V-Ray to Standard Converter (Materials & HDRI Maps)
V-Ray to Standard Converter is a lightweight scene-migration script that strips V-Ray dependencies out of a 3ds Max file in a single pass. It scans the scene for every VRayHDRI map and VRayMtl material, then replaces them with their native 3ds Max equivalents — BitmapTexture and Standard material — while preserving names, file paths, and the most common texture slot assignments.
This is useful when sending a scene to a collaborator who doesn't have V-Ray installed, archiving projects in a renderer-agnostic format, prepping assets for a different render engine, or simply cleaning up a file before handoff to a client.
What it does:
Part 1 — HDRI Maps: Every VRayHDRI instance with a valid file path is replaced by a standard BitmapTexture. The original filename and node name are carried over, and replaceInstances ensures every reference throughout the scene (in materials, environment slots, light slots, etc.) is updated automatically.
Part 2 — V-Ray Materials: Every VRayMtl is replaced with a StandardMaterial of the same name. The following texture slots are migrated:
Diffuse → Diffuse Map
Bump → Bump Map
Opacity → Opacity Map
Reflection → Reflection Map
Refraction → Refraction Map
Displacement → Displacement Map
Self-Illumination → Self-Illumination Map
Why replaceInstances? Rather than walking the scene graph object-by-object and reassigning materials, the script uses replaceInstances to swap the maps and materials globally in one operation. This is fast, comprehensive, and works regardless of how deeply nested the V-Ray nodes are inside Multi/Sub-Object materials, Blend materials, Composite maps, or other container types.
Installation:
Save the script as a .ms file (e.g., VRayToStandard.ms).
Run it via Scripting → Run Script... in 3ds Max.
The script executes immediately with no UI — there is no dialog or confirmation prompt.
Usage Tips:
Save your scene under a new name before running. This conversion is destructive — the original V-Ray materials and HDRI maps are removed from the scene and cannot be recovered via Undo once the file is saved and reopened.
The script has no UI by design. Drop it on a toolbar button or assign a hotkey for one-click execution.
After conversion, the scene will render with the Default Scanline Renderer (or whatever non-V-Ray renderer is active). Switch renderers via Render Setup → Common → Assign Renderer if needed.
Run this before the One-Step Copy & Relink script (if you use both) — once V-Ray maps are converted to standard Bitmaps, the relink utility will see them as BitmapTexture instances and process them through that code path.
What does NOT get migrated:
This is a deliberately minimal conversion. The following V-Ray-specific properties have no clean Standard-material equivalent and are dropped:
Reflection/refraction glossiness, IOR, Fresnel settings, anisotropy
BRDF type (Phong / Blinn / Ward / GGX)
SSS, translucency, sheen, coat layers
Energy preservation and GI multipliers
Diffuse / reflection / refraction / self-illum colors (only the maps in those slots are transferred — solid color values are not copied to the Standard material)
VRay2SidedMtl, VRayBlendMtl, VRayLightMtl, VRayOverrideMtl, and other non-VRayMtl material classes
VRayNormalMap, VRayDirt, VRayColor, and other V-Ray procedural maps (only VRayHDRI is converted)
The result is a scene that opens cleanly without V-Ray, not a visually-matched scene. Expect to do shading touch-ups in the Standard material editor afterward.
Limitations:
No undo dialog, no confirmation, no progress bar — runs silently and instantly.
HDRI maps with empty filename strings are skipped (no replacement performed).
If a VRayMtl does not expose one of the expected texmap_* properties on a particular V-Ray version, the isProperty check skips it gracefully.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| vraytostandard.ms | 1.88 KB |