V-Ray Workflow Integration

I upgraded to SketchUp Studio earlier this year and have been overall very pleased with the integrations of Scan Essentials and V-Ray. I have a bit of rendering experience with Thea For Sketchup and I find V-Ray very comparable with one exception: Materials.

I am specifically struggling with having to use the V-Ray materials within my building model whereas in Thea and other rendering software, it’s possible to link a render material to a SketchUp material. For example: wood flooring can be represented with SketchUp’s native “Black Lines” texture so that when plotting a floor plan, I get a clean mono-chromatic floor pattern that keeps the plan legible when plotted.

As soon as I go to render a view I have to replace the simple texture with a V-Ray texture in order to get the correct render results. If I wanted to use a dark/black wood floor, then my floor plan drawing becomes unreadable with the dark texture. Editing the texture in sketchup to a lighter color in SketchUp’s material editor also changes the V-Ray material… So I can’t have it both ways. I’m then forced to choose between textures visible in my plans or changing the face style to solid white (background) or color by layer in order to plot.

Am I missing something in V-Ray? Is it possible to have render-able materials associated with SketchUp textures that can still be plotted?

What is this ‘correct render results’?

If you were to use a tile material from V-Ray’s material browser for example, it would replace the texture you are using with no option to retain the SketchUp texture.

There are some parameters that allow you to override the what V-Ray sees the material vs SketchUp. See below where I used a material from SU’s default library, then went into the Bitmap settings in the Asset Editor and inverted the texture and adjusted the gain and offset so the tiles renders black but previews in SU as white.

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I found what guidepro wants, it’s an interesting feature

Something somewhat similar, with SketchUp and V-ray, but…
vri-05

Here are some images to further express what I am looking for.
I would like to be able to render my projects to this level:

Without all of the textures in my SketchUp model:

Because this is unacceptable when printed:

For the purpose of my floor plans I would like the SketchUp model to look like this:

In order to get from render materials to simple materials, I have to change all of the materials out manually. and then back again next time I am ready to render which is a huge pain.

Custom Binding is your friend.
You can set a custom binding type to show in sketchup that is different to what is rendered in VRay.
You do need to be able to locate the Sketchup textures on your machine, so have a little SU material library ready.
I have set up a small standard library of hatches that I use, or if I wish to use a flat colour I just set that as ‘Colour’ rather than ‘Bitmap’ in the Binding Texture slot of the VRay material.

You then have complete control over what SketchUp ‘sees’ and what VRay ‘sees’

I do this for every material I have in my model, I also use it to display ‘composite’ materials is SU, for example, If I create a texture map set from say, Substance Alchemist (Base Colour, Roughness, Normal, Glossiness etc) I combine the images in Photoshop to create a composite texture map that has Normals and AO and stuff like that baked in, which I then use as my custom binding texture in SketchUp.


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I played around with the custom binding settings. It definitely does what I am asking for, albeit a little cumbersome, especially when the V-ray material scale is wildly different from a comparable SketchUp texture. I didn’t see an option to adjust the scale/placement of the binding texture. Any workarounds for that?
It sounds like you are creating a SketchUp specific texture from your custom texture map set? Perhaps I’ll look into a substance editor.
Thanks for providing this solution for now! It’s nice to know that it’s possible!

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Scale (or material size) is managed entirely in the sketchup material tray. Or at least that’s what I do. I’ve never manipulated texture size In Vray. All my textures are square and generally end up being being multiples of 600mm.

Let me know if you want me to expound on my texture workflow. It doesn’t have to be alchemist; Quixel mixer or plain old PS will do the trick. Depends if you want to create and modify your own textures. I use substance stuff as it’s procedural and easy to create variations with different levels of wear /age/ type etc