Export vray Proxy "hanging" on larger models

[silverwingsltd]

Hi

I'm having trouble converting a lounge chair (and other stuff) into proxies. In the beta fase the vray proxy exporter worked like a charm
but now in 2.0 I seem to have trouble exporting larger models (in this case a 650.000 poly chair) It just leaves sketchup "hanging"
and when I run out of patience after a couple of hours and minimize the screen to work on something else, I get the "sketchup doesn't respond" message and it keeps hanging for hours without end.

Anyone else having trouble exporting lager models?

[Jackson_cg]

I usually convert to obj from SU and then from obj to vrmesh using the "OBJ GEO PLY to .vrmesh converter" tool as I found the VfSU vrmesh exporter too slow.

/Jackson

[tedvitale]

This is a known bug that we've been working on. We've done some really great optimization to the export proxy tool that fix the bug and will be part of the soon to be released patch.

[eliotbnz]

I've been having the same issues - proxies were a part of why I chose to stay with VFSu for now so great to hear there's a patch coming.

As a side, is there a tutorial for the "OBJ GEO PLY to .vrmesh converter" tool anywhere - looks useful.

[teknoel]

I'm having problems with this too. nothing over a few thousand polys seems to export

[teknoel]

I usually convert to obj from SU and then from obj to vrmesh using the "OBJ GEO PLY to .vrmesh converter" tool as I found the VfSU vrmesh exporter too slow.

/Jackson

I've played with that a bit too and I've found that the converter does a great job of building the mesh but it leaves all the material ids off of and the proxy renders without any material. I'm gonna play around a bit more with the skechup obj exporter to see if i can find the answer there. Jackson if you could give me a clue to your process that would be great.

[eliotbnz]

http://www.onyxtree.com/gall-valero1.html

That is the tutorial I use for my meshes. I don't use the inbuilt proxy convertor at all anymore - waste of time until they fix it.

My workflow with proxies is as follows

- I have 2 - 3 shortcuts to the OBJ GEO PLY to .vrmesh converter on my desktop, with different parameters in the shortcut properties regarding number of faces produced etc

- I drag the selected .OBJ file onto the shortcut and it takes a few seconds to convert it to the .vrmesh file. It exports to where the .OBJ file is located.

- I then import the resulting .vrmesh file inside sketchup with the vrap proxy importer

- Once it loads, I do a quick render to see what random colours have been placed where

- I then open the material editor and place the material jpegs/bitmaps in the diffuse slots for the various leaf/bark materials

- Do another render to make sure all is good

- Then I will build a far simpler proxy within the existing proxy group (aka, double clicking on the proxy until I can edit each little face/line), for a tree this might be just an extruded hexagon with a horizontal hexagon to the rough diameter of the tree's branch cover

- I apply each one of the bark and leaf materials to the faces of the new proxy, and delete the old triangles etc of the original proxy. This step is important. I usually select the whole new proxy and cover it with one of the materials, then apply the other materials to a side of the new hexagonal "trunk"

- Final test render to check, then save it as a sketchup file that can be imported or copied between sketchup projects at will.

Takes a few minutes per tree but ends up working awesomely. I have downloaded a heap of free .OBJ trees/plants/grasses from around the web as they are FAR better than the usual 3d warehouse trees, and am about to try converting max and 3ds files to .OBJ to give that a shot as there are tons of free .3ds and max trees etc available.

Hope this made sense - I have got this all working perfectly now so hope it works for you guys too

Edit: I occasionally get a proxy that only has one material id - obviously no good. Generally it gets put in the "too hard basket" and I just use something else, but let us know if you figure it out.

[teknoel]

Are you using OBJ's that you export from sketchup or objs that you create with onyxtree? I only ask because I have heard that the ply2vrmesh utility relies on the obj material to be baked into the file in order provide the necessary chanels. I'm trying to figure a way to do it without going into blender or another 3d software

[eliotbnz]

I suspect you're right, as .obj files exported from sketchup don't work (material issue as you stated).

I just did a test on a tree from the warehouse.

Using outliner and select by material, I deleted all the foliage, leaving just trunk and branches. I exported this as an .OBJ file and converted it with the .obj to vrmesh tool. Then I reopened the master sketchup file and deleted the trunk and branches and exported the foliage as an .OBJ file, and again converted it to a .vrmesh.

Imported both to sketchup and they come through as different materials, thus you can get around the material id issue this way. Takes a bit longer, but it works for sure, but really only useful for models using a couple of materials. One issue is getting them positioned relative to one another accurately again, but you can get it close by eyeballing it and warehouse trees aren't great in that respect anyway.

Dunno if this is helpful or not.

[teknoel]

That's a good workaround until the vray export gets patched. Its a pain though. My friend has vray for rhino so he exported a proxy for me. It works perfectly when i import it into skechup. So that's another way to get around the problem.

[eliotbnz]

As I'm a student, I have 3DS. I just opened some .max trees and shrubs and exported them as obj. Ran them through the convertor and they worked great.

Happy with that! Dreading learning 3ds...

[Red333]

Anyone know how I can set the perimeters of the vrmesh? Preview faces, faces per voxel, etc? (Using the converter?)

Thanks!

[Jackson_cg]

Right click the converter icon>Shortcut Tab>Under "target" change the value for previewFaces.
e.g. for 400 preview faces my target text reads: "%comspec% /k ply2vrmesh.exe -previewFaces 400 -smoothNormals -materialIDs"

/Jackson

[marthamaatkamp]

So... any ETA on this patch?
I currently use a workflow, exporting the obj, converting it to vrmesh via Blender, but this is not a great solution. It's more like a workaround.
The exporter should just work.

[dkendig]

we are trying to wrap things up, but no ETA yet