I can’t get this material to convert from MR to VRay properly. Any suggestions for creating it from scratch and keeping the exact same look?
HI Autodesk’s Physical material is supported in V-Ray and can be rendered directly. Is this what you are using or?
Hi thank you for taking the time to reply. As you can see in these before and after images this is what happens when I open this in 2022 with vray. Both Arch & design and Autodesk materials lose their attributes. I have a huge library of these older materials that I need to update into 2022 vray. What is the best way to achieve this? I have tried just about every type of conversion tool.
Before
After
Any advice on converting my library correctly?
Right, so it doesn’t convert Mental Ray Arch & Design and Mental Ray Autodesk materials. Guess I’m just stuck having to recreate everything from scratch. RIP
It does? Check the image from Alex two posts down from the one i linked.
Mental Ray file and materials in first image. 2nd image is just switching to VRray and they lose their attributes. Then in the 3rd image just opening the old file in 2022 you can see what happens. So in any of these stages, how can I get them to retain the same attributes (look) as the first image but in VRay? I guess I’m missing how any of these steps work.
*) Open the scene.
*) Open the autodesk scene converter (Rendering menu → Scene Converter…)
*) Switch to the editor tab
*) On the left pane, open the Material category, select the Mental Ray Arch and Design entry.
*) the Right pane will populate with possible conversion targets, pick Physical Material
*) Click Convert Scene, close the Scene Converter window.
*) Run the V-Ray scene converter (it’s on the right-mouse menu) with its default options to turn the materials to v-ray ones.
The problem is is that the material is already destroyed before I can even get to the converter. Like it shows in that last image in 2022. It retains nothing from MR.
EDIT: I can put up a sample file if that’s helpful.
That’s because AD removed the lot for max 2022.
You should convert with an earlier max which still has MR (2018, perhaps?).
We’ll be forward compatible with the converted materials (i.e opening 2018 file in 2022).
Here you can see what happens just from switching from MR over to Vray render engine and the conversion options. As far as I can tell there is no autodesk scene converter in 2014. I’m still at square one not being able to save any of MR materials attributes.
As far as installing 2018 it looks like I can only go back as far as 2020.
2020 may well do it.
Ignore the look of render samples for now.
Ensure you can get to the end of the procedure outlined above, and check the way the material setup looks.
Once we can compare the proper conversion result to the original, we may find out where things went wrong.
This got me pretty dang close! Thank you Lele!
2020 preserved the MR stuff. Then I used the scene converter to change those materials to phyisical. Then opened in 2022 and converted physical to vray. Looks close enough.
I really can’t thank you enough for suggesting this. It’s been weeks of frustration.
If I can buy you dinner or repay you in some way let me know.
Kind regards
Ah! I’m glad you sorted it out, that’s repayment enough! 
Mind you, you will not get a 100% match, as so many things are different under the hood (render engines, shading models, and so on).
It should however have preserved the maps in the right places, the gloss amounts and so on, which is ever so slightly better than nothing. ^^
As a suggestion going forward, you could do worse than checking out the free stuff on Cosmos, to replace or enhance these materials (as i assume you will have to go through them anyway.), both in the materials section and in the models section (those also have materials and large textures!).
Further to this, feel free to experiment with the presets in the V-Ray material (dropdown at the top), as that will leave the maps plugged in, but change the parameters of the shader (from glass to metal, f.e.).
Studying presets is an excellent way to bring one’s knowledge to current methods: with so many effects and layers in the vrayMtl itself, it’s now much easier to create complex materials within a single shader (as opposed to having to use a blend with many shaders).