Thursday, April 28, 2011

Sketchup-Creating Vray Material

Vray materials in this tutorial are actually simplification from various possible way of making Vray Material for sketchup. This tutorial comprises:

1. Vray material standard, which actually automatically formed from Sketchup standard material
2. Material with Bump, for textured material
3. Glossy material, to make porcelain, marble, granite and such
4. Metallic material. I make gold material in this example, but with color adjusting you can also make iron, brass, chrome, copper etc
5. Glass material, which in its development can be plastic or water material

Keep in mind, that when creating a Vray texture in sketchup, make sure from the beginning which material you want to use and the size of the mapping you’re going to place. Because sometimes, after editing the standard material in Vray Material Editor, I find it difficult to change the texture. Sometimes I even have to start from importing the texture again.


Below, I only provide the fire texture for the fireplace. Other materials I used is pretty common, you can find them easily in your own library.



Have a nice day!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Sketchup-Vray Scene Setting

Vray is my most favorite rendering engine, even though I think it's a little bit slow on  the rendering process when I use it on Sketchup. In this tutorial I will show you how to set the fastest setting in  rendering parameter, but still give the optimum result.


But all of this parameters are not absolute. There are a lot of factor that affect your rendering result. For example, how big your window opening, what kind/color of material you are going to use, how many lights you place inside of your room, etc. All of those things will affect the result and your rendering speed. You have to be open for trial and error. A bit troublesome, I know. But the result will be worth all the trouble.


At the end of the tutorial, the rendering result may seem a little bit over bright. It's because we haven't place the material yet (we're going to discuss this on the next tutorial). So if you want, you can use the sketchup default material. It's compatible enough (with the exception with the opacity material) for Vray.


Family room



Have a nice day!!

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Max-Mapping Uneven Sides using Unwrap UVW

How do we map all kinds of texture into one object? On the previous tutorials, we’ve learned that we can do it by channeling it to a certain polygon in editable poly. And then we used UVW Map to adjust the texture size. But this way, all the texture size must be equal, and it has to follow the UVW Map direction. That’s why I detach some part of the polygon so we can have different texture. Besides, it also means we need multi obj map, which each map needs to be edited individually.

Other way, which, I think, more practical is by using Unwrap UVW. All the texture needed can be gathered in one map, and than using Unwrap, placed separately. With the adjustable size on each polygon.

This time I emphasize on making Architrave door and room Cornice. It can be used in more complex object. But that’s another story, another tutorial.


Have a nice day!!