Understanding Asset Path Behavior for Different Computers

[blueman26]

I use both a PC and a lap top. I understand that using a machine with different paths (and actually a different drive letter) would present a problem. However, what I don't understand is why some of the images come through and render perfectly without changing the path while others require a path change before I can render them using the proper image.


This asset /image(Leather Old Brown Guitar Case) required me to change the path to what you see in order for it to render properly and of course to view the image.



While this image file (Herringbone Tan Tweed) rendered perfectly despite the path error being shown


Is there someway to get all files to behave as the Herring Tan Tweed? Why does one file behave differently than the other when you can see that the location of this file can't be found?



One other note: Though these files are stored locally on each machine (in different paths), they are also linked to files on SharePoint. Is there someway to use the SharePoint link as the file location so that there's be no need to change for each machine? However, this might end up being a real pain as there are many projects and each project has many images used as textures that are saved in the library.


Thanks

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi blueman26,

Your question is actually something that comes up often.
And to be honest, we have a pretty good system for managing file paths which is unfortunately not documented in details anywhere.

Here's the logic that we use when a file is loaded:

• V-Ray first checks the file paths of all textures and does not do anything with the valid ones.
  These ones will be rendered just fine.
• To auto-resolve missing textures we first check our material library. If the texture is found there, we update the path automatically to ensure you can render it.
• If the texture is still missing we start looking next to the .skp file. A deep search is performed relative to the project location and if any of the textures is found it's path is updated (auto-resolved).
• If a texture is still missing we use one last resort - the textures that SketchUp stores within the skp. We call them raw bitmap buffers.
  However SU only stores buffers for the maps visible in the viewport.
  This means that if there is a texture visible in the viewport it'll be rendered by V-Ray no matter what.
  If a texture fails to auto-resolve and is not visible in the viewport - it'll be rendered black by V-Ray.

One more thing that you should know is that .tx textures like the ones from our material library are not fully stored in the .skp.
We in fact replace the SU buffer with a lower-resolution jpg version of the .tx to avoid bloating size of the skp.
This means that even if we find a .tx texture and render it, chances are it is a lower quality version of the original one.
This does not apply to any other file format.

Is there someway to get all files to behave as the Herring Tan Tweed? Why does one file behave differently than the other when you can see that the location of this file can't be found?

I'm not sure what your exact setup is but I just suspect the second map is not displayed in the viewport and you're rendering the raw buffer in the first case.
The way to avoid that is to keep the textures used in the project in a subfolder next to the skp file.

One other note: Though these files are stored locally on each machine (in different paths), they are also linked to files on SharePoint. Is there someway to use the SharePoint link as the file location so that there's be no need to change for each machine? However, this might end up being a real pain as there are many projects and each project has many images used as textures that are saved in the library.

As I mentioned, just keep the project assets next to the skp...
Another option is to avoid using mapped drive letters in your texture paths and instead use global network paths.
Here at the office we have a shared server at the following network location \\serverName.chaosgroup.com\...
If I load a texture using the network path like this let's say - \\serverName.chaosgroup.com\textures\map1.jpg - it'll work as expected on every machine with access to the network.
If however I map the network drive and load the texture from - X:\textures\map1.jpg - chances are it'll not work on another computer.
I'm not sure if this is a valid workflow in your case though...

Hope that clarifies things to some extent.

Regards,
Konstantin