V-Ray for Sketchup- Dumb newbie questions

[m_cubed]

Hi,

 

At work we've decided to save money, and are now using V-Ray for Sketchup rather than 3DS Max. Our renders are usually exterior daylit still images. I have been using 3ds max mental ray with imported sketchup files for the past year or so.

 

I am having difficulty finding much documentation on how the V-Ray plugin for sketchup works, but from the little I've read it sounds like basic materials are not included, and one is supposed to create everything from scratch or search online?

 

We're using Sketchup 8, but the V-Ray manual and its files are for V6. There are a bunch of images of sample materials in the manual, but I haven't figured out where I might get copies of the vismat files.

 

the help menu on my install directs me to the sales website.

I've found some tutorials on YouTube, and may go that direction, but I was hoping for some basic documentation from the software itself-

 

Does anyone have recommendations of good info on how this works, or is this just the way it is?

 

thanks in advance for any info/ideas,

Michele