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This page provides details on the Asset Editor in V-Ray for Revit.

 


Overview

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The V-Ray Asset Editor is the place where you can create, save and open assets, and adjust their settings. These include materials, geometries and textures. 

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.vismat files created with earlier versions of V-Ray are no longer supported. You can read a .vismat file containing materials in V-Ray but you can no longer save an asset in a .vismat format. Assets are saved in .vrmat files only.

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UI Paths

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Section

||Revit Ribbon|| > V-Ray tab > Assets panel > Asset Editor

 

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Functionalities

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Categories

Assets are grouped in Categories for ease of access and use. The Materials, Geometries, and Textures categories are located at the top of the central Asset Editor panel.

Left/Right-click on an empty category to create an asset. If there already existing items, Left-click selects the directory, while a Right-click always opens a list of available assets to choose from in order to create them.  The Asset creation dropdown list remains active when the Ctrl key is held, allowing the creation of multiple assets as well. Each Category has a Search Scene tab on the top of the list, which allows searching for assets in the selected category. Select more than one category or asset at a time with Ctrl+select or Shift+select.


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The Assets tab search function only displays top-level hierarchy assets.

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The Asset lists have some additional multiple selection functionalities:

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  • Ctrl + Left-click on deselected item – Adds to the selection;

  • Ctrl + Left-click on selected item – Removes it from the selection;

  • Ctrl + A – Selects all items in the list/category;

  • Shift + Left-click – Expands the range of the current selection;

  • Left-click + Drag – Drags only the selected item entry;

  • Shift + Del – Deletes the selected asset(s) without showing a confirmation dialog;

  • Right-click on deselected item – Shows the context menu for the item and does not change the current selection;

  • Right-click on selected item – Shows the context menu for the item and doesn't change the selection. If multiple entries are selected the context menu will display only their common actions.

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Most numeric V-Ray parameters come with a slider for easier adjustment. Each slider is set to a default range of recommended or commonly used values. If a value above or below that range is used the slider adapts by increasing or decreasing its range accordingly (2x the input value) to maintain usability.

Тhe slider range does not indicate the parameter's total minimum and maximum input values. The absolute minimum and maximum values of each parameter can be found by hovering over its spinbox.

 
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Buttons

See the utility buttons at the bottom of the Asset Editor from left to right.

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Opens a list of all V-Ray assets grouped into categories. Use it to add available assets to your project.

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Opens a directory with .vrmat files to import into your Library.

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Saves an already created asset to a preferred directory. 

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Deletes preselected asset(s). Select more than one asset by using the Ctrl or Shift buttons. 

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Purges all unused items from the selected asset categories.

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Traces back assets that were previously selected.

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Moves the selection one level up in the hierarchy.
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Some keyboard shortcuts are available for navigation in the Asset Editor.

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For Windows:

  • Ctrl + (1/2/3/4/5/6) – Switches to the corresponding category or the settings view;

  • Ctrl + 0 – Selects all categories;

  • Alt + (1/2/3/4/5) – Adds to the active categories;

  • Ctrl + A – Selects all assets in the category of the current selection;

  • Shift + Left-click – Expands the range of the current selection;

  • Delete – Deletes the selected asset/s;

  • Ctrl + Left Arrow – Selects the previous asset;

  • Ctrl + Up Arrow – Selects the parent of the active asset;

  • Ctrl + ( [ or ] ) – Toggles the left or right fly-off panels;

  • Left-click + Up/Down Arrow - Increases/decreases the EV number field with 0.5.

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  • Left-click + Up/Down Arrow or Left/Right Arrow - Increases/decreases the value of any other slider1.

 
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Preset Library Buttons

The Preset Material Library also has some functionality buttons at the bottom of the Asset Editor.

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Adds a directory in which your .vrmats reside. When a directory is loaded, the .vrmats files load in the Preset Material Library as separate assets.

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Changes the view between row and a column.

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Changes the asset display from list to grid.

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Zooms material buttons in and out to adjust the size of the preview swatches in the list.

For more information about all the functionalities that the Preset Material Library offers, follow the link.


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Multiple selection of assets is possible in the Library, but you cannot drag-and-drop more than one asset at a time.

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In V-Ray 6, the V-Ray Preset Material Library is moved to the Chaos Cosmos Browser. Materials that have already been downloaded with any earlier V-Ray version remain unchanged and can still be loaded as a custom folder. Please use the materials from the Chaos Cosmos Browser for any new projects.

The Browse Materials in Cosmos button opens all available materials in the Chaos Cosmos Browser.

 
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Preview Swatch

The Preview Swatch is located in the right panel of the Asset Editor, rendering all changes done to the currently selected asset. This is a quick preview of materials and textures. It contains several customizable controls.

ButtonDescription

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Enables or disables the live preview of the swatch. As the Preview Swatch is an actual render, it might require some additional computing power. The Stop live preview button comes in handy in such situations.

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Shows a preview of the asset when the live preview is stopped. The swatch renders the current settings of the asset, but does not take into consideration any changes done to it later.

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Changes the resolution of the preview swatch. When using the live preview swatch, there are other ways to reduce resource usage – choose the resolution of the rendered swatch from 100% (1/1) (which is the best quality, but is a slower render), 50%(1/2), 25%(1/4) and 12.5% (1/8) (which trades off image quality for refresh speed).

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Changes the render engine for the live preview.

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Shows a dropdown menu to select the scene used to preview the asset. Some swatch scenes are more suitable for displaying certain materials than others. For example, a Brick material will be best seen in a wall preview, instead of a shader ball. Select from Generic, Fabric, Floor, Ground, Subsurface Scattering, Wall, Wall Closeup and Sphere for all materials and from 2D, 3D, Environment, Falloff or Dirt for all textures.

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Pins the selected asset in the preview. It displays the pinned asset until unpinned. 

Pulling the bottom line of the Preview Swatch up and down reduces or expands the swatch. 


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Using the Stop Preview Swatch option releases the V-Ray Render node License, if there is no other rendering process taking place.

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Asset Tagging

Custom grouping scene assets of any type is now possible in the V-Ray Assets Outliner. A new Tag View button allows toggling tags visibility on or off. It is located at the top-right corner of the Asset Outliner, next to the search field. Tags help to organize and work more efficiently in complex projects. Upon creation each tag is assigned a random color. 

Each tag can be assigned to multiple assets all at once via the context menu and one asset can be assigned multiple tags. Tags can be assigned to assets of all categories - materials, textures, lights, etc. When a tag is assigned to assets of different types, the tag indicator appears in each category.

Right-clicking on a tag allows its renaming or deletion. Alternatively, double-clicking a tag name allows its renaming directly.

Right-clicking on any asset and hovering over its "Tag" context menu entry displays a list of all available tags in the scene, as well indicators which tags are currently assigned to the asset.

Dragging an asset over a tag assigns the tag to this asset.

 


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  • Tags are considered scene-specific, meaning they are serialized in each project file and they cannot be transferred between scenes.
  • Saving any asset as a .vrmat does not write its tags to the file keeping it clean of any scene-specific data.
 
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V-Ray Color Picker

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The V-Ray Color Picker is accessed by selecting any color slot in the Asset Editor. It is a color manager that allows numeric color value selection in Screen (sRGB)1 and Rendering (RGB) Color spaces, options to regulate RGB, HSV and temperature. V-Ray Color Picker automatically converts Kelvin to RGB values, as well as RGB to Kelvin whenever possible.

Left-click on the current color to save it in the palette. Alternatively, right-click on an empty slot in the palette. Right-click on a saved color in the color slot to replace it with a new one.

The V-Ray Color Picker has a Color Assistant opened by clicking on the side bar at the bottom of V-Ray Color Picker window. The Color Assistant provides color palettes to pick a color from.

Left-click on a color from the Color Assistant to pick the current color. Right-click on it to use as a base for a color palette. For more information, see the V-Ray Color Picker.

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Notes

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    1Hovering with the cursor over each color box in the Asset Editor displays a tooltip with the color value in RGB format with a range of 0 to 1 in Screen (sRGB) color space.
  • Most numeric V-Ray parameters come with a slider to make fine-tuning easier. Each slider is set to a default range of recommended or commonly used values. If a value above that range is used the slider adapts by increasing its range accordingly (2x the input value) to maintain usability. If a value below the current slider range is used, the slider again adjusts its range by shrinking it to twice the amount of the input value.
  • Тhe slider range does not indicate the parameter's total minimum and maximum input values. The absolute minimum and maximum values of each parameter can be found by hovering over its spinbox.

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