Hi all! I’m trying to open a .3dm file on Rhino 6 but get a popup saying “unsupported version of vray material” which won’t go away even after repeated attempts to close or okay the message and therefore I cannot access the file! Any idea on how to fix this? Thanks!
This message indicates materials created in earlier V-Ray version (older than v2.0) are being used in the project. You can automatically migrate the materials to a newer version by following these steps:
1. Uninstall V-Ray for Rhino 3.60.03
2. Go to Download | My Chaos and click the filter checkbox “Show older versions”
3. Download and install V-Ray for Rhino 3.60.02.
4. Open the project file, set V-Ray as the current renderer and check if the materials in the V-Ray Asset Editor are alright.
5. Save the project file.
Once done, you can install the latest V-Ray 3.60.03 again.
Kind regards,
Peter
Hi, The same thing is happening to me. I tried what you suggested but it seems like V-Ray 3.60.02 is not on your website anymore. Also you guys should work on doing this easier. I have a lot of projects using old V-Ray and doing this for every project is really not an option. I hope you guys can come around this problem.
Thanks in advance.
Please make sure the “Show older versions” checkbox is active:
You can try the following python script - scene_migration_36002.zip.
Be sure to open it with a text editor (or directly in Rhino using EditPythonScirpt command), edit the directory path and save the change prior to using it.
Kind regards,
Peter
scene_migration_36002.zip (584 Bytes)
You are correct. Trial accounts are limited to downloading only the latest available versions.
If you still wish to check your old projects containing outdated materials in V-Ray 3, you can:
- open and save them using the most recent V-Ray 2.0 version you have available
- click through all invalid material prompts (one for each outdated mtl) upon opening a project, then delete its materials and save it
- contact support@chaosgroup.com for assistance
Kind regards,
Peter
Hi, I have encountered the same problem as in the .3dm file cannot be opened and a dialog box of “unsupported version of vray material” popped out. I cannot continue my work.
I have tried looking for version 3.60.02 of vray but couldn’t. Anyone can help me on this?
With all due respect Peter, but downgrading the software reinstalling an old version running some Python script & reinstalling the newer software???
You can not really suggest that as a solution in a professional work environment when your clients need to frequently access older files.
I really urge Chaosgroup to provide a proper solution to this and not some bogus workaround.
You really let your clients down big time:
1) Your clients have accumulated elaboratematerial libraries - Chaosgroup lets them out in the wild and your paying client needs to recreate all their materials at their own time (=cost)
2) Your clients need to retexture all their older files at their own time (=cost)
3) Your clients have to use a complicated workaround if they even want to access their older files at all, again all at their own time (=cost)
All this happens without a proper warning.
All because a render plugin is created with substancial mistakes your clients can not access their files properly.
When can we expect a proper professional solution to this? The one you point to in the other thread is anything but that.
Chaosgroup is really disappointing in their approach to its customers.
Probably its really time to switch to a different rendering system now. Glad there are others to choose from around. Just ashame we spent money on Vray.
Nothing against you personally Peter, but if I compare how McNeel treats and supports their customers to the way Chaosgroup does this (not!), McNeel wins 200%
I hate to have to partially agree with the main issue in the previous post. A patch for many of the problems not resolved since the last official release of July is desperately overdue. My concern is that if Vray Next is to be the next release, will we be asked to pay for the upgrade? I hope not … nobody should be paying for bug fixes. Peter, can you tell us about that? Thank you.
I have to strongly disagree with this statement. Chaos Group support has been always excellent as far as I’m concerned.
Glad for you Palosanto.
Still if Chaosgroup really suggests something like that suggested here as a solution, its borderline ridiculous in my eyes.
We all paid a substantial amount of money for their software. Only to learn after the upgrade about all these issues mentioned here.
McNeel would be appaled to do that. Their support has been nothing but perfect (at least to me).
What I’d expect would be really for Chaosgroup to get their act together on this and offer at least an option to open the model without any textures.
Playing around with Python scrpts is not a professional solution for end clients.
Than I need to retexture. All at my own cost & with the risk of not getting the textures looking exactly the same.
It’s a pain in the but, but doable, especially if one would switch the render system at that moment.
Why on earth do we as clients have to deal with this?
Why did they not offer a utility to convert the old textures/materials?
I’m seriously annoyed about this.
I can understand your frustration but to be fair to Vray developers, the material problem seem to exist only for materials older than version 2. Version 3 methods and technology are quite different than version 1.xx. Sometimes there are compromises to be maid in order to improve the software. Vray 3 is light years ahead of version 1.xx from almost 6 years ago in terms of quality, speed and usability. Perhaps the old material problem is one on those compromises that might not be easily integrated in the new version engine because it’s simply incompatible and might require some external processing of the scene (via scripting or otherwise).
well, if they would at least have given us the choice to simply bypass that stupid box and retexture.
But what Peter suggests here is not a professional solution but a workaround which is requiring considerable time (=cost) by their end client.
Whats worse is, that if you need to modify some older project you had done and presented to a client previously and now that clients wants changes, you need to recreate the complete scenery and try to match the previous presentation somehow.
It’s just a big pain.
Further they could have at least warned us before purchasing the upgrade and further provided a simple to use utility to carry over most materials to the extent possible, even if we would have to edit some of them later to get them to 100%.
Just to say: "Well it does not work, find a solution at your own time=cost or be almost forced to use our online materials, (after the upgrade!) is not really fair towards paying clients.
I have a custom library made of many many materials and can now recreate almost all of them at my own time&cost. On top I need to retexture old models if I still want to use them + I can not open them at this moment.
Last not least, if I put all that effort into upgrading the materials now, who tells me that they do not repeat this on the next release???
Of course if I enter their wonderful new indirect subscription scheme by using only their online material library I do not run that risk, but I end up paying regularly.
One reason why I had choosen Vray was precisely because I did not want regular subscription fees.
For small offices regular subscriptions are a real pain. In one moment you have an aweful lot of work, than you run on idle. The more fixed costs you have in the later moment the more you end up paying in these times.
Unfortunately the software industry fails to understand that and cater more and more for the big companies..
I can’t agree. For example I miss cooperation with the users in questions of the UI. So much, or all suggestions, of the beta team was ignored … . ASGVIS was much more in contact with the users and bugs was solved per nightly builds. At the moment the user needs to be very patient and need to wait months. As a Rhino user I feel like a third class Vray user. First class for the 3dsmax version only, second class because the stripped down combi plugin version and third class because no really lively connection to the Rhino user anymore. The truth is the Rhino community is break down since the beta group wasn’t heard anymore. I still hope things will change. All could win.
When I mention the support in my post #10, I was referring to specific issues that I had which were almost immediately resolved via email or direct access to my system via Teamviewer.
I hear you Micha, regarding the Beta program, even if many of the beta tester suggestions weren’t addressed, at least there seemed to be good progress with the nightlies but this stopped months ago and I don’t know why. The answer that I got lately was always: “It will be solved in Vray Next”
Chaos Group seems to just take note of the problems reported and they might get resolved in Vray Next but what if they are not? Why not release patches as the issues are progressively fixed so that users can send feedback and not have a bunch of bugs again in Next? We cannot expect to have to pay for an upgrade to Next while Release 3 is still not fully functional …
Yes and their way to use of Teamviewer is the next thing I do not appreciate, if you use TeamViewer for anything professional related you are required to buy a license.
They surely have a legal licence at their end, but most clients are unlikely to have one.
The prices teamviewer calls out for a license are prohibitivly high for small offices.
So, Chaosgroup indirectly forces users to illegaly use TeamViewer on the users end if that enduser wants to have issues sorted out issues relating to their professional work. If they would use Skype instead we could do this legally.
Further I do not want grant full access to my machine to outsiders like Chaosgroup.
Regarding stuff that will be fixed in the next version. Well how about they fix version 3 fully before they ask their users to shell out more money for the next update (which is likely to have a lot of new problems…).
wow, wow, hold your horses … they don’t ‘force you’ to use Teamviewer. I think your frustration and anger start to make me uncomfortable so I’m done.
Ok I pacified my last bit a tad, still I do not appreciate the way they support.
First of all, I would like to thank you all for the openness of your feedback provided in this and other forum threads. I can assure you we always take seriously our user community.
There are multiple channels of communication with the V-Ray for Rhino team, one of which being this forum. Reports from threads we have not personally replied to are still being logged and classified together for further internal discussion. There are no exceptions. While most suggestions and wish lists are not implemented directly, they are always weighed up in the form of discussion and then aggregated together to form user stories, improvement and new feature tickets or help reorganize our priority lists. It is not uncommon for a single user request to directly reshape a part of our software.
With all this in mind, a new platform for the V-Ray Next for Rhino beta community is currently being prepared. We do hope it will be more comfortable and easy to use and eliminate a lot of the hassle for users who simply wish to express thoughts.
Now let me explain the logic behind why we decided to drop off support for old material plugins.
A change in V-Ray materials was first introduced in 2012 with V-Ray 1.5 for Rhino. Instead of containing data in binary form all newly created V-Ray Material (.vismat) files from then on were xml-based. Throughout the years, the ability to read the old (up to v1.49) type of .vismat files was preserved due to compatibility concerns (vismats from v1.5 or later still load just fine).
With the launch of V-Ray 3.4 in 2017 support was dropped for versions older than v2.0. Later on, after a long period of gradual advancements in both V-Ray for Rhino and SketchUp a point was reached where maintaining that compatibility was obstructing further development of the material structures. The ability to read the old binary vismats was dropped in July 2018 with the release of v3.60.03. This decision was further backed up by data pointing out only a small minority of users still utilizing such legacy files.
We understand for those who still kept projects with pre-2012 data within, the frustrating part was actually the multitude of prompt messages which needs to be overcome. This was an unforeseen situation which did indeed cause some confusion.
The proposed workaround is simple and the scale of the issue small enough to consider it as a sufficient solution. The attached script was devised to automate the whole process and considerably shorten what might otherwise be a lengthy manual process.
If assistance to run the script is required, my colleagues from our Support team are eager to help.
As an alternative to working with scenes containing such legacy data, v3.60.02 is available for download.
Regarding the lack of updates - ever since the launch of V-Ray 3 for Rhino beta about 2 years ago the dev team has implemented an extensive amount of new features, including entirely new user interface and DR manager, hybrid rendering, Grasshopper integration and many others. These are the biggest updates we’ve ever shipped. Based on telemetry data and support request tracking v3.60.03 was deemed objectively stable. Furthermore, many of the proposed solutions for outstanding issues required a bump in the V-Ray Core version or a deeper approach in our code which in turn lead to something which was overdue - a large part of the old code needed revisiting to ensure our product can catch up more swiftly with our other flagship products. This meant beginning active development on v4.0 early on while monitoring for crucial bugs in the current v3.6.
Moving on to V-Ray Next has been a huge endeavor so far. Simply adding v4.0 core features is just a small part of the work being done by our developers. V-Ray for Rhino and V-Ray for SketchUp have been restructured from the ground up to ensure an improved foundation for all future development and cut out all legacy code which may obstruct future improvements and implementation of core features. While much of this work will go unnoticed ‘under the hood’, I hope the sheer performance gain and subsequent increase in frequency of new versions will make up for it.
Kind regards,
Peter
Well, just came by this, in my eyes still stupid, issue again.
For the benefit of others who perhaps need a quick way to get at least fast to their own geometry without all these installation and up- and downgrade games, here is one way around this:
1) Open Rhino
2) Switch Renderer to Rhino instead of Vray
3) Disable Vray in plugin control in Rhino
4) Restart Rhino
5) Now Rhino defaults to its in built render engine during start
6) Open the file you could not open before
7) Remove the Version 2 Textures in this file completly & save your file under a different name
You lose some materials and textures this way, but, at least you’ve got your geometry recovered.
Reenable Vray if you want . You have to have the old textures removed or replaced before, or the problem returns.
Now you can decide if you stick to Vray for the future & retexture for it, or if switch to alternatives like Blender with Eevee and Cycles
