PBR

Page Contents
This page provides information about the PBR material in V-Ray for SketchUp.

Overview
The PBR material is specifically designed to enable a PBR-based workflow of creating a metal
material.
Applying the PBR material as a layer provides flexibility in creating advanced materials.
For detailed information on the V-Ray metalness, see the "Understanding metalness" article by
Christopher Nichols.

UI Options
The PBR material settings are organized in Basic and Advanced modes. You can switch the mode
from the toggle button under the Preview Swatch or globally from the Configuration rollout of the
Settings tab.
From the Add Attribute button, you can select additional attributes that can add up to the
appearance of the material. For more information, see the Attributes section.
An Add Layer button is provided for some V-Ray materials, including PBR. You can select an
additional layer that can add up to the appearance of the material. For more information,
see the Layers section on Materials page.
The PBR material itself can be created by adding a PBR layer.
Holding down Ctrl (or Cmd on macOS) while having the Add Attribute or Add Layer menu open,
allows selecting multiple entries without closing the dropdown.
A Reset option is provided in the context menu of each Color Slot. You can reset the color to the
default one.

VRayPBR
Color – Specifies the color of the material. In areas where the Metalness is 0 (black) this color
represents the diffuse albedo. In areas where the Metalness is 1 (white) this color is a reflection
filter.
Metalness – Controls the reflection model of the material from dielectric (metalness 0.0) to metallic
(metalness 1.0). Note that any intermediate value between 0.0 and 1.0 does not correspond to a
physical material. This parameter can be used with PBR setups coming from other applications. The
Metalness texture map should be considered a mask between two different types of materials:
dielectric or conductive. RGB map should be used with this option. If a Bitmap texture is slotted its
color space must be set to Rendering Space (Linear).
Roughness – Controls the sharpness of reflections. A value of 0.0 means perfect mirror-like
reflection. Higher values produce blurry or glossy reflections. RGB map should be used with this
option. If a Bitmap texture is slotted its color space must be set to Rendering Space (Linear).
IOR – Specifies the IOR when calculating Fresnel reflections.
Opacity – Controls the material/layer opacity amount. A value of 1.0 makes the material opaque.
Lower values make the material transparent.
The Reflection parameter is hard-coded to a value of 1 and therefore not displayed in the UI.

Binding
Binding – Enables connection/binding between V-Ray and the corresponding base application
material.
Color – Enables color binding. Changing the V-Ray material color changes the corresponding base
application material color and vise versa.
Opacity – Enables opacity/ transparency binding. Changing the SketchUp material transparency,
however, does not change the V-Ray material. Instead, it disables the Opacity binding.
Texture Mode – Enables texture binding. Changing the V-Ray material texture changes the
corresponding base application material texture and vise versa.
Auto – By default binds the Diffuse texture to the base app material.
Texture Helper – Allows the use of a helper texture as a base application material map. The
same helper is used if the binded texture is a procedural map. This is useful if every time you
have to set texture placement for a map that can't be displayed accurately in the base app.
Custom – Allows the use of a custom texture as base application material map.
Disabling this parameter allows changing the base app material texture without affecting the V-Ray
material.
If a PBR material contains multiple layers, only the top-most one is regarded in Auto binding
mode.
Override Control

Can be Overridden – When enabled, the material can be overridden by the Material Override option
in the Settings.

Attributes

The attributes from the following expandable menus are available for the PBR material.

Translucency

Back Material– Defines the material V-Ray uses for back side faces as defined by their normals.
Translucency – Determines if the front or the back side of the material is more visible in the
rendering process. By default this value is 0.5, which means that both sides are equally visible.
When this parameter is closer to zero, the material facing the camera is more visible, when it is
closer to one, the back material is more visible. A texture can be used to control the variation of the
effect.
Mult. by Front Diffuse – When enabled, the translucency is multiplied by the diffuse of the front
material.

Bump

This option gives the ability to add bump map and normal map effects when using any material.
Bump/ Normal Mapping – Enables or disables the bump or normal effect.
Mode/Map – Specifies the bump map type.
 Bump Map – A height map should be used.
Bump Texture Channel – It is most commonly used for Round Edges effect. Edges texture is
used as a bump.
Normal map – RGB map should be used with this option. If a Bitmap texture is slotted its color
space must be set to Rendering Space (Linear).
Normal Map Type – This option is available only when the Mode is set to Normal Map. It specifies
the space for the Normal Map.
Tangent Space – Uses tangents set to each individual face.
Object Space – Uses each object's local coordinates.
Screen Space – Uses a flat projection along the camera direction.
World Space – Uses world coordinates.
Amount – Multiplier for the bump/normal map.
Delta Scale – It specifies a scale for sampling the bitmap when Bump Map is selected. The exact
value is calculated automatically by V-Ray, but can be changed here.

Displacement

Materials need to be applied to objects (groups/components) to have working displacement. If

various materials are applied to different faces of an object, the displacement from the top-level
(group/component) material will be used on all of them. Normal Displacement will take into
account the texture size of each different face material, while 2D Displacement will ignore
them.
Displacement1 – Enables or disables the displacement effect.
Mode/ Map2 – Specifies the mode in which the displacement is rendered.
2D Displacement – Bases the displacement on a texture map that is known in advanced. The
displaced surface is rendered as a warped height-field based on that texture map. The actual
raytracing of the displaced surface is done in texture space and the result is mapped back into
3D space. The advantage of this method is that it preserves all details in the displacement map.
However, it requires the object to have valid texture coordinates. You cannot use this method
for 3d procedural textures or other textures that use object or world coordinates. The parameter
can take any values.
Normal Displacement – Takes the original surface geometry and subdivides its triangles into
smaller sub-triangles, which then are displaced.
Amount – The amount of displacement. A value of 0.0 means the object appears unchanged.
Higher values produce a greater displacement effect. This parameter can also take a negative value,
in which case the displacement pushes geometry inside the object.
Shift – Specifies a constant, which is added to the displacement map values, effectively shifting the
displaced surface up and down along the normals. This can be either positive or negative.
Keep continuity – When enabled, tries to produce a connected surface, without splits, when there
are faces from different smoothing groups and/or material IDs. Note that using material IDs is not a
very good way to combine displacement maps since V-Ray cannot always guarantee the surface
continuity. Use other methods (vertex colors, masks etc.) to blend different displacement maps.
Resolution – This option is available when the Mode/Map is 2D Displacement. It determines the
resolution of the displacement texture used by V-Ray. If the texture is a bitmap, it is recommended to
match this resolution to the size of the bitmap. For procedural 2D maps, the resolution is determined
by the desired quality and detail in the displacement. Note that V-Ray also automatically generates a
normal map based on the displacement map in order to compensate for details not captured by the
actual displaced surface.
View dependent – When enabled, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle
edge in pixels. A value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each subtriangle is about one pixel
long when projected on the screen. When disabled, Edge length is the maximum sub-triangle edge
length in world units.
Edge length – Determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is
subdivided into a number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement,
slower rendering times and more RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering
and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends on the View dependent parameter. The
slider's minimum range is set to 0.4. Using lower values is still possible by manually typing them in
the input box but it may cause significant render delay.
Max subdivs – Controls the maximum sub-triangles generated from any triangle of the original
mesh when the displacement type is Subdivision. The value is in fact the square root of the
maximum number of subtriangles. For example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 =
65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this
value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tessellate the original mesh itself
into smaller triangles instead. The actual subdivisions for a triangle are rounded up to the nearest
power of two (this makes it easier to avoid gaps because of different tessellation on neighboring
triangles).

Water Level – Clips the surface geometry in places where the displacement map value is below the
specified threshold. This can be used for clip mapping a displacement map value below which
geometry will be clipped.
Level Height – Value below which the geometry is clipped.
Raytrace Properties

Visible to Camera – When enabled, makes objects using this material visible to the camera.
Visible to Reflections – When enabled, this option makes objects using this material visible for to
Reflection rays.
Visible to Refractions – When enabled, this option makes objects using this material visible for the
Refraction rays.
Cast Shadows – When disabled, all objects with this material applied do not cast shadows.

Override

Shadows – The material that is used when a shadow ray hits the surface.
Reflection – The material that is used when a reflection ray hits the surface.
Refraction– The material that is used when a refraction ray hits the surface.
GI – The material that is used when a GI ray hits the surface.
Environment – The texture that will be used instead of the scene environment maps.

Material ID

ID Number – Isolates objects as an R/G/B mask in the MultiMatte render elements.

ID Color – Allows you to specify a color to represent this material in the Material ID VFB render
element.
Each material is assigned with an automatically generated ID Color.