V-Ray Next for SketchUp – Hotfix 1 Released

V-Ray Next for SketchUp has just been updated with a number of bug fixes and feature enhancements to improve your rendering experience, including:

• Optimised Scene Management – The entire asset management system has been optimised and made more reliable. You’ll find it easier to work on heavy scenes with a large number of assets and complex shading networks.
• Improved V-Ray Scene Importer – Reliably import models using multi-materials created in 3ds Max.
• Improved stability – This update fixes specific workflows related to loading V-Ray 3 projects, using settings preset files, overriding materials, texture colour space management and more.
• Further improvements – Including better compatibility with some of the most popular SketchUp plugins.

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Read on for the full changelog:

Installation & Licensing

• The Chaos Group License Server is updated to version 5.2.2
• The installer now properly sets and displays a primary remote server IP address and port number – 127.0.0.1:30304

Workflow Improvements 

• The entire asset management system is optimised and made more reliable. This affects asset creation, renaming, deletion, referencing, etc. The optimisations are most obvious in heavy scenes with big number of assets and complex shading networks
• Render element assets are no longer deleted when the category is active and the Purge function is used. Use the multi-selection functionality to quickly delete a batch of elements
• The Z Depth render element ‘Depth from Camera’ parameter is removed
• The VFB Render Progress window now receives and can display log messages that have been sent before its first initialisation

Other Changes & Bug Fixes

• Saving and loading projects no longer resets the Colour Space of all textures to the default sRGB option. Using the File Path Editor no longer changes the colour space either
• The asset preview render process can now be restarted if it stops responding. Make sure to stop and restart the interactive preview (using its toolbar stop/start button) in the unlikely event this happens
• The fresnel opacity of newly created Reflection material layers is now correctly displayed in the asset preview swatch
• Invalid material or texture references can now be successfully cleared from the slot’s context menu
• Creating a proxy from big number of SketchUp components or component instances now shows accurate progress in the Export Proxy window
• An issue with a Water textures used in a bump slot is resolved. Negative texture values are now properly handled
• All V-Ray taskbar processes are grouped and displayed under the SketchUp Windows taskbar icon. This applies to the Asset Editor and the V-Ray Frame Buffer window
• VRscan materials are now correctly sized and properly affected by the SketchUp material scale. A helper texture is displayed in the viewport to ensure this. Texture Placement parameters are now listed for every VRscan in it’s Asset Editor properties panel
• The way VFB Colour Corrections are saved within SketchUp projects is updated and made more reliable
• A number of issues related to V-Ray 3 scenes loading and upgrading are resolved
• A number of issues related to .vropt (render settings) files loading are resolved
• The Purge Unused Assets function no longer causes issues on MacOS
• Materials incorrectly saved with older V-Ray versions no longer cause issues when loaded in Next
• A number of issues related to complex texture hierarchy manipulation and deletion are resolved
• The Batch Cloud rendering functionality is temporarily disabled. Once a Chaos Cloud platform-side update is implemented, the feature will be re-enabled. Our main goal is to provide a system that warns users for possible issues with their batch cloud jobs(like missing external file assets, for example), letting them resolve the problem before the rendering starts
• Images imported through the SketchUp native Import no longer produce problematic V-Ray materials. Scenes containing such images saved with previous V-Ray version no longer cause issues when rendered in Next
• A number of issues with badly serialised V-Ray component data are resolved. A more detailed error message is displayed and a better log file is created, letting us easily identify any further problems
• Deleting Fur, Clipper or Mesh Light widgets from a group is now reliably handled during Interactive Rendering
• A number of issues preventing the V-Ray Asset Editor from being populated with assets on specific scene load are resolved
• The V-Ray Scene Importer now reliably imports models using multi materials exported from 3ds Max. The material ID assignment in 3ds Max results in a single object group in SketchUp with different materials applied to the corresponding faces
• The Scene Interaction Tool now works reliably with obstructed light widgets
• Deleting multiple materials at once no longer produces Ruby errors and warnings
• Using the Scene Interaction Tool before the previous action is completed no longer prints Ruby errors
• Skatter Proxy geometry materials render correctly when using the ‘Render only’ mode. Regeneration no longer causes Ruby errors
• A geometry instancing optimisation is implemented for Skatter objects with the ‘Render only’ mode enabled. This ensures that rendering a big number of instances is done in the most memory-efficient way
• The way the SketchUp default material is handled by V-Ray is improved preventing incorrect lighting in specific situations
• Activating Material Override during Interactive rendering now reliably affects all scene materials that have their ‘Can Be Overridden’ option enabled
• Changing the SketchUp material Opacity value automatically disables the synchronisation with the V-Ray material refraction. This allows for custom opacity manipulations in the viewport without affecting the rendered result
• V-Ray material refraction no longer resets in specific situations when the SketchUp scene is saved and reloaded
• The Z Depth render element tooltips are fixed
• All Smoke texture parameters are now properly named
• Repathing files with a Windows path on MacOS no longer causes issues
• The migration (gamma management) of render elements from scenes saved with V-Ray 3 is improved

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