V-Ray Tutorial: Creating a fire material

in V-Ray voor SketchUp

Author: Martha Maatkamp
Copyright: Design8 BV
Start by applying an image of a fire, with a black background, to the face in SketchUp that will represent your fire.
Such as this one:

More fire images can be acquired through the website http://www.CGtextures.com

Next up: activate the V-Ray toolbar, and open the Materials dialog window:

Within the material window, look for the applied material. It will have the same name as the material in the
SketchUp material window.
Right-click the name of the material, and choose Create Layer > Emissive.

V-Ray tutorial: Creating a fire material in V-Ray for SketchUp

By Design8 BV http://www.design8.eu/ page 1

The description of the material will now look like this:

Within this material, a number of things need adjusting, as shown below. The number correspond with the following
paragraphs.

1.

Click the capital letter M next to color, in the panel Diffuse. A window appears, showing (among
many other things), the link to the image file, in the input field File. Select this text and copy it; Ctrl+C.

V-Ray tutorial: Creating a fire material in V-Ray for SketchUp

By Design8 BV http://www.design8.eu/ page 2

2.

Now click the lowercase m next to color in the panel Emissive. An almost empty window appears. To
the left side, a drop-down menu is available. Click it and choose TexBitmap.

Now the window resembles the window we saw in paragraph 1.Only the link to the image needs to be put in.
Paste it into the input field File; Ctrl+V. To finish, click OK.

3.

Now click the m next to Transparency in the panel Emissive. The same window appears; again, its
empty. Pick TexBitmap once more from the drop-down menu on the left.

V-Ray tutorial: Creating a fire material in V-Ray for SketchUp

By Design8 BV http://www.design8.eu/ page 3

Paste the file path again into the input field File. Furthermore, check the box, labeled Invert.
The image will now be inverted; black parts become white, white parts become black. This means, because
you are applying this to an image describing the transparency, that the white parts become transparent, and
other parts remain opaque. (In this specific case: the flames will be visible and the background will become
transparent).
Click OK to finish.

4.

Execute the exact same steps as in paragraph 3, but apply them to the Transparency in the Diffuse
panel.

5.
6.

Check the option Double sided, in the Emissive panel, to make the face shine its light to both sides.
Enter a value of 100 for the Intensity in the Emissive panel. This value can be adjusted later, in order
to adjust it to the lighting situation of your render.

Finally, click the button Preview top left in the screen, to make V-Ray render a preview image of your material. The
screen should now look like this:

V-Ray tutorial: Creating a fire material in V-Ray for SketchUp

By Design8 BV http://www.design8.eu/ page 4