Vray Glass is Black in SU

[efish2000]

Hi,

First time post. haven't used Vray for SU in years but its so much easier to use. Only problem is when I apply material Vray Glass Neutral form library onto a material, it shows up black in SU but still renders ok. Is there a way to change it. When I render the tutorials it is fine. Tried with glass thickness, apply by layer, etc. same thing. thx. Vray 3.40.02. SU 2017 Pro. OS 10.10.5 Yosemite.

[matthewg]

I think one of our designers had that issue, i found that it was because of reverse faces. if you go to View->Face->Monochrome you can see if the face is reverse or front facing.

I think by default lighter colour is front facing darker colour is back facing.

If you have a 3D object and are applying glass all the way round the Fog makes a difference.

[matthewg]

Some examples of what i experienced. Ohh and for reference, i'm suing Vray 3.6 but it was a similar thing in 3.4

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi,

First time post. haven't used Vray for SU in years but its so much easier to use. Only problem is when I apply material Vray Glass Neutral form library onto a material, it shows up black in SU but still renders ok. Is there a way to change it. When I render the tutorials it is fine. Tried with glass thickness, apply by layer, etc. same thing. thx. Vray 3.40.02. SU 2017 Pro. OS 10.10.5 Yosemite.

Hi efish2000,

In V-Ray 3.4 the material refraction was not synchronized with the SketchUp Opacity and that's the reason why glass was black in the viewport.
Simply changing the SketchUp material Opacity resolves it. This has to be done manually for every material though.

In V-Ray 3.6 we have material binding options which should help you with that.
The Opacity Binding is on by default which should give you better library materials representation out of the box.

In case you need custom view-port material representation you can disable the Binding/Opacity toggle and manually set a value.

Regards,
Konstantin

[konstantin_chaos]

Some examples of what i experienced. Ohh and for reference, i'm suing Vray 3.6 but it was a similar thing in 3.4

Hi matthewg,

The reason why your material renders black is its Fog Color.
The fog color is based on the color specified and the thickness of the object in the scene (the further the ray travels in the volume the darker color you'll see).
If your glass object has no thickness (is a single-sided surface) the fog density reaches infinity and leads to the dark shade that you see.
Simply adding a thickness to the face should resolve that.
If on the other hand you have to use single-sided surfaces (for windows let's say) you can create a Fake_Glass... from the Diagrammatic library category.

To have full control you can do the following from scratch:
> Black 'Diffuse' color
> White/Bright 'Reflection Color'
> 'Reflection IOR' on and equals 1.6 (or whatever you need)
> 'Refraction Color' set to a bright color for the tint
> 'Fog Color' - white
> 'IOR' set to 1
> 'Affect Shadows' on

You can also check out the material attached.

Regards,
Konstantin

[matthewg]

Thanks Konstantin. Always looking to understand the software better to support my designers. My "Fix" was quite rudimentary but did the job in the end. Good to know what reason behind the darkness was though.

[efish2000]

Hi efish2000,

In V-Ray 3.4 the material refraction was not synchronized with the SketchUp Opacity and that's the reason why glass was black in the viewport.
Simply changing the SketchUp material Opacity resolves it. This has to be done manually for every material though.

In V-Ray 3.6 we have material binding options which should help you with that.
The Opacity Binding is on by default which should give you better library materials representation out of the box.

In case you need custom view-port material representation you can disable the Binding/Opacity toggle and manually set a value.

Regards,
Konstantin

Thanks Konstantin, That is very helpful to know. Do you know if 3.6 is a free upgrade from 3.4 and will it convert our 3.4 scenes and settings, or do we have to reset everything. best jh

[konstantin_chaos]

Thanks Konstantin, That is very helpful to know. Do you know if 3.6 is a free upgrade from 3.4 and will it convert our 3.4 scenes and settings, or do we have to reset everything. best jh

V-Ray 3.6 has a big number of changes compared to 3.4 but it will migrate your scenes automatically on load.
Keep in mind that saving the scene with 3.6 will make it impossible for the 3.4 version to load it correctly.

Regards,
Konstantin

[josephkim626]

In V-Ray 3.6 we have material binding options which should help you with that.
The Opacity Binding is on by default which should give you better library materials representation out of the box.

Hi Konstantin,

The desired workflow would be opacity/refraction synchronized whether the value is tweaked on V-Ray, or SketchUp.
Currently changing Refraction Color value in V-Ray changes SketchUp's Opacity, but V-Ray stays the same when value is changed in SketchUp?


https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...l+%7C+VRayBRDF

Opacity ? Enables opacity/ transparency binding. Changing the V-Ray material refraction changes the corresponding base application material opacity/ transparency and vise versa.

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi Konstantin,

The desired workflow would be opacity/refraction synchronized whether the value is tweaked on V-Ray, or SketchUp.
Currently changing Refraction Color value in V-Ray changes SketchUp's Opacity, but V-Ray stays the same when value is changed in SketchUp?


https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...l+%7C+VRayBRDF

Hi josephkim626,

We actually had a two-way connection in the beginning but we soon discovered this can cause problems when loading old scenes.
We should certainly look into this again and find a way to have both two-way binding while keeping scenes unchanged.

Regards,
Konstantin