Vray MultiSubtexture Support?

[AForestProUser]

Hi,
First of all thank you for your great plugin. As I'm new to this plugin I'm not sure if I'm missing something here. Does Forest Pro support Vray MultiSubtexture ? I mean it would be a surprise if it doesn't, but apparently I cannot get it to work. I currently have more than 3oo textures in the scene all used with vray Multisubtexture as It is not wise to create 300 material, one for each texture. But as far as I tested Forest forces all materials to use the first ID texture.
I appreciate if someone can give a hint here.
Thank you,

[iToo]

Hi, thanks you for using our software.

Unfortunately VRayMultiSubTex is not fully supported because Forest modifies internally the IDs of the geometry. This process is necessary for several operations and for compatibility with certain render engines.

There are a couple of workarounds for this issue:

1) Create a Multi-sub with multiple instances of the material, so IDs used in VRayMultiSubTex match with IDs of the multi-sub. You can see an example in the attached scene.
2) If the number of items is not huge, Use Forest Tools to generate instances of the source objects.

I hope that helps.

[iToo]

I've added an entry in the FAQ to describe this issue in detail.

[AForestProUser]

Thank you for the reply, I've converted some of them to multisub material but that's not really a workaround, that's a limitation that forest has.The issue is not about putting the time to convert all those multisub textures to a multisub material, it's about not having renderer to process hundreds of materials and also for changing a value in material we have to go over the same nodes to change the material value instead of just changing one material. A huge waste of time. Let's put this aside since I'm sure it won't be fixed.
I have some suggestion for some features;
1.LOD support : I saw that in the forum it was requested before so I'm going to upvote that.

2.Multiple custom mesh picking in viewport not through the list. And also the same feature for picking multiple surfaces in viewport .

3.Ability to duplicate a paint area

4.per custom geometry scale in percentage (like global scale but per object in the list of custom geometry ) width and height is not always helpful.

And lastly I found out changing a material for a custom object doesn't update the material in the forest object in the geometry material rollout.
(forest material is automatically assigned when I add a custom mesh and I have to clear it manually in order to be able to let
forest update the material of the custom object as I change it)
By the way, adding "VrayMultisubTexture is not supported by Fores Pack" somewhere on the site/documenttion/forest features will help to avoid confusion for some users or maybe it's there and I've missed it.

Thank you for everything,
AForestUser

[AForestProUser]

"You can find an example of this technique in the attached scene: it includes two objects, one of them with a VRayMultiSubTex using IDs 1 to 5. We used a Multi-sub to repeat the material in the first 5 slots, so IDs 1 to 5 are preserved for this object in the auto-material. Take note it's necessary to add the items to the Geometry List in order, so the object with VrayMultiSubTex go first. In this way, the instanced materials are placed in the slots 1-5 of the auto-material.

So that means you can't have more that one MultisubTexture since it'll mess up the IDs, and even in that case the MultisubTextured one should be added first , right?
I guess the Multisub material would be a better option then
Do I still need to be concerned about orders if no Vray MultiSub Texture is used and only MultiSub Material ?

[iToo]

So that means you can't have more that one MultisubTexture since it'll mess up the IDs, and even in that case the MultisubTextured one should be added first , right?
I guess the Multisub material would be a better option then
Do I still need to be concerned about orders if no Vray MultiSub Texture is used and only MultiSub Material ?

Although theorically would be possible to use several VRayMultiSubTex assigning specific IDs (A: 1-5, B:5-10), definitively it's not a recommended procedure. Instead, there are not problems using MultiSub materials.

1.LOD support : I saw that in the forum it was requested before so I'm going to upvote that.

We are working in that. If there are not problems, this feature will be available in FP 4.3.

2.Multiple custom mesh picking in viewport not through the list. And also the same feature for picking multiple surfaces in viewport .
[3.Ability to duplicate a paint area]

We'll think on it. Our main concern is how to add new options without complicate the interface.

About painting areas, there is a procedure to duplicate them:

1) Apply "Convert to Spline".
2) Create a new Spline area picking the spline created above.
3) Apply "Convert to Paint".

4.per custom geometry scale in percentage (like global scale but per object in the list of custom geometry ) width and height is not always helpful.

Agreed.

And lastly I found out changing a material for a custom object doesn't update the material in the forest object in the geometry material rollout.

In this case the suggested procedure is to clear all materials from the geometry rollout, so Forest uses the material of the source object. It can be done with a single click using multiple selection.

[AForestProUser]

About painting areas, there is a procedure to duplicate them:

1) Apply "Convert to Spline".
2) Create a new Spline area picking the spline created above.
3) Apply "Convert to Paint".

Yeah, That's what I'm currently doing but it was nice if it was a single click rather than 3 steps.

2.Multiple custom mesh picking in viewport not through the list. And also the same feature for picking multiple surfaces in viewport .


We'll think on it. Our main concern is how to add new options without complicate the interface.

I'm suggesting that since in a complex scenes especially when there's no good naming scheme finding objects in a list would so difficult and also adding one and then picking one would take so much time, but thank you anyways, I'm just throwing out ideas