Author Topic: VRay Setup in Max (Read 23764 times)

Assembly · **on:** August 14, 2015, 04:04:47 am

Hi Guys,

After finding no information about this, i decided to find a solution myself to share with everyone and maybe find better solution too.

I have been playing with a few methods for using substance painter with VRay (3.25.01) in 3dsMax (2016 SP1), but found this to be the easiest to understand and setup, both from a substance painter point of view and a 3dsmax point of view. I think it works really well.

Check out the attachments..
first.. is what i am exporting from Substance, its a custom profile i made.. pretty straight forward.. i export these as exr's. Max seemed to prefer these over png's in my tests.

Second.. is my setup in Max. Its a VRay_Blend material. Base material is my Metal Shader setup, make sure the diffuse colour is set to black.. in the first layer is my NON Metal Shader setup. The only difference between them is where the diffuse colour goes. The metalness map is used as the Blend mask in the Blend material, this needs to be inverted.

A few notes.. i have highlighted the roughness map to show some other settings.. the settings in boxes are applied to ALL my texture maps.. keeps things nice and sharp. The settings in circles are specific to the roughness map.. inverting it basically converts it into a glossiness map. Play with the Output amount to get something that looks right in your render.

The render you see is only lit and reflected by a VRay dome light with an HDR in the texture slot.. ive also attached an alternative HDR.. all i did was swap the texture and everything just works.

Attachment 4 (IOR).. shows a quick change of texture from substance ('bronze armour' with 'machinery' masked on top ) and shows the shader setup for non metal. IOR is set to 1.5 as an average. For the Metal shader, IOR is set to 12. GGX BRDF is very important to set on both shaders.

Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 11:57:06 pm
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Max should handle the gamma settings of the exr's correctly.. but as a note.. all maps should be interpreted as gamma 1.0 when importing in.. except the base colour map which is 2.2.. but again, max should handle this automatically.

Hope this helps someone get a head start.

Assembly · **Reply #1 on:** August 21, 2015, 06:23:51 am

Looks like i was a few weeks too early.. SP1.5 now has a vray export template.

Here are the results based on the same file i used in the above post.

On the left is the new Substance Painter 1.5 VRay export preset shader setup.. On the right is the setup i defined above.

There are some differences.. most noticably around the chest. And neither method really matches what you see in SP. But hey, it still looks awesome.

I used png's in the (new) left setup.. and i had to manually set the gamma when importing the bitmap -> 2.2 for anything that will render as a colour.. 1.0 for anything that will be used to control a value.. (including Normal Maps).

The VRay Normal Map doesnt seem to like 32bit exr's that come out of SP.. but my Bump setup from the post above works fine.

I still like my setup as if offers a little control outside of Painter.. but good to know that there are options.

nate · **Reply #2 on:** August 21, 2015, 01:03:31 pm

This is GREAT! Thank you for posting this!

-nate

saulglanz · **Reply #3 on:** August 21, 2015, 09:24:03 pm

neat!! thanks a lot for sharing... it is good that allegorithmic finally released the presets for vray, but i even like your approach better

all the best

Assembly · **Reply #4 on:** August 25, 2015, 01:08:38 am

Hi guys..

Ive had a little more time to explore this and found that upon further inspection close up.. the VRay Preset, doesnt quite hold up.

As you can see on the left.. the texture map becomes muddy where the diffuse map and reflection map blend.. the diffuse map is black where metal is and the reflection map is white.. and where they cross over.. there is a incorrect transition through greys, where the material is neither metal or dielectric. Obviously, it should be one or the other.
So on the material render we get a weird halo where metal transitions into dielectic.

My shader network (on the right) avoids this, as the shader is doing a blend between two materials.. one over the top of the other. In the transitional zones, there is actual material information underneath.. not just grey.

Good luck out there, Guardians!

saulglanz · **Reply #5 on:** August 26, 2015, 06:43:59 am

Hi damon_2,

I really like the way your render looks... so I've been trying to reproduce what you did.
Nevertheless my result is pretty greyish and lacks that nice metallic touch.
I'm using Vray 3.20.03 in 3Ds Max 2015 and exported all exrs from Substance 1.5.
I attach here my files... but what I would really appreciate is if you could upload your collected scene, so that I can study it closer.
Cuz I still get lost when setting the HDR environment properly, and my metallic map for some reason seems to be sort of inverted to the one you have. I also set the diffuse color to black for both metallic and non-metallic sub-shaders, but I don't know if I shouldn't have mess with that.

I hope I can get your assistance. Thanks a lot for your time!!

All the best

nguyenduydung2007 · **Reply #6 on:** August 27, 2015, 03:16:55 am

Seems like your method get closer look in SD

Assembly · **Reply #7 on:** August 27, 2015, 11:54:52 pm

Quote from: saulglanz on August 26, 2015, 06:43:59 am

but what I would really appreciate is if you could upload your collected scene, so that I can study it closer.
Cuz I still get lost when setting the HDR environment properly, and my metallic map for some reason seems to be sort of inverted to the one you have. I also set the diffuse color to black for both metallic and non-metallic sub-shaders, but I don't know if I shouldn't have mess with that.

I hope I can get your assistance. Thanks a lot for your time!!

Hi saulglanz..
I have no problem uploading my setup.. but lets try to see if we can work out the problem first, better learning.

At first glance.. it seems like you have everything connected correctly in your Max setup.
You are correct in setting the diffuse colour to black in your metal shader.. this step is very important and i will update in my description at the top. Setting the diffuse to black on the non metal makes no difference as this is being controlled by the texture map.

What does appear off to me is the height map, roughness map, normal map and metallic map.. which suggest to me that you exported the wrong maps. Which export profile did you use?
Double check with my Substance Painter export setup in the top Post. This was a custom export profile i made to get the maps that i use.

As for setting up some lighting.. all i use is one vray dome light with an HDRI loaded into the texture slot.. if you need some HDRI's try these sites.. they have some free ones to download..
http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/?category=downloads (this guys blog is pretty good reading too)
http://www.openfootage.net/?cat=15

See how you go and get back to me with your results.

Happy hunting

jonathan_14 · **Reply #8 on:** September 04, 2015, 10:47:41 am

Hey damon_2 - another vote for a scene upload! There are SO MANY potential variables involved in a VRay scene setup that it would be really handy to actually have a scene file to look at. Are you using VRay cameras, what are the exposure values set to on them etc. I am finding official documentation and information generally really difficult to find on this - so I'm impressed by what you have managed!

Assembly · **Reply #9 on:** September 08, 2015, 04:28:37 am

Hey Guys.. here is a link to some files.

https://copy.com/eBsQTpbNZv0NBtem

There really isnt anything tricky going on here.
Camera has no exposure settings (go to environment Tab and turn off exposure control if its been switched on)
Theres a smaller 'LowRes' version (maps are 512px)
And a Larger 'HiRes' verion (maps are 2k)

Hope this helps

jonathan_14 · **Reply #10 on:** September 08, 2015, 10:12:11 am

Amazing! Very much appreciated damon_2 - I officially bestow legendary status upon you!

Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Assembly · **Reply #11 on:** September 08, 2015, 11:52:55 pm

No problem.. Let me know if you have any questions.

Assembly · **Reply #12 on:** September 11, 2015, 05:25:22 am

Thats a really really great idea... maybe... sound pretty time consuming.
Thanks for the interest.

toddd3d · **Reply #13 on:** October 16, 2015, 05:09:05 am

Hey damon_2,

thanks for posting all of this info! I am trying to use the new vray template and the 1 thing I am running into is problems with mixing a painted surface with a metal(I have a tin toy model I am working with). When I wear away the paint to metal and bring the maps into max/vray I get black where the metal should be showing. I've tried inverting maps, different formats but have been failing to get the metal to look right. Do you or anyone here have any suggestions? I do realize that I can likely get the result with your template/method and a blend, but would like to have the template provided by allegorithmic do what it is intended to do as it seems to be an easier workflow.

thanks in advance for any help!

Todd

Assembly · **Reply #14 on:** October 16, 2015, 06:02:37 am

any chance you can share you file?