how to transfer vray texture map to shaded?

[johnalexander1571]

I am importing a huge .fbx file with textures. They appear in the Vray version of the file and render in Vray, but don't export to Twinmotion. The Shaded thumbs are all ? marks I cannot figure out how to get the shaded versions to update themselves from the Vray materials at all. Does nyone know of a way to navigate this issue? I tried launching formZ without VRay installed and this didn't work.

[johnalexander1571]

I have spent a large portion of the day trying to bring in .fbx so that it doesn't set all the materials to white. I can't do it from Maya or 3DStudio fbx or obj or dae. Nothing is working.

[Justin Montoya]

Hi John,

I too would love to know the answer to the missing Shaded materials translation, as it shows up regularly for me too.  There's a lot of variables here, so Tech should really chime in to let us know the correct way to do this (there are support requests for this very issue).  Until then, I have found varying success which I'll try to share below.

 

So your FBX file comes in with VRay texture translations that don't show Shaded?  You tried importing it with the VRay plugin disabled?   Can you share the FBX file so I can test it?

 

Do you have Keep Textures enabled on your file that you Import the FBX into?  Try that first,  save, restart your computer, Re Open.  I have had that bring back missing Shaded translations where V-Ray was working as it should.   Yes?

 

Next, the other work around I have been able to come up with is to manually update all the Shaded links.  I know, I know.. It's not fun when you have dozens or even hundreds of maps, but I've done it over and over again as I seem to regularly come up with missing Shaded links, despite having the correct V-Ray textures showing up.  There must be some way of 'FORCING' Shaded to update itself based on the links in our VRay.  In the old days, if we had a stuck RenderZone map that didn't update, all you had to do was adjust the Reflection numbers and it would automatically update again.  Not sure it'll work here, but it's worth a shot?

 

[Justin Montoya]

You could also try to import the FBX file directly into Twinmotion, skipping FormZ.  Does that lose maps too?

 

[Des]

I've no idea if this helps or not. FormZ only exports (in datasmith) textures from the shaded version of the materials. I use Maxwell render so all my materials are referenced mxm material files. They are represented in shaded view in FormZ by the diffuse map but not other maps such as bump, specular etc. So when I am exporting from FormZ using datasmith, I have to make sure that all the materials have the bump maps, specular maps loaded in the Shaded version of the material so they are exported correctly. Maybe this is the same with the Vray materials?

Not sure if this has anything to do with your query or not.

Des

[johnalexander1571]

Hi,

Thanks guys, I updated to 9.2 to be sure, tried with and without RZ trial enabled, I did try saving and reopening with Save Textures on, I thought that did have a good shot of working but it didn't. The file is a large environment that imports beautifully into TM, Maya, 3DStudio, etc. I can't go straight to TM because I need to work in the file for long periods first. I just have to use Maya for my main drive software since I have to have something that works. I gave it a whole day of trying, I can't keep trying it in formZ when it works fine in Maya.

The file is the Bistro file associated with Amazon and NVidia's Omniverse Developers program. I can't find a link to the download at the moment.

 

[johnalexander1571]

Des, yes the whole problem is that the textures are not ever getting loaded into the Shaded version, and this is why they won't display or export to Datasmith. When they are right there in the VRay render, it is so frustrating. There are hundreds of them, so I can't load each one by hand.

I wonder if a quick script by someone could just go through and load the Vray materials or just the texture maps into the shaded ones and solve the whole problem.

Edited January 13, 2022 by johnalexander1571

[johnalexander1571]

I also was getting the same thing, any .fbx export from Maya or 3dStudio trying to get around this. DAE and obj also failed.

[ZTEK]

I don’t use Vray, nor Maxwell, so I don’t have any clue how their materials systems work, but...

Did you try having the materials and/or the associated textures files, if there're any, in the same folder than your formZ file?

I only use formZ Shaded Full and Twinmotion with good results.

Long ago, I stopped keeping the textures “inside” my FZ files, as Justin shows in his screenshot with Keep Textures on. I use Open Fast,  Keep Textures off, and Compression Off, and I keep all my textures files locally in a folder inside the project folder, on a not centralized way. In this way, formZ always find them.

This method is redundant, but I don’t have any problems with my materials or the textures.

[johnalexander1571]

Hi ZTek, yeah, I tried that too.

[dpwr]

Any updates or work around success on this?

[johnalexander1571]

I found a tiny bit of relief by using .3ds files in my case. I have some Evermotion environ files from Turbosquid, I open in MAX and export as .3ds. This preserves more than anything else. BUT, my company supplies me MAX and I have a 30 day trial of VRay plugged in. Notably, I am not finding Evermotion MAX to Twinmotion reliable at all with not much testing. I can count on formZ to Twinmotion.

I didn't find a way to get VRay mats that are a bit "marooned" by .fbx import over to their shaded counterparts without doing it one at a time.

[Justin Montoya]

Using 3dsmax as a translation step here too. 

SKP, MAX, 3DS, OBJ files, come into FormZ better if first translated in 3dsmax.  I've been using both OBJ and FBX for output, depending on the file. For example,  OBJ seems to be really clean and efficient for getting 3D rigged Render people MAX files into FormZ.  The only problem is that shaded mode materials have a transparency that needs to be turned off after imported into FormZ.

SKP files have also been causing unusual FormZ issues lately when directly imported, but if you open it in 3dsmax first and then export it as a FBX, it seems to be much better, and the file size is dramatically smaller.  I think this process is removing some of the junky SketchUp modeling 'slag' that causes FormZ to hiccup.