Mastering V-Ray Render Options in SketchUp

Posted on Jan 13, 2025 in Architecture

V-Ray for SketchUp: Mastering Render Options

Opening V-Ray for SketchUp – Render Options

The V-Ray for SketchUp Options controls all rendering parameters. You can open these Render Options from the Plugins menu above or click directly on the V-Ray Options icon.

Saving and Loading Option Settings

There are many Options settings in V-Ray for SketchUp. Users can save the current settings or save different files according to different scenes, different render quality settings, or different render engines. From File>Save, save the Options settings. Use .visopt as the file format. It’s about 2KB in file size. When the SketchUp file is saved, all changes in V-Ray Options settings will also be saved. Use File>Load to load saved .visopt Options files. It will replace the current settings. Use Restore Defaults to restore the original V-Ray settings.

Open the file Chairs-Original.skp. There are three chairs and a very large floor in the file. All objects are not assigned to any material, and there is no light in the scene. Please click the blue render icon from above directly, and you will get this gray tone image without changing any settings in the V-Ray Options.

Open the V-Ray Options window and pull down the Global Switches, Environment, and Indirect Illumination tabs, as illustrated below.

1. Global Switches Please uncheck Hidden Lights and Default Lights under the Lighting section. Hidden Lights means hiding the lights from the scene. It is used when the users don’t want to see any light while modeling in the scene. When you uncheck the Hidden Lights box, those hidden lights will not affect the V-Ray render. To prevent these hidden lights from affecting the final render output, we recommend you uncheck Hidden Lights first. Default Lights means V-Ray built-in lights. Users cannot see nor edit these lights from the scene. If one unchecks Default Lights and does not check the GI below, the render will turn out totally black. We also recommend you check Low thread priority under the Render section so that it won’t affect other programs while rendering with V-Ray. 2. Indirect Illumination Please check “On” under Indirect Illumination, also called Global Illumination. We will explain those green dot items later. 3. Environment Environment is to control the contrast, color, and HDR of the Global Illumination. Please check the boxes before GI and Background. Please adjust those three items, then select the blue render icon on the top. You will get the image with Global Illumination. Compared to the image without Global Illumination, you can see the objects don’t have dark shadows because the objects get light from all around.

The image is in a blue tone because the default environment color of V-Ray is set to light blue of R204, G224, B225. Please check the box under GI to enter the color selections. Change the Sat from 62 to 5. The color is changed to light blue of R250, G252, B255, which is very close to white.

Click OK to exit, then click on the blue render icon to color the image. The image color becomes very close to white, like the image below.

Because the chairs and floor are not assigned to any materials, V-Ray gives the objects SketchUp’s default white layer as material. To know how to assign the materials to the objects and make adjustments, we need to open the Properties tab.

Assigning Materials in V-Ray

1. Click on the Material Editor in the V-Ray toolbar to open it. Create a material, then in the SketchUp Material, click “in model” , and click the surface to apply the material.

2. Select the “Paint Bucket” and click on the surface that you want to apply the material to.

3. Now the objects are applied with materials. You can open the Material Editor to edit and create other materials.

For further information, visit the official V-Ray documentation: http://www.vray.com/vray_for_3ds_max/manual/index.shtml