Hello. I decided to make this post to list—and hopefully find solutions to—some of the most important issues my team has been facing when using Vantage for SketchUp.
I want to start by saying that I truly see a lot of potential in this tool. However, after a couple of months of testing it on real projects, both my team and I mostly feel frustrated. Vantage has very persistent problems that make the entire design process tedious and discouraging, to the point where it actually slows down our work. Most of these issues don’t seem related to how the tool was conceived, but rather to what we believe are bugs. Unfortunately, a large portion of the time we should be spending on design ends up being wasted trying to fix recurring problems:
- It’s very common that after applying a material or using one of V-Ray’s UV mapping tools such as triplanar (world fit), the object in Vantage either turns completely black or simply disappears. This is perhaps one of the most frustrating issues when working with Vantage for SketchUp. Sometimes the only workaround is to delete the object and then use Ctrl+Z to bring it back. In most cases, we have to restart Vantage entirely.
- Basic SketchUp functions like copy-paste or creating arrays take an excessive amount of time and very often freeze the computer, forcing us to use Ctrl+Alt+Del to kill both applications. This happens very frequently and only when Vantage is active. I’ve asked about this in other posts but haven’t received a solution. I even asked whether buying a GPU dedicated solely to SketchUp would help. I don’t know exactly what goes wrong when trying to use SketchUp and Vantage via Live Link, but working inside SketchUp becomes a nightmare.
- Vantage disconnects from SketchUp. This happens occasionally. I’ve noticed that once you’re in Vantage via Custom Live Link, opening the Asset Editor or Chaos Cosmos in V-Ray automatically disconnects the Live Link session. At that point, nothing you do in SketchUp is reflected in Vantage, and the only solution is to close Vantage and start over. It’s quite unpleasant.
- The mapping used in the diffuse channel seems to work completely out of sync with the mapping in the bump channel. Many times, to adjust the mapping of an opacity, normal, or bump texture, we first connect it to the diffuse channel since it’s easier to see the texture scale there. Once we get the mapping right, we move that texture to the opacity or bump channel. But this never works! As soon as we move the texture, its scale changes completely. And that’s not all—we’ve also noticed that even if we connect opacity, bump, or normal textures directly to their proper channels and do the UV mapping correctly, the moment we add a texture to the diffuse channel, the mapping we previously set for bump or opacity changes entirely. It’s as if adding a texture to the diffuse channel automatically shrinks the textures in bump or opacity. The same happens with other channels like emissive. No matter how carefully you set your texture in diffuse, once you copy it to emissive, it gets rescaled.
- It’s not possible to save your work in SketchUp while using Vantage Live Link. Honestly, this feels ridiculous. The main reason we use Vantage is its ability to design and visualize in real time. Without Live Link, Vantage loses its purpose for us. A designer’s job is to create different concepts until finding the right one. Even after that, constant changes are needed—colors, materials, shapes. It’s essential to visualize them in real time. We can’t export a scene as a .vrscene every time we change a material just to see how it looks in Vantage. We depend on Live Link. If it doesn’t work properly and doesn’t allow us to save our work, Vantage loses all meaning for us.
- Beyond these bugs, there are many features that Vantage still doesn’t support or only partially supports. A very important one is triplanar texture in the bump channel. Not to mention other features that Vantage supports individually but stop working once combined. Honestly, Vantage feels like an unfinished application. And that’s surprising, considering it’s been on the market for several years and Chaos charges a significant price for it.
Despite all these challenges, I still believe Vantage has the potential to grow into a tool that truly competes with other industry solutions and makes our work easier instead of harder. My hope is that one day it will evolve into the reliable, streamlined platform we need. One that helps us focus on creativity and design rather than troubleshooting constant issues.
Thanks for posting.