Conversion of scenes created with V-Ray 3.7 for Cinema 4D
Overview
The conversion of scenes created with V-Ray 3.7 or 3.6 for Cinema 4D is based on changing each material, object, shader or setting to its new equivalent counterpart. The process is destructive for the old scene, but to ensure no data is lost, the scene name is changed to prevent overwriting the old scene.
Known issues and limitations
Render Settings:
Min Shading Rate is forced to 6.
DMC settings are not converted (except for Time Dependent). Use local subdivs is disabled.
Linear workflow is disabled.
Primary GI engine is forced to Brute Force.
Secondary engine is forced to Light Cache, if it is not Brute Force.
Light Cache map mode is forced to Single Frame, if it is not From File.
Use of Embree is forced to On.
Stereoscopic camera settings are not converted (not supported yet).
Lens effects settings are not converted.
Materials:
V-Ray Standard Material:
Opacity source is forced to Color and Opacity mode to Stochastic. Grayscale values are converted to color.
Highlight glossiness is removed.
Translucency type is forced to Volumetric, if enabled.
V-Ray Advanced Material:
Disabled layer parameters are not converted.
The following layers are ingored:
Material weight
Diffuse layer 2
Specular layer 2
Specular layer 3
Specular layer 4
Specular layer 5
SSS layer
Transparency texture is used for opacity.
Take overrides and animation keys on the layer enabling checkbox will not be converted.
Highlight glossiness is ignored.
Shaders:
V-Ray LayeredMax shader texture is mirrored horizontally after conversion.
V-Ray AdvBitmap:
Converted to regular Bitmap.
Gain is ignored.
Animation settings are ignored.
Nearest filtering is converted to MIP.
Lights:
Rectangle light texture is mirrored horizontally after conversion.
Portal lights are removed.
Parallel light beam radius is considered 0 (the parallel light is converted to infinite non-physical light).
Spot Light penumbra angle is recalculated to preserve results.
Sun Light:
Sky is not converted.
Only physical camera intensity multiplier is considered.
Tags:
Physical Camera:
Exposure fixed step increments are ignored.
Other:
Cinema 4D Layers are not converted.
Missing conversion:
Render elements are not converted.
Most shaders are not converted. Only Layered and V-Ray AdvBitmap are converted.
Only physical camera tag is converted.
Focus Distance inside the physical camera tag needs to be transferred manually from the main camera
Are you planning on conversion from the old vray materials to the new ones?
Both V-Ray Advanced and V-Ray Standard materials from 3.7 are converted to V-Ray material from V-Ray 5 on scene open, and you should be the same with differences. If they’re not looking the same then probably they have a texture or a shader that isn’t fully supported yet.
Once you open a legacy scene (from V-Ray 3.7) you will be prompted with a dialog and you will be asked what action to take. You can either convert the whole scene (materials, lights, textures, settings etc) or you can leave it as it is. There is no dedicated option for conversion it is all done automatically based on the choice you made when the scene was opened. The opened scene is then renamed so you can preserve the original in case you still want to use it with V-Ray 3.7.
Is there a know issue with textures not being read, if they are located in a different folder (I have specified the path in the preferences)?
I have tested several old 3.6 files which had 3D people assets where the textures were located in a different folder, but they don’t show up. It seems that these textures are not converted, although they should have been either a vray advanced, or standard material.
Would it be possible to add an external converter, or a converter built into the vray tools available from the c4d level?
I have over 4250 scenes, c4d files built from varay 3.7, and I don’t like having to manually open each scene separately to convert it to vray 5. It will take me a long time.
Would it be possible to convert multiple sceans at once? For example pointing to the directory on disk containing these scenes?
hey guys
i’ve being test the converter to try to convert all my library…(a lot of objects i must say)
There are some things that are not working as i expect… for example if we have some vray shaders, some of them wont convert, neither let us know the possibility to know which texture were used… i’m aware that probably a automatic process wont do the right thing, but at least we should have the possibility to push all the used textures on the 3.7 version… do you think it’s possible?
i can make a small video …
thanks and all the best
nuno
Is there somewhere a good tutorial available about the render setting in 5 (interior)?
i imported previous files from 3.7 into version 5 but the previous setting are not wel imported/wrong… I need similar good settings but i dont know how…
You don’t need to change anything in render settings, just select the correct threshold for the AA or leave the progressive sampler to run until you are satisfied (don’t forget to activate the denoiser).
Forget about the 3.7, rebuild from scratch all the assets and light setup is your best option.
If you are interested on our channel we have several tutorials about Vray 5: https://www.youtube.com/c/3DRenderandBeyond/videos we have made also a few blogposts: Blog - 3D Tutorial and Beyond
Ein material Converter für die Cinema Materialien in Vray 5 Wäre mal toll ! Diffusion und Reflektion und Bump das Wäre schon mal Super? Dann können wir uns das öffen mit 3.7 ersparren! Ich finde es ist sehr Zeitaufwendig wenn mann mit beiden versionen Arbeiten muss.Gibt es schon neuigkeitein bis wann es kommen wird?
Hi - I work quite often with models from Evermotion - they do all for 3.7 and conversion does not really work - especially for trees with double-sided material - sometimes all files show up totally black, quite often it works, but something goes wrong with the alpha channel and the reflection .. attached two screenshots. Attached an example, but it also happens for newer files from Evermotion…
Could you please send us a test scene with a few materials so we can check what is not converted? You can attach the scene here or send it to me in a PM.
As discussed in DM, there was an issue with the conversion of the “Use Fresnel” parameter from the classic V-Ray Advanced Material. We have now fixed this issue and improved the converter and you can find the fix here:
