Asset Editor- Black Boxes for Materials- reset path?

[matt_waddington]

I know this must been troubleshot before- but I can't see to find any specific help on it.

In the asset editor (VRAY 5 in SU Pro 2023) I can no longer connect online with Chaos Cosmos (though I can through the dedicated Cosmos tool) or with my downloaded assets. All of my downloaded assets are black squares, with odd names, in the asset editor.

The dedicated Cosmos tool finds the downloaded assets without a problem, , but I think a path is broken in the asset editor, but I can't figure out how to reassign it.. Its been this way a long time- and at one point I had transferred to a new computer, but I'm not sure if that was the cause (probably was?).

If I move a "black box material" into materials in the asset editor, and then look at the texture slot to see where' its pointing- I get "directory does not exist" (bottom image). But- I can manually find that individual texture on my harddrive and correct it. (.users\username\chaos cosmos\packages\materials).

But there must be a better way to do this all at once and not material by material! Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[natalia.gruzdova]

Hello matt_waddington,

Please note that Cosmos assets and materials can not be loaded in the V-Ray Asset Editor in the same fashion as .vrmat files and old V-Ray 5 Material Library (I can see from your screenshot that you have manually added Cosmos materials).

The idea is to work directly from Chaos Cosmos instead of Asset Editor as you are able to import any downloaded materials or assets to your scene directly from Chaos Cosmos. Please see the video example.

We are aware of the users request to make it possible to work from V-Ray Asset Editor and will consider this possibly in future or the way we can combine two entities.

Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

[matt_waddington]

Thank you for your response Natalia. I understand how the Chaos Cosmos works (as in the video you sent), and can access assets from there just fine , but unclear why that option was stripped from the editor- seems very awkward now.

Be that as it may, what is the function then of the "materials" expanding window in the standard _V-Ray Asset Editor ( the one show at left below)? I see that I can access older vrmat files if I track them down, but since I don't use those any longer and can no longer make them (or can I?), I don't understand what this is for. Is it vestigial? Or should I be using it?

I don't even understand why both the new vray materials and the old vray materials both have the "vrmat" extension if they are different types of files. I can see an old vrmat, but not the new ones, in this window. What's the difference?

Also- if I convert a SU material to a Vray material in the asset editor, and add things like a bump map, where does that vrmat get stored? Can I access ones I've made in later projects? Can I do that through the window below possibly?

Confusing as heck to me- and takes up a lot of my work day trying to figure things like this out!

Thank you for any light you can shed on this!

[natalia.gruzdova]

I apologize for the late reply matt_waddington,

what is the function then of the "materials" expanding window in the standard _V-Ray Asset Editor ( the one show at left below)

You can add your own custom material library if you have one and use it in your projects this way.

I don't even understand why both the new vray materials and the old vray materials both have the "vrmat" extension if they are different types of files. I can see an old vrmat, but not the new ones, in this window. What's the difference?

While the file format is the same, materials from Cosmos allows for a more universal approach to many users that work with V-Ray in several host-applications, as this way all the materials are created uniformly and rendering results are consistent in every application.

Previous (local) V-Ray Material Library was part of the installation and was created in order to be loaded to the V-Ray Asset Editor with all the structural logic of the textures and previews. Now this was fully moved to Cosmos Browser as I have shared. The library of the assets with all the models and materials with high-resolution textures are gradually expanding and it would not be possible to include everything in the local installation in the future.

Also- if I convert a SU material to a Vray material in the asset editor, and add things like a bump map, where does that vrmat get stored?

It is present and is saved in your SketchUp project. Or you can save it as .vrmat and make a custom library and use your own materials in different projects. When you save material ir also saves all the textures used in this material to the maps folder.