MaterialsV-Ray for SketchUp

V-Ray for SketchUp

Outline Override

This page provides information about the Outline Override material in V-Ray for SketchUp.

Last updated 28 July 2026

This page provides information about the Outline Override material in V-Ray for SketchUp.

Overview

The Outline Override material is related to the global Outline settings and some of the global options affect all Outline Override materials.

The Outline Override material is available only when the engine is set to CPU. It is currently not supported for GPU.

UI Paths

||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Materials (right-click) > Outline Override

||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Create Asset (left-click) > Materials > Outline Override

UI Options

The Outline Override material settings are organized in Basic and Advanced modes. You can switch the mode from the toggle button under the Preview Swatch or globally from the Configuration rollout of the Settings tab.

An Add Layer and Add Attribute buttons are provided for some V-Ray materials, including Outline Override. You can select an additional layer that can add up to the appearance of the material. For more information, see the Add Attribute and Add Layer sections.

The context menu of the Color slot provides options to Copy and Paste, as well as to Reset the color.

A Reset option is provided in the context menu of each Number Slider. You can reset the slider value to the default one.

Base

Base – Specifies the base layer material.

Outline

Line Color – Specifies the color of the outlines. See the Line Color example below.

Opacity – Enables Opacity/Transparency binding. When enabled, changing the V-Ray material refraction changes the corresponding base application material opacity/transparency.

Normal Threshold – Determines when lines will be created for parts of the same object with varying surface normals (e.g. at the inside edges of a box). A value of 0.0 means that only 90 degrees or larger angles generate internal lines. Higher values mean that smoother transitions between face normals can also generate a line. Setting this value to 1.0 fills curved objects completely.

Overlap Threshold – Determines when outlines will be created for overlapping parts of the same object. Lower values reduce the internal overlapping lines, while higher values produce more overlapping lines. Setting this value to 1.0 fills curved objects completely.

Width – Specifies the width of the outlines. See the Line Width example below.

Example: Line Color

This example shows the effect of the Line Color and Inner Line Color parameters.

Line Color = red; Inner Lines = disabled

Line Color = red; Inner Line Color = black

Line Color = green; Inner Line Color = blue

Example: Line Width

This example shows the effect of the Width parameter. The Inner Line Control is disabled.

Width

= 0

Width

= 1

Width

= 2

Inner Line Control

Enables a separate control for the inner edges. See the Inner Line Control example below.

Inner Line Color – Specifies the color of the inner lines. See the Line Color example.

Inner Width – Specifies the width of the inner lines.

Example: Inner Line Control

This example shows the effect of the Inner Line Control parameter. The main lines are black and the Inner Lines are red. The Width of the main lines is set to 3, while that of the Inner Lines is set to the default 1.5.

Viewport Display

Viewport Display – Enables connection/binding between V-Ray and the corresponding base application material.

Color – Enables color binding. Changing the V-Ray material color changes the corresponding base application material color and vice versa.

Opacity – Enables Opacity/Transparency binding. When enabled, changing the V-Ray material refraction changes the corresponding base application material opacity/transparency.

Texture Mode – Enables texture binding. Changing the V-Ray material texture changes the corresponding base application material texture and vice versa. Disabling this parameter allows for base app material changes without affecting the V-Ray material.

Auto – Binds the diffuse texture to the base app material.

Custom – A custom texture slot is bound to the base app material.

Viewport Texture – The selected texture is bound to the base app material. Keeping this slot empty in Custom mode shows a Helper Texture in the viewport.

Override Control

Can be Overridden – When enabled, the material can be overridden by the Material Override option in the Settings.

Attributes

The Attributes available for the Outline Override material are as follows.

Translucency

Bump

Outline

The Outline attribute is available only when the engine is set to CPU. It is currently not supported for GPU.

Line Color – Specifies the color of the outlines.

Opacity – Specifies the opacity of the outlines.

Overlap Threshold – Determines when outlines will be created for overlapping parts of the one and the same object. Lower values reduce the internal overlapping lines, while higher values produce more overlapping lines. Setting this value to 1.0 fills curved objects completely.

Width – Specifies the width of the outlines.

Inner Line Control – Enables a separate control for the inner edges.

Inner Line Color – Specifies the color of the inner lines

Inner Width – Specifies the width of the inner lines.

Some of the global parameters have an effect on all materials with the Outline attribute. These parameters are Width Type, Trace Bias, No Inner Edges, Visible in Secondary, and Compensate EV.

Outline

Displacement

This is a legacy attribute that will be removed in the future. Consider using the geometry displacement modifier instead. It can be created as a geometry asset in the Outliner and can be applied to objects in the project. Note that the displacement effect will no longer appear in the Preview Swatch.

Displacement – Enables or disables the displacement effect.

Mode / Map – Specifies the mode in which the displacement is rendered.

2D Displacement – Bases the displacement on a texture map that is known in advance. The displaced surface is rendered as a warped height-field based on that texture map. The actual raytracing of the displaced surface is done in texture space and the result is mapped back into 3D space. The advantage of this method is that it preserves all details in the displacement map. However, it requires the object to have valid texture coordinates. You cannot use this method for 3d procedural textures or other textures that use object or world coordinates. The parameter can take any value.
Normal Displacement – Takes the original surface geometry and subdivides its triangles into smaller sub-triangles, which then are displaced.

Amount – The amount of displacement. A value of 0.0 means the object appears unchanged. Higher values produce a greater displacement effect. This parameter can also take a negative value, in which case the displacement pushes geometry inside the object.

Shift – Specifies a constant, which is added to the displacement map values, effectively shifting the displaced surface up and down along the normals. This can be either positive or negative.

Keep Continuity – When enabled, tries to produce a connected surface, without splits, when there are faces from different smoothing groups and/or material IDs. Note that using material IDs is not a very good way to combine displacement maps since V-Ray cannot always guarantee surface continuity. Use other methods (vertex colors, masks, etc.) to blend different displacement maps.

Resolution – (Available when the Mode/Map is 2D Displacement) Determines the resolution of the displacement texture used by V-Ray. If the texture is a bitmap, it is recommended to match this resolution to the size of the bitmap. For procedural 2D maps, the resolution is determined by the desired quality and detail in the displacement. Note that V-Ray also automatically generates a normal map based on the displacement map in order to compensate for details not captured by the actual displaced surface.

View Dependent – When enabled, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle edge in pixels. A value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each subtriangle is about one pixel long when projected on the screen. When disabled, Edge length is the maximum sub-triangle edge length in world units.

Edge Length – Determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is subdivided into a number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement, slower rendering times and more RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends on the View dependent parameter. The slider's minimum range is set to 0.4. Using lower values is still possible by manually typing them in the input box but it may cause significant render delay.

Max Subdivs – Controls the maximum sub-triangles generated from any triangle of the original mesh when the displacement type is Subdivision. The value is in fact the square root of the maximum number of subtriangles. For example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 = 65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tessellate the original mesh itself into smaller triangles instead. The actual subdivisions for a triangle are rounded up to the nearest power of two (this makes it easier to avoid gaps because of different tessellation on neighboring triangles).

Water Level – Clips the surface geometry in places where the displacement map value is below the specified threshold. This can be used for clip mapping a displacement map value below which geometry will be clipped.

Level Height – Value below which the geometry is clipped.

Materials need to be applied to objects (groups/components) to have working displacement. If various materials are applied to different faces of an object, the displacement from the top-level (group/component) material will be used on all of them. Normal Displacement will take into account the texture size of each different face material, while 2D Displacement will ignore them.

Displacement

Raytrace Properties

SketchUp2023_VRay6.2_Material_Attributes_Raytrace

Menu

Outline Override

Overview

UI Paths

UI Options

Base