Linked Material Libraries

[ValeroStudio]

The same way Maxwell allows you to link a SU material library with a Maxwell MXM file based on naming of material. I would love to see something like this is VR4SU. Imagine, you have your set of materials already setup at a library in SU, apply it to your model, click render, poof like magic, all the reflection, refraction, bump, etc. settings are applied based off a Vismat of the same name on your machine!

[dkendig]

SketchUp lets you set up material collections. All you have to do is take the SU counterparts of the V-Ray materials, which have our material information embedded within them, and save them out to a material collection folder somewhere. I suppose we could add some sort of automation to it in the future, but until then, this should result in having a preconfigured material library that's easier to access, which I believe is the main goal of what you're saying.

[ValeroStudio]

Wait. You mean if I have a VRay material, lets say like glass with reflection and refraction layers, and take that material from the SU Materials dialog and save that to a library, all the settings save with it?

[dkendig]

unless there's some sort of bug that's preventing that. If that's the case, it should be resolved in the next update.

[dkendig]

Is that bug that prevents you from setting up a component library with v-ray materials already applied to the models is still around, then no, you can't do this at the moment. It was working at some point though, and it will work again.

[ValeroStudio]

Nope. Just tried. The information from the material is not saved, it just comes in with the default settings. The way it works with Maxwell is that you tell the plugin where to look for linked materials and if it finds a match it auto maps it.

IE- You have a material in SU with the name BlueGlass01, lets say, MW will look in the folder(s) you designated and if it finds a material file called BlueGlass01 it will use this material automatically when using that rendering engine. This allows you to setup a whole SU material library of all of your MW materials.

They even have all the Arrowway materials converted to a SU and MW material library and as long as you own the full res maps, it will automatically map these materials for you. Hugely convenient and bums me out that VR doesnt have the same functions as the MW material editor.

It's almost worth the 37-hour render times just so I dont have to go through making materials!

[ValeroStudio]

New release! new release!! new release!!!!!!!!

[dkendig]

that makes me a little sad, but then again, that's just one more thing to look forward to, right?

[andybot_cg]

This actually works, but only when vray is disabled. Whenever you load/ copy/ paste a sketchup material, the vray information is lost when vfsu is active. It's part of the copy/ paste bug.

[ValeroStudio]

Translation - it works but is doesn't.

[andybot_cg]

Translation - it works but is doesn't.

Well, the thing that should work is affected by the same bug that prevents a number of other things from working... Unfortunately 1.49.01 is still really a beta.