Max to Rhino Material/proxy workflow

[jskt]

I'm trying to get our library of VRay proxy plants for max usable in VRay for Rhino, and having a greeat deal of trouble with the material conversion. It seems that if a material is more than trivial, the .VRMat exporter doesn't handle it properly. Furthermore, it seems that some material ID-related setups that work in max don't work in Rhino, which I imagine has to be a translation error since VRay 3.6 is the render engine in both cases.

For example, trying to use a multi-sub texmap inside a Multimaterial doesn't appear to work properly in Rhino, while it's very much possible in max (the Rhino version I eneded up building by hand for the material attached below used 4 VRayMaterials inside 4 Vray2Sided materials (plus a regular vraymateril for the trunk) inside a multimaterial instead of just using a multisubtex for IDs 2-5 and a single material tree. It's a lot of duplication of effort to keep changes in sync, and also clutters the scene material list with 7 extraneous entries, plus it intimidates the less-technical users I'm building the materials for.

Also, is there some way to get a tree view of a material on the Rhino side? It's really difficult to keep one's bearings being able to see only one map or submaterial at a time in the material editor, and having to leave the branch you're editing to see the preview update is really annoying. Is there a friendlier way?

Finally, is there a way to instance maps on the Rhino side? I only see "paste as copy" in the rightclick menu on a map icon.

I've attached an example of a material setup that fails to translate (max 2017, Vray 3.6) - The VRMat editor won't even load the material.

[Peter.Chaushev]

Hello, and thank you for your detailed post!
One of our developers will look into what exactly is stopping the .vrmat you shared from opening in V-Ray for Rhino. We realize some complex materials trees or certain features cannot be properly translated into V-ray for Rhino. While both V-Ray for 3ds max and V-Ray for Rhino share the same core, each of them is tailored specifically for their host app and therefore some differences in functionality are inevitable. The simplest workaround I can offer you is to export the plants from 3ds max as .vrscene files which can be loaded directly into V-Ray for Rhino.
Would also suggest to post in the V-Ray for 3ds max sub-forums to discuss more about the VRMat Exporter.

Regarding your question for material tree view, our dev team is keen on exploring solutions for node-based material editor but there is no timeframe set yet.

Texture instancing is not currently in V-Ray 3 for Rhino. It is planned for the next major version.

Kind regards,
Peter

[jskt]

Thanks for your reply.

When I tried using VRSCENE files they didn't work, although I don't recall exactly what the problem was.

As for a node-based editor, I'm sure that's on the horizon and you will do a fine job of it, but in the meantime a simple tree view (like the old 3ds max material editor had), would be very welcome for navigating around the material and I imagine would take a lot less dev resources to implement.

[Peter.Chaushev]

Could you please explain how your vrscene workflow fails?
If possible, please send a screenshot illustrating the issue and/or a sample .vrscene file together with a short description in an email addressed to support@chaosgroup.com ?
My colleagues will assist you based on the requested info.

Kind regards,
Peter

[gouisedeau]

Hello guys,

I'd like to have some feedback on all of this. I'm going through the same journey and I need help. Any link / tutorials I can follow ? I try to import high res vegetation with complex materials made in 3DS max.

I agree with jskt, the way we build materials in Vray for rhino (even in Rhino Next 2020-04-04) is not intuitive.... It does the job for really simple materials but we don't really have the ability to make it more complexe easily.... 3dsmax tree slate editor is the best for now...

I know Rhino is poor in material editing, but do you think Vray team could implement this tree editing system into the Vrayplugin ? that would be awesome.

best regards,
-CC

[toniboni]

Hello guys,

I'd like to have some feedback on all of this. I'm going through the same journey and I need help. Any link / tutorials I can follow ? I try to import high res vegetation with complex materials made in 3DS max.

I agree with jskt, the way we build materials in Vray for rhino (even in Rhino Next 2020-04-04) is not intuitive.... It does the job for really simple materials but we don't really have the ability to make it more complexe easily.... 3dsmax tree slate editor is the best for now...

I know Rhino is poor in material editing, but do you think Vray team could implement this tree editing system into the Vrayplugin ? that would be awesome.

best regards,
-CC

Totally agree!

[Grigio18]

Regarding vrmat export from max to rhino i agree, it's not working 90% of the time with complex materials.

But I don't have problems to export vrscenes from max to rhino.

For vrscenes, my advice is to use the scene converter and the bitmap to hdri converter inside max before the export, and check if there is any plug in texture in use, that is not supported by vray standalone.