Sketchup + 3ds Max + Vray workflow

[marcelo fernandes]

Hey, guys. So here's my problem.

 

My workflow has always been modelling on Sketchup, exporting to dwg by layer, importing in 3ds Max and Rendering with Vray. I'm sure a lot of other people found out this to be the best way to do things.

 

But now we also bought many Vray for sketchup licenses and that means that we cannot work by layer anymore. Noone else in the office knows 3ds so we are all working by material in sketchup. That wouldn't be a problem, I tought. I always knew the existence of many converter plugins.

 

That left me with two options.

1- installing a sketchup plugin that converts materials to layers and export in dwg like i always did.

2- saving the sketchup file as .3ds and in Max running a script to convert those Arch and Design materials to Vray materials.

EASY (or at least i thought)

 

Problem is that none of the existing Plugins or Scripts seem to work.

 

Any ideas?

[SkylineArch]

Not sure what you are asking exactly, but I model in SketchUp, export as .3ds by material (I apply textures in SketchUp to set my UVW's, so I don't have to do that in Max), then replace the materials that come into Max with VRay or Mentalray shaders. The Model will be in Max, grouped by material.

[numerobis]

opening the .skp in max doesn't work for you?!?

[marcelo fernandes]

Well, some of my projects have plenty of materials and often we have to go back and forth very often between SU and 3ds. It's the part where we replace the materials by vray materials that I wanted to skip, but the scripts for that don't seem to work.

[SkylineArch]

Humm. I haven't actually tried this, but something that might work is apply materials in SketchUp, then import it into Max as usual, apply your vray shaders, making sure the names match the materials you had in your sketchup model. Then if you need to update, import your sketchup model into a new scene, then merge that max scene into your original scene, using scene materials??? I'm not sure, but something along those lines might be a work around. I've had to re-import models, but typically only have a dozen or so materials to reapply, so it's not too much of an inconvenience.