"Materials created in SketchUp are by default no longer treated as full-featured V-Ray materials"

V-Ray V-Ray for SketchUp General
1

Ladies and gentlemen of Chaos,
I do not and will never use Enscape, so please remove this new Sketchup material management method and put it back the way it was before!

Like many I think, I use a lot of Sketchup objects from 3D Wharehouse and other internet resources.
And you know very well that there is no perfect object and that we have to modify them all to our taste.

And that’s the problem: I have to convert Sketchup materials into V-Ray materials all day long.

What a waste of time and source of errors (I have an open support ticket)!!!

Until now I have always approved of V-Ray’s evolutions, but now it’s a big mess!

That’s it.

2

What happens when you disable Enscape compatibility in the preferences?

3

I have this option unchecked by default.​
With or without this option, it’s the same.

4

We definitely need a one-and-done batch tool to convert them all in one shot. I was just working with the tech help at Chaos on an issue I was having with swarm rendering and errors I was getting about missing assets. Those missing assets were not showing up as missing in the file path editor because Vray doesn’t look at those materials that are not converted. Having to go down a list of 75 materials and convert each one is kind of a pain.

5

For information, since V-Ray 6 for SketchUp Hotfix 1, it is possible to make the conversion in 1 click.

6

Hi guys,

Ladies and gentlemen of Chaos,
I do not and will never use Enscape, so please remove this new Sketchup material management method and put it back the way it was before!
The new SU material management will have to stay to allow for the Enscape bridge (for anyone who wants it).
We will reconsider adding an option that disables it (for newly created materials) but I believe it brings benefits even when you don’t use Enscape.
The thing is, you might want to keep your Asset Editor clean, not showing all the simple material or even color assignments from SketchUp.
We have seen numerous user projects polluted with hundreds of plain color material which will never have to be edited in V-Ray.
This new handling was planed even before the Enscape bridge was a thing, the bridge just gave us one more reason to do it.

Like many I think, I use a lot of Sketchup objects from 3D Wharehouse and other internet resources.
And you know very well that there is no perfect object and that we have to modify them all to our taste.
Objects from the warehouse are one great example of when the non-vray materials are useful.
Most often than not you bring in a bunch of warehouse models just to see how they look.
Other times you use them in the background and you never intend to invest in modifying their shaders.
In all such situations, the new handling allows for a clean Asset Editor / Outliner while still letting you edit a material on demand.

And that’s the problem: I have to convert Sketchup materials into V-Ray materials all day long.
What a waste of time and source of errors (I have an open support ticket)!!!
As you have pointed out later, there is now a way to select multiple materials and convert them to V-Ray ones using the context menu in the Outliner.
If you can list any other inconveniences, we’ll be more than happy to address them.

Until now I have always approved of V-Ray’s evolutions, but now it’s a big mess!​
I hope I was able to describe and make sense of the motivation behind this change.
It was not a random (messy) decision that we made.

We definitely need a one-and-done batch tool to convert them all in one shot.
Do you find the context menu option sufficient?
We can add other options for this too.

I was just working with the tech help at Chaos on an issue I was having with swarm rendering and errors I was getting about missing assets. Those missing assets were not showing up as missing in the file path editor because Vray doesn’t look at those materials that are not converted…
This is very strange.
None of the SU materials use external assets (textures).
Can you share some more info about your exact problem?

Regards,
Konstantin
​

7

Hi Konstantin,

I will just answer the questions that concern me. I’ll let Matthew answer his own questions.

We have seen numerous user projects polluted with hundreds of plain color material which will never have to be edited in V-Ray.

This is where Sketchup’s Purge function comes into play, as it is a very effective way of cleaning up a file. The problem is that this function is no longer recommended/compatible with some of the new objects/materials in V-Ray.
Link :​ https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/a…ecommendations

Objects from the warehouse are one great example of when the non-vray materials are useful.
Most often than not you bring in a bunch of warehouse models just to see how they look.
Other times you use them in the background and you never intend to invest in modifying their shaders.
In all such situations, the new handling allows for a clean Asset Editor / Outliner while still letting you edit a material on demand.

This is not my workflow. I always open a 2nd session of Sketchup to import and “look into” the objects from 3DWharehouse or elsewhere. I only import them into my project file once I have validated them.​

I hope I was able to describe and make sense of the motivation behind this change.
Thank you for taking the time to explain the Chaos team’s approach.
But the old Sketchup native material management didn’t bother me at all in my workflow. The new method does.​

8

Hi Konstantin

I would like to express my opinión here

When i first saw the announcement about bring support for enscape i didnt undersrand the decition, why vray bring a kind of bridge to enscape…

We have a lot of things in vray and vray gpu that are lefting at a half.

Lets see… is vray visión ready to do an animation with quality, i dont think so.

Out of core was left at 50% or 40%

Visión is like in 40% or 50%

Vray gpu is really a big issue… lot of unsupported things, the vram issues and the inestability of the software.

What dcha 34 describes really freaks me out… if we are going to have issues changenging material from one software to another one is not good.

in 2 years are we going to see support for vray to lumion???

We dont need bridge to another software just pure vray but please focus on the roots… not bringing bridge to more software.

Please Konstantin finish the tools that you bring with vray 5 and vray next.

If visión was intendeed for animations… why did you bring support for enscape…

Vray for quality raytraced renders and vision for animations with real reflections, real refractions. Enscape for what… it is going to match vray render quality? Is vray vision left apart just for the enscape???

Right now your engineers are going to work even harder… you have to develop enscape with vray… but vision, vray gpu, the assets with chaos cosmos, better materials…when???

For enscape i have to pay another money and at least spend 1 year learning the software…

Vray visión could do that if you really bring support for raytraced reflections, refractión, etc.

I didnt like it vray 6… vray 5 was amazing!!!

When vray 5 came to sketchup i was so amazed that i paíd the upgrade with just 1 week testing the software.

I dont know what to say Konstantin… first time in all my life with vray that i didnt like the upgrade and is not about money is almost for a lack of further controls and the increase of the quality with vray gpu.