This page gives information about Chaos Cosmos Browser in SketchUp.

 

Overview

 

||VRayToolbar|| > Chaos Cosmos icon 

 

||Asset Editor|| > VFB dropdown menu > Chaos Cosmos icon 

 

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Installation


Usage

 

To start using the Chaos Cosmos Browser, you have to sign in. Press the Sign in button at the top-right corner and enter your Chaos credentials in the newly opened browser tab.

 

 

 

Then, you can use the buttons at the top or use the search tab to find assets.

You can additionally choose between different categories and filters for date, popularity, color, and space. The option to Show downloaded only is also available.

The Navigation Bar, which is available on mouse hover on the browser's top frame, eases your navigation through the Chaos Cosmos pages. Note that when the page is reloaded, the navigation history is lost.

 

 

 

Once you choose an asset, you have to download it. Hover over it and click on the blue icon at the lower-right corner. Another way to download an asset is to click on it. This reveals additional information. You can see the category/space/color of the asset and other additional information. 


 

 

 

Once the download is complete, a pop-up window will state that the asset is downloaded successfully. Use the Import button to bring the asset into the host platform. That starts the component placement tool and allows you to place multiple asset instances wherever you want in the scene.

Upon placement, the Cosmos asset becomes a Sketchup Component, and you can scale, move, and rotate it.

Note that downloaded assets can be reused across different host platforms. They are saved locally at the following directory: C:\Users\[User]\Documents\Chaos Cosmos\Packages.

 

 


 

Parameters

Downloaded Cosmos assets are listed in the Asset Editor under the Geometry section. They can be identified by the Cosmos icon. They can be renamed, deleted, used as replacements, moved, and merged.

The Use as replacement/Replace in scene option is possible only for other Cosmos Assets. It replaces all scene instances of the asset. The replaced asset is not deleted and is stored in the Asset Editor.

Use Mtl Override - When enabled, the global Material Override option in the Render Settings overrides the asset. When disabled, the asset in the referenced scene is not affected by the Material Override option in the Render Settings.

Representations - Offers different viewport preview representations of the Chaos Cosmos assets.

High - Displays the original mesh in the viewport. Using this option with heavy meshes and scenes might take longer before the mesh is displayed in the viewport and might slow down SketchUp significantly. The process is dependent on the poly-count and the representation is quite detailed.
Medium
Low
Bounding Box
Point (Origin)

Chaos Cosmos assets come with several different levels-of-details (LOD).

V-Ray for SketchUp always loads the highest level of detail when rendering Chaos assets.

V-Ray Vision always loads the second-highest level of detail by default - either Medium or Low, depending on the asset.

Chaos assets very far in the background are automatically switched to their lowest level of detail.

 

Lights

The toggle enables the Cosmos Light asset.

Intensity Multiplier - Multiplies the intensity of all instances of the Cosmos asset.

Color Multiplier - Multiplies the color of all instances of the Cosmos asset. For more information regarding the color swatch, refer to the V-Ray Asset Editor page.

Cosmos assets with light sources are listed in the LightMix render channel.
Cosmos assets that rely on self-illumination through materials, do not have these controls exposed. However, the self-illumination of specific Cosmos assets can be adjusted after merging them by modifying the self-illumination layer parameters of some of their materials.

Merge - Converts the Chaos Cosmos asset to a standard proxy mesh with material assignments and populates the scene with materials and lights. That way, you can edit the asset's materials. The process is irreversible. For more information on proxy meshes, refer to the Proxy Mesh page.

Note that this automatically switches the asset to High LOD, and if you render with V-Ray Vision, the link to Cosmos will be broken and the special LOD assignment used by Vision will no longer be there. Lower level-of-detail (LOD) versions of the proxy mesh that are used by V-Ray Vision will be lost.

 

The status icon () indicates whether the paths to the textures and other external reference files used by the asset are valid. Hover over the icon for more detailed information.

 



HDRIs

Downloaded Chaos Cosmos HDRIs are imported as Bitmap textures and are listed in the Asset Editor under the Textures section. They can be copied, renamed, duplicated, deleted, selected in the scene, and used as a replacement.

For more information on its parameters, refer to the Bitmap page.

To preview the HDRI, assign it to a Dome light or directly to the scene environment. For more information, refer to the Dome Light page.

 

 

Materials

Use the Import button to add Cosmos Browser Materials to the V-Ray Asset Editor Materials list.

Use the Import Options button to enable the triplanar mapping function for the selected material. This feature automatically scales materials to their actual size taking into account the scene units.

 



See more information on how to apply materials in the video.

 

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Updates

Cosmos assets with newer versions on the server have an "update" button in the Asset Editor. Press the update button () to start the update.

Note that the update can change the appearance of the object and the rendered result.

If the asset files are missing, a Download button () is present.

The download progress is present next to the button ().

If the asset has more than one version, the Download button downloads the original version and the update button - the newest one.

 

Notes

  • Cosmos geometry assets are displayed and managed as blackboxes - the object and its materials are hidden in a single item listed in the Asset Editor. This means their associated texture and vrmesh files are not displayed in the V-Ray File Path Editor. Merging the asset with the scene for editing is amends this.
  • Scenes with Chaos Cosmos assets can be rendered in V-Ray Vision. Note that by default Vision displays Cosmos assets using their medium level-of-detail (LOD) representation.
  • Scenes with Chaos Cosmos assets can be rendered in Chaos Cloud.
  • Scenes with Chaos Cosmos assets can be exported as .vrscene files. Using such .vrscene files on other systems requires all texture and .vrmesh files used by the Cosmos assets to be manually transferred. It is recommended to either use the Pack Project functionality for a quick grab of the necessary files or alternatively merge the Cosmos assets before exporting a vrscene in order to utilize the V-Ray File Path Editor.
  • Chaos Cosmos assets that contain light sources can be used with Light Mix.
  • At render time, Chaos Cosmos objects work as V-Ray proxies. For more information, refer to the Proxy Mesh page.
  • The original size of Chaos Cosmos assets is measured in centimeters. On import they are appropriately scaled according to the specifics of SketchUp which operates in inches (regardless of SketchUp's display units). Therefore, when Cosmos assets are merged the resulting Proxy Mesh uses a Scale Factor of ~0.39. It is best to leave this value unmodified unless the whole scene is scaled due to a unit conversion.
  • When you share .skp project files with others, Cosmos assets contained within are available for download on the other machines. Simply click the 'download' icon next to each of the Cosmos assets to acquire their files automatically. Internet connection is required.
  • When you use the Pack Project option, a pop-up message appears that asks you whether or not to pack Cosmos asset files with the project. Packing the assets ensures that textures and other external files referenced by Cosmos assets are collected and included in the archive. As a result, the project will be loaded and rendered correctly on other systems even if the same Cosmos assets are not downloaded there. Use this option when submitting projects to a 3rd-party render farm. Cosmos assets will still be available for download on the destination computer even if they are not included in the archive.
  • The asset status icon () is updated upon restart of the license server.