Vray instancing doesn't support multiple materials per object anymore?

#1

In the past, I’ve had no problem rendering millions of trees with bark, branch, twig, and leaf shaders all assigned to one single combined mesh. I did this with mental ray too for YEARS.

But now it’s broken? You can’t do it? Sometimes it works but not others? What’s happening and why? Does anyone else have this issue? I’m using Maya 2020 and Vray 4.3 already. It worked fine with Maya 2015 and Vray 4.1, but now it doesn’t work anymore?

Specifically, it will render the object but with only ONE material applied to the geometry, and randomly so. So I get trees where the whole tree geometry is shaded by the leaf shader OR the bark shader. But no indication why or how it’s doing this.

I know Vray proxies exist but the workflow is very convoluted and wasn’t necessary with 4.1. Has anyone else ran into this issue?

#2

Hi, is it vray proxies you are using?

I have noticed this when using proxies and if you duplicate them without using duplicate special the shaders wont connect. Just my idea of it. The new vray version (vray 5) has some new settings with proxies and when using the new features it doesnt seem to work when scatterings trees with mash for example. going back to the standard vray proxies it works.

#3

I found the answer is to use Vray proxies, as Ekan said. It works fine for trees and everything, you just have to connect the shaders when you import the proxies! :slight_smile:

Back in business, just wanted to share the solution!