If you are used to using the V-Ray Material Library in the V-Ray Asset Editor, you may have noticed that if you upgraded to V-Ray 6, it’s not there! Where did it go and what is the Chaos Cosmos Browser?

Normally, we see the material library like the image shows below:

However, in V-Ray 6, you get a message stating “The standard V-Ray Material Library is now part of Cosmos.” and a nice button called “Browse Materials in Cosmos”. When clicked, it opens the browser window similar to the following (excuse the red markup):

According to the Chaos site, in V-Ray 6, the V-Ray Material Library Browser is replaced by the Chaos Cosmos Browser. The legacy browser is still useable but the plan is to retire it completely at some point.

What is the Chaos Cosmos Browser?

The Chaos Cosmos Browser was introduced in V-Ray 5 and is similar to the 3-D Warehouse in SketchUp, but tailored to V-Ray materials, objects, and examples. You can access it by using the Chaos Cosmos button, which looks a bit like an artist easel:

Clicking that opens the Chaos Cosmos Browser, and you can change the default size (I prefer landscape over the default of portrait). Navigating their categories is easy enough, and there are many high-quality objects and materials you can import into your project.

How Do I Get My V-Ray Material Library Back?

There is a way! If you already have V-Ray 5, then chances are you have the standard material library downloaded on your machine (part of the install process). This is usually under the following path:

C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\V-Ray Material Library

Since Chaos plans to eventually scrap this, I recommend copying this folder to somewhere safe on your machine so that you have a copy you can always reference.

To import the material library, simply do the following steps:

  • Open the V-Ray Asset Editor.
  • Expand the left panel for Materials if needed, and at the bottom left, click the folder icon (“Adds a new file system location”).
  • Navigate to where your local copy of the folder is.
  • Click Select Folder.

This will bring in your local library just as it did in the past.

If you are a student in FOCUSED SketchUp and you need to download the V-Ray Material Library, you can go to Module 5, Lesson 4 “Creating a Material Library” and download the attached zip file.