Improve your V-Ray Textures using these 5 top tips!

We are often asked for guidance on how to improve the quality of V-Ray textures, so we want to give you our 5x top tips which will supercharge your workflow and boost the realism of your work!

1. Never leave the reflection colour as black

Reflections are visible in almost every material – there are very few exceptions to this in the world around us.

Improve V-Ray textures | Reflections are present on every surface.

Consequently, as CGI artists, we need to represent this within our work and ensure that our materials are always programmed to reflect light.

Improve V-Ray textures | We must program our materials to reflect light

As you can see, when we have our reflection colour set to black, we do not see any reflections…

Improve V-Ray textures | Reflection colour of black gives us no reflections whatsoever

Whereas when we set our reflection colour to white, we see really intense reflections.

Improve V-Ray textures | Reflection colour of white gives us intense reflections

Note the difference between reflection intensity and reflection glossiness

There is a difference between reflection colour and reflection glossiness - note the difference here

We cover this on our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses, held at the end of every month over Zoom!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: always change the reflection colour from black

Improve V-Ray textures | Never leave reflection colours as black

2. Pay attention to repeating textures

There are few aspects to life as inconvenient as repeating (or tiled) textures…

Improve V-Rat Textures | Tiled textures are lacking in realism

An great material could be ruined if it repeats itself too often, and you can see visible repetitions within your work

Improve V-Ray Textures | High quality materials can be created in V-Ray, but we must address how these are applied (or wrapped) onto geometry within our model

It is fair to deduce that we must take measures to prevent this from happening… there are a few things that we can do.

Try and use the largest scale images possible for your materials. Think large-scale!

Improve V-Ray textures | Always look for large scale textures where possible

This fundamentally reduces the number of times that a material must repeat itself on a given surface.

We can also use something called Stochastic Tiling…

Improve V-Ray textures | Adding stochastic tiling is done as follows

Using this technique, V-Ray automatically randomises the positioning of your materials – reducing the tiling effect!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: use large-scale maps & add stochastic tiling

Improve V-Ray textures | Recording made by Archilime Academy showing the effects of Stochastic Tiling within the V-Ray 5 for SketchUp

3. How to fix glass errors

Does your glass sometimes show up as black, or just generally looks strange?

Improve V-Ray textures | Black glass is fixed within V-Ray for SketchUp by ensuring that the faces are facing the front

You’re not alone!

You may have glass applied to back faces – V-Ray hates this! Turn on the monochrome face style to check

Graphic of glass applied to back faces - checking with View, Face Style, Monochrome

V-Ray requires 2x faces of glass, with front (or white) faces facing outwards.

Improve V-Ray textures | A gif made by Archilime Academy showing the correct setup for glass — We also recommend using one of the preset glass materials – they work great!

If you follow these rules for glass, you will never have any more issues with glass!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: glass in V-Ray requires 2x faces, with front faces facing out. Check this using the monochrome face style

Improve V-Ray Textures | It is crucial that we ensure that we address incorrect glass materials

4. Add specular or gloss maps into the reflection glossiness texture slot

Do your textures look uniform and flat?

Flat reflections are a result of adding a value in the reflection glossiness

Have you ever seen one of these maps before?

Create Realistic Textures | A specular map dictates where on the material we will see glossy or matte reflections — A specular map dictates where on the material we will see glossy or matte reflections.

Add them into your reflection glossiness slots to create varying levels of gloss across your material.

Using maps, we can create variances in reflection across the material

If required, you can wrap these gloss maps in a colour correction to enable to adjust this further

Colour corrections can be added to any type of map to change the appearance of a material

We can see the comparison between a material with & without a map inside the reflection glossiness slot.

The difference between using a gloss map and not using one

Check out more on how to do this on our blog on how to create realistic textures!

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: using maps to control your materials’ glossiness makes them more realistic

Improve V-Ray Textures | An advanced V-Ray material — An advanced V-Ray material

5. Add imperfections to your textures

Nothing is ever perfectly smooth…

Surface imperfections are often what tells us that a material is photorealistic

Not even seemingly ‘flat’ surfaces…

No surface is ever truly flat in the real world

Motes of dust, minute scratches or greasy fingerprints – top-level CGI artists look at add these details to our finishes.

Improve the Lighting in your CGI - An interior CGI of The Priory in Tetbury

It is possible to add black and white alpha masks into the reflection glossiness and/or bump slots.

Scratches are seen everywhere in the real world - as much as we hate it!

Wrap these in a colour correction, and tweak the brightness and contrast of these maps to achieve the desired results.

Scratches can be added to surfaces by adding alpha maps into the bump sections of the asset editor

Key takeaway to improve your V-Ray textures: use alpha masks to simulate surface imperfections.

Improve V-Ray Textures | The use of alpha masks to break the uniformity on flat surfaces is crucial for realism

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Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

How do I create realistic textures?

Have you ever wondered how you can go from this…

Create Realistic Textures | A screenshot from SketchUp of a simple texture

…to this?

Create Realistic Textures | An advanced V-Ray material

Well, grab a brew and open up V-Ray – we want to show you how to create realistic textures using some common examples to help improve your texturing game within the V-Ray for SketchUp Pro workflow!

Basic Principles

Textures (see also; materials) are painted onto faces within your 3D modelling software, and these can be flat colours or image-based.

The process within SketchUp to import images to use as textures

In our first example, we are going to begin developing a wood floor texture – and so we need to find an appropriate image to use here.

We recommend Poliigon or Extreme Textures if you are looking for high-resolution images to use as materials, whilst SketchUp Texture Club is another source with an extensive library.

In this example, we are importing Extreme Texture’s Antique Oak into SketchUp as a Texture, which will allow us to paint this onto a face.

Now is a great time to check the scale – within the Materials panel of the tray; use the global size settings to ensure that our boards are scaled appropriately. To help me do this, I like to draw a guideline that equals the desired width of the board, so that I have something to reference.

Create Realistic Textures | Within SketchUp, we resize the texture globally using the material panel within the tray. — Using a guide line for reference, we resize the texture globally using the material panel within the tray.

Here we can see how important it is for our material to be seamless. There is a vast collection of seamless materials available from the sources mentioned above!

We now have a high-quality, seamless texture applied to our model which is the correct scale.

Why does this not look realistic yet?

Create Realistic Textures | A SketchUp texture

Building Blocks

Light.

What V-Ray allows us to do is to bounce light around our model and control how our materials interact with it.

Create Realistic Textures | How virtual textures are broken down within V-Ray for SketchUp — Virtual textures can be broken down into three maps.

As covered on our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses; most solid materials can be divided up into three maps; diffuse, reflections and roughness.

The diffuse texture is what we see within our SKP model. This can be considered our ‘base’ texture and defines predominantly what the material looks like without lighting or roughness effects applied.

A diffuse map is often considered our base texture. — A diffuse map defines what our texture looks like. Texture map courtesy of **Extreme Textures**

If light bounces off an object and is not absorbed, then one sees a reflection. V-Ray has the ability to control the intensity and glossiness of reflections of materials within the scene by using reflection or specular (see also; spec) maps. For example, areas on a texture where one would see a glossy finish would show up as white on a spec map, whilst matt areas appear darker.

A specular map dictates where on the material we will see glossy or matte reflections. Texture map courtesy of **Extreme Textures**

Not all materials are as flat as a mirror; for this, we use a bump or normals map. Areas on a bump map that are darker are shown as depressions on the surface of the material when rendered, whilst the opposite occurs for lighter areas. Be careful with the intensity of bump or normal values – anything above 1 is normally not required.

A map that is used to simulate 3D depth to the texture. — A bump map is used to give the texture some 3D depth. Texture map courtesy of **Extreme Textures**

Adding Complexity

Hold on… how does glass work?

Refraction colour dictates how much light 'refracts' through a material. — Refraction colour dictates how much light ‘refracts’ through a material.

As we can see, the lighter we make the refraction colour, the more ‘glass-like’ our material becomes.

We can deduce that the setting to use that controls the transparent properties of glass is called refraction. Like with the reflection glossiness, we also have the opportunity to create frosted glass by adjusting the refraction glossiness value!

Refraction glossiness enables us to define shapes on the other side of the material.

What about fabrics?

Depending on the qualities of the fabric in question, we would advise taking a look through the preset textures within V-Ray…

V-Ray offers plenty of preset fabric textures

Once a similar fabric has been chosen, you can edit the colour and tones of the diffuse, by right-clicking on the bitmap slot within the Diffuse, and wrapping it in a Colour Correction. Here you will be able to modify the hue, saturation, brightness and contrast, to your liking.

Adjusting the colour of materials within V-Ray for SketchUp — Textures can be re-coloured by wrapping the diffuse in a Colour Correction adjustment.

Fabric textures now benefit from a new feature in V-Ray 5 for SketchUp where you can add a translucent layer for extra realism.

V-Ray 5 for SketchUp now offers the opportunity to add a coat to materials for added realism.

What if my texture seems to emit light?

One can add emissive layers to all materials within V-Ray as shown…

Emissive layers can be added to most materials. — Emissive layers can be added to most materials

You can also copy your Diffuse into your Emissive bitmap slot…

Diffuse maps can be added into the emissive texture slots

We cover how to create more realistic textures on our one-to-one, bespoke Development programs and Top-Up courses.

An example of high quality textures

Now that you know how to create realistic textures; Wrapping is a term we give to the application of a material to multiple faces within our model – much like the wrapping of a present with wrapping paper. We cover this in great detail on our Access into V-Ray for SketchUp courses.

We hope that you have enjoyed our texturing tips!

Brought to you by the Archilime Academy

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5 Tips to Improve V-Ray Textures