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Intro to VRay for SketchUp Print E-mail

VRAY4SKETCHUP

 forum version

 

 VRay4SketchUp Demo - http://asgvis.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=46

 

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Navigation in SketchUP:
- MMB --Rotate View
- MMB+Shift-- Pan View
- MMB Scroll-- Thumble

Ok :> In this tutorial i'm gonna show you how make vray4sketchup to work fine :)

On ASGVIS website - makers of VRay for Sketchup - you can download free 30-day trial of vray engine (registration is required).
After downloading, install it. Open SketchUp. As you propably can see, there new plug-in in your Plugins menu and new icons in your Shelf.


vray sketchup

 

Change color style, i think, that default is a little bit too bright. To do this, go to Window>styles and choose which you want.


vray sketchup

 

 

MATERIALS

Now, take a look at the vray materials.
Create rectacle with rectacle tool.


vray sketchup


Then use Push/Pull tool to extrude it up a little bit.


vray sketchup

With Arc tool selected, click on the edge on the left and then on the right and move your mouse down until you see something like below.


vray sketchup


Now with Push/Pull tool selected, extrude inner face to the end. It should disapear.


vray sketchup

Now, as you see how push tool works, make rounded edges on top of the ramp with the same method as earlier.


vray sketchup

 

 

 

Before we start to add materials, it's important to turn off phycial camera in Render settings under Camera section. That is because setting physical camera takes more time to do, and at default settings some results may not be visible.

VRayMtl
Select everything in the scene, right click and choose Create Material> VrayMtl. This operation will create default vray material.


vray sketchup

Now in the pop-up window we have material settings. rename your material.
By default, VrayMtl is created with only Diffuse Layer, it means that you can adujst color and transparency or put there any map. If you

press update view you can peview material look.


vray sketchup

If you want to have some refraction or refletions on your material you must add desired king of layer by rgihclicking on Layer name> Add layer.

vray sketchup

For example let's add new reflection layer. White color means total reflection. Black - no reflections. Below, there are two examples

which illustrate what i'm saying.


vray sketchup


vray sketchup

Now it's time to emmisive layer. Waht it does? If you've ever used vray for 3ds Max you propably know Vray Light Material. This

emmisive layer works same way. It emmits light from object. Useful for light bulbs, car lights etc. Quick example below.


vray sketchup

There also one more layer to add, it's refraction. Useful for glass and things like that. We also have ability to add bump maps, displacemnt

maps, reflection and another that you propably remember from otther 3d package.

VRay2SidedMtl
Now, the next shader provided with vray4SketchUp is VRay2Sided material. It lets you choose two different materials for every side of

polygons.

VRayLinkedMtl
Another material is vraylinkedmtl. This material is very useful if you want to use SketchUp native materials with VRay. So you put

SketchUp material into this material and in addition you can add vray layers.

VraySkp2SidedMtl
This is combination of VRay2SidedMtl and VRayLinkedMtl it means that you can put two SketchUp native materials on both side of poly.

VRay Lights

Vray4SketchUp has two type of lights.
VRayRectLight is a scalable rectancle light shape. You can edit this light by right clicking>VRay4SketchUp>Edit Light. By default this lightsource casts light in one direction, optionally you can check 2Sided in light setting to make it cast front and back.


vray sketchup

VRay Omni-directional light casts light in every direction, so it can be useful to enlight interiors or for things like light bulbs.


vray sketchup

VRay Shapes
There are two additional vray icons in our toolbar. First icon, simply creates a sphere, so it's not much useful. Second creates an infinite plane, so you don't have to scale a plane to cover empty space in your renders. This is very useful.


vray sketchup

 

RENDER OPTIONS

By default vray4SketchUp is highly configured e.g. there is physical camera turned on, GI, Environmet. In few steps i'll try to show you

what these options do and how to use them.

GLOBAL SWITCHES
Here you have some major setting, for example from here you can override all materials color in the scene, turn on global

reflection/refractions/ shadow etc.


vray sketchup

 

SYSTEM
VRay let you use powr of other LAN computer so here, you can turn on Distributer Rendering and manage it.

CAMERA
As you propably could see, you don't create any camera in your scene, that is because vray uses viewports default position to render. So

here you can turn on physically based xamera, DOF, Motion Blur and type of camera.

OUTPUT
Here you can adjust resolution of output image or autosave render image.

ENVIRONMENT
In this section you can turn on GI Skylight, so that creates an invisible sphere with configurable parameter like intensity, map, reflection

map.

IMAGE SAMPLER
Ant-aliasing options here. If you have to sharp edges, you can correct this here.

QMC SAMPLER
It's fast way to increase quality of rendered image.

COLOR MAPPING
Here you can adjust brightness and overall light look. So for example if dark corners in your image look too dark, here you can fix this.

VFB CHANNELS
Here you can add channel to virtual frame buffer.

DISPLACEMENT
If you have any shader with displacement map, here you can adjust it's quality.

ABOUT
Don't look there :)

Another useful option is that you can save your setting to file or import somebody's else settings.
So play with these setting and make make make the renderings :>

HDRI

In few steps i gonna show you how to setup HDRI.

Turn off psychical camera. Assign new vraymtl to object that you want to reflect HDR map. Add new reflection layer. Press 'M' icon next to color and crank up colors until you see nice reflection in Material Preview, something like below

vray chaos group cgnew

Now open render globals, go to Environment tab> GI and set hdr map into 'm' slot. Do the same thing for Background.

vray chaos group cgnew

If you press Render button you should see something like below.

vray chaos group cgnew

That's it :>

 

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