Itoo Software Forum

Forest Pack => Forest Pro (*) => Topic started by: LunarStudio on February 28, 2010, 08:01:58 PM

Title: Multi/Sub-Object VrayMtl and Standard
Post by: LunarStudio on February 28, 2010, 08:01:58 PM
Hi. Thank you for the great plugin!

One thing I wanted to mention is that as I'm going through the multi materials when using Vray, I noticed that some (not all) of the material slots are using Standard materials. This is going to drastically slow down the rendering, especially on animations. From my previous experience with Vray, Standard materials can add an extra minute worth of rendering time.

Can future releases contain VrayMtl only? As of now, I have to manually change all of the Forest materials.

Thanks!
Title: Re: Multi/Sub-Object VrayMtl and Standard
Post by: iToo on February 28, 2010, 08:41:50 PM
Hi,

Do you mean the billboard materials included with Forest or the HQPlants libraries ?

The Forest libraries use standard materials to maintain the compatibility with all renderers.

Title: Re: Multi/Sub-Object VrayMtl and Standard
Post by: DIMITRIS on February 28, 2010, 09:09:30 PM
I must say that it would be great if in the future we could have forest libs downloaded as a seperate file, choosing what kind of materials we need... Vray, Mental Ray, Maxwell, etc...
Title: Re: Multi/Sub-Object VrayMtl and Standard
Post by: iToo on February 28, 2010, 11:42:40 PM
I must say that it would be great if in the future we could have forest libs downloaded as a seperate file, choosing what kind of materials we need... Vray, Mental Ray, Maxwell, etc...

Well, that's easy. I just wrote a couple of scripts (FMat = Forest Material):

- FMat2VRay: converts all materials from current library from FMat+Standard to FMat+VRayMtl
- StripFMat: converts from FMat+Standard to Standard
- AddFMat: converts from any material to FMat+material

How to convert Forest libraries to VRayMtl:

- Copy ForestMaterialTools.ms to <maxdir>\scripts\startup
- Create a new toolbar (Customize User Interface), and drag the macroscript FMat2VRay from "Itoo Software" category to the toolbar.
- Open a Forest material library from the Material editor (libraries are stored in Program Files\Itoo Software\Forest Pack Pro\matlib).
- Click on FMat2VRay button
- Save the library

I've also attached the Forest Pro libraries already converted to VRayMtl using this script.

And this amazing script to convert any material to VRayMtl would be useful too: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/vraymtlconverter-v2-5

For Mental Ray is better to use FMat+Standard, because Forest converts internally the Standard material to a custom MR shader that is optimized for billboards. For Meshes/Proxies you can use FMat with Standard or Arch&Design materials, as you like.

I think it would not be difficult to write a script for Maxwell, but unfortunately i have not a Maxwell license here.

Title: Re: Multi/Sub-Object VrayMtl and Standard
Post by: DIMITRIS on March 01, 2010, 07:27:12 AM
Nice work as always... thanks!