Materials lost when importing sketchup file

[mirolator]

I've searched throughout the forums and I can't seem to find an answer to my particular situation.

I've created several rooms of an apartment in different sketchup (.skp) files. All the textures have a linked Vray material.

Now, I'm trying to combine all of those rooms together to form the condo. I'm doing this by opening one of the files and then using the Sketchup Import comand. (File>Import...[import SKP file])

When I do this I seem to lose all the linked materials on the imported .skp files. One thing that's interesting, is that if I right-click on a material, and select Vray for Sketchup, there WILL be an option to Edit Material. But when I click it, it brings up the Material Editor, but nothing is highlighted because the material is not there.

So am I missing something?

Or do I need to re-create the linked materials on the .skp files i've imported? From now on, should I desing the entire apartment in one .skp file?

Thanks for your help.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Materials lost when importing sketchup file

I took a quick look at it, and apparently when the model is imported the V-Ray material is not imported with it. However, once the material is imported (separately) then the linked material is restored without having to reapply the linked material. In other words, just export the materials from the models that you are going to import, and once you've imported all the models import in the materials. I'm not sure exactly why the v-ray material information is not imported, but it may be due to SU's import process.

[mirolator]

Re: Materials lost when importing sketchup file

Dalomar,

Thanks a lot that worked!

While on the topic of exporting. Something I discovered I should share. Some of my materials would not export. Wouldn't even give me the folder window for a save location.

I found out if my material has any portion of the default name with < > brackets like some colors from Sketchup are named with the brackets, then it wouldn't export. Changing the name to something without brackets and then the export works fine.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Materials lost when importing sketchup file

The brackets come from making linked materials from SU materials that are in the model, but not yet applied to an object (I believe), so you can "get rid of them" by making sure they are applied to a SU object first. I don't think the brackets will actually export because they are an invalid character within a file name (just like a question mark or percent sign), so blame windows for that one ;D