Sketchup to 3dsMax+vray. NEED HELP!!!!!

[marcelo fernandes]

Hi all. This is my first post. Hope i'm not repeating anyone else's.

 

I work in an arch office and luckily I have at my disposal 3ds and vray, that i used before. I had only to adapt to modelling in sketchup, cuz it's the standard around here. At the beginning i hated it, but got used to it and now can't live without it, except for this particular issue:

 

----------------------GLASS or volume in general----------------------------------

-when doing glass, i noticed immediatly that i had to make simple faces in sketchup and then apply a shell modifier in 3ds in order to have thicknes, otherwise, 3ds would calculate both faces separately and no volume in between and that always leads to erroneous refractions.

So far so good; that was not the end of the world, until now that i am working on a project with curved windows. What happens is that, because sketchup's circles aren't actually circles, but a sequence of lines, the curved windows are exported as dozens of contiguous planes and, when you apply the shell modifier, things get ugly. They will be extruded individually thus creating an end-of-the-world-like result. i'm sure that many other people faced the same problem. Is there a solution for that?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

P.S. Sketchup is so simple, fast and productive. It's a pity that curved things arent vertorial. It's also a pity that it only supports 32bit and that vray for sketchup is still not yet there. I'll have to learn how to live with that. Maybe if Autodesk bought it instead of Trimble (wtf is trimble anyway?) there would be less compatibility issues. Who knows.

[Ismael]

http://www.ramyhanna.com/2008/09/sketch-up-to-3ds-max-does-work.html

 

See Ramy's comment on August 6, 2011 8:17 PM.

 

Maybe what you need...

[Shaun Hamm]

Try to extrude all your glass in sketchup about 1/2" to 1 " before you export it instead of shelling it in max. A couple other tips, always group whenever possible and check to make sure front faces are always in view. ("blue" faces render invisible). Use monochrome view to see if you have any backfaces showing.

 

For curves, if you break up your big arc by creating smaller connected arcs, they have more points and have you have a smoother arc.

[Shaun Hamm]

http://www.ramyhanna.com/2008/09/sketch-up-to-3ds-max-does-work.html

 

See Ramy's comment on August 6, 2011 8:17 PM.

 

Maybe what you need...

 

Nice...looks like they added the ability to specify number of segments in SU8, i still use SU7 for the most part and never noticed that in 8.

[marcelo fernandes]

Thanks, Ismael, but he actually uses mental ray, so it doesn't affect him. Anyways, really nice to read, helped me in other things. Thank you

[marcelo fernandes]

Shaun, i don't think you quite understood my problem. Extruding doesn't give volume to my solids, only draws the faces that define it and that's why it doesn't render well in max, because vray need volume to accurately calculate refraction.

 

As for your second point, i suggest you upgrade to SU8, cuz you can specify the number of segments when drawing an arc and that makes it a lot easier than creating many different contiguous arcs.

 

"blue" faces render well in vray cuz you can make your materials double sided.

 

Thanks for the reply.

[marcelo fernandes]

ahhh... i see you have that subdivision thing covered already. Its a really nice add, huh?

[ludnid]

hmmmm...I have to disagree with you on a couple of things. For starters, vray for sketchp IS there already just depends on how you go about it. PROOF : http://sketchupvrayresources.blogspot.com/ . A lot of "mad men" performing wonders with it.

 

I'm a sketchup-max sketchup-vfsu too so have you looked into the plugins available to sketchup? My windows are always doubled and have no problems with refractions. I use either of windowiser to double my faces or the joint push pull tool which extrudes curved surfaces and can be gotten for free amongst other plugins on sketchucation.com

 

if you still want to go through max, i usually select my imported model, go to edit mesh, select one of the window faces, then scroll down and select id ( this will select all my faces with the window material ) and detach it. After i've detatched i simply move it backwards or add the shell modifier though i see that as a lot of trouble when it can be done much easier in sketchup.

@ Shaun - Actually setting the number of segments on a curve or a circle has been there since sketchup 5, 6 if i'm not too sure.

[marcelo fernandes]

Ok guys, so I got it.

 

I asked the guys who do our presentation renders and the solution was quite simple. I made this quick scene to explain.

 

I made three forms in sketchup (from left to right):

1-has thickness directly in SU

2-doesn't have any thickness at all

3-has shell modifier in 3ds

 

Now, the trick was actually to activate "weld vertices". I actually feel a little bit embarassed of not having thought of that. So, here's an image with the option off:

And another one with the box ticked:

 

We can immediatly see the differences.

 

In 1, changes are not very obvious, but, considering that IOR is set to standard 1.6, the refractive distortion is only happening on the second image, therefore proving that the object gains volume. This means that, if geometries are well made and grouped in SU i won't even have to apply shell in the future (although i will, as i will explain later).

 

In 2, as no volume was given in either SU or 3ds, the refractions simply don't exist. It's totally wrong in every sense. Noticeable is also the fact that, with "weld vertices" on, 3ds could smooth the facets, as it recognizes the entire object and not independent faces as before.

 

In 3, with "weld" off, we had the issue i complained about on the first place. Facets are extruded separately, creating an non-continuous outer shell (if the shell had been made inwards, they would just intercept each others).

 

 

 

So, both 1 and 3 work well with "weld vertices" on. This is now a matter of personal taste and method. I will keep on drawing glass in SU as a simple plane, because i find it a lot easier to, later in 3ds, just shell the glass layers and voila.

 

I feel quite embarased for having such a basic error haunting me throughout all this time. heheehe

Reminds me of when i discovered the affect shadows tickbox for refraction in vraymaterials. I had always been removing "cast shadows" from the glass layers... what an idiot. (BTW chaosgroup guys, that one should come on as standard, right??)

[marcelo fernandes]

Well, Dindul, I get your point.

 

where I work we are 4 doing renderings. 2 of us use 3ds2012+vray2.0+forestpack+autograss+evermotion_models. The other 2 use sketchup+vray+warehouse. Let me just start by saying that this is not my office, otherwise everyone would be working on SU+Vray only. The price difference between the 2 workflows is just absurd. SU+Vray is like 1500€ and 3ds+Vray+etc is more like 7000€ and that says it all, right?

 

Well, as i happen to have legal versions of 3ds2012+vray2.0+etc, i will keep on using them, but let me share with you my experience.

Although it is a matter of time until i switch to SU+vray, it's also a fact that, for now, SU+Vray doesn't properly or totally support the following:

 

-VRAY PROXIES

-Incredible plugins such as FOREST PACK, AUTOGRASS, FUMEFX, MULTISCATTER, TREESTORM, etc (i know that SU might get there, but there still isn't a good choice for this kind of commercial addons.

-64 bit. This is really realy important and people tend to forget about that.

-The power of the procedural 3ds maps that can be combine to create mostly anything at 0 memory cost.

-UVW mapping, UVW unwrap, etc. (well, maybe there is a plugin for that and i don't know)

-Vray direct lights

-Proper HDRI integration

-VrayDisplacementMod

-VrayRT

 

As more than half of my renderings are exterior views with lots of trees, cars, people, and complex geometries, you can imagine that proxies play a great role (and if you ever used Forest pack, you know what i am talking about). In fact, our method means using ZERO PHOTOSHOP because in one project, if we want to make change to a facade just to check the materials of shapes, waiting for the rendering to be done is already too much, so everything must be modeled. We have dozens of renders from the same camera with minor changes all the time.

 

the guys who use SU+Vray experience a lot of problems. Lack of memory in compelx scenes, vray crashes, maps that disappear when you change computers, etc.

 

I find 3ds a little bit outdated compared to SU, specially in terms of navigation, but it is still more powerfull. Anyways, i'm gonna start doing my simpler renderings in Su hoping that one days there will be a SU+Vray version that meets my needs

[ludnid]

Very well said Marcelo. In light of the last post i couldnt agree with you more. Chaos seem to be working on a new 2.0 version of vray for sketchup that'll reduce most of those bugs and introduce proxies. Will wait and see.

[marcelo fernandes]

Thanks, mate. Looking forward to SU 9 aswell. It is really important that they soon come out with an improved version and then we'll see if Trimble will actually be good for the software.

 

Anyways, installing Vray for SU as we speak.

 

Nice renders, dude!

[M V]

Word on the street is that the Chaos guys are hard at work on a new release. I think it will address a lot of the concerns folks have. Probably not 64 bit though. That's a SketchUp issue unless that take VRay out of the SketchUp environment and use some kind of pack to studio feature or something. I personally, would not want to see that.

[marcelo fernandes]

Well, apparently, the new Sketchup 2013 is not 64bit yet and they only improved the 2d features of LAYOUT. That's sad.

 

On the other hand, vray 1.6 has RT and proxies. A couple of questions, though:

 

-How to apply muti-sub materials in sketchup? Cuz proxies need that.

 

-They did not introduce either vrayedgestexture nor vraycomptex. It's a pitty because the toon material doesn't work when put behind something with an opacity map (like glass, 2d people, 2d trees, etc... and if you purge your model, it will erase the base material, thus it is not directly applied to anything.)

 

-And the most important of all: I really hope they have improved stability. That's its main flaw.

[ludnid]

i just downloaded vray 1.6 beta from the net and in the process of testing it out. The renders created by tilt pixel really looked good especially with the addition of the vray dome light and as you mentioned proxies. It seems evermotion is converting some of their vegetation to proxies for vray sketchup but to be used on a cloud network.

 

I just tried bringing in a tree from 3dsmax to use as a proxy and faced the problem you just stated with respect to multi sub objects. So i'm heading over to the warehouse to find good objects to use then possibly give a feedback within the next couple of hours.