering if the links are “broken”?

The 3D Warehouse does not support external file links (a single skp can only be downloaded from there).
As I explained earlier SketchUp stores all viewport textures in the skp file.
That is why you see the textures in the viewport and can even render them.
If on the other hand you download a model that was saved with V-Ray and one of the textures was not shown in the viewport (reflection map for example), for you the texture will be completely missing with no way to render or retrieve it.

I realize that managing file path might seem confusing in the SketchUp context, since SU does not have native support for external file links.
However this approach has many benefits and can't be avoided in V-Ray.
I believe we've provided sufficient tools for you to manage your scenes and move them around.
If you have any suggestions on how we can improve the user experience, please share them.
This kind of feedback helps us a lot.

I also hope this post clarifies things to some extent.

Regards,
Konstantin