Using Superellipse PBR Textures in Cinema 4D + V-Ray

This guide will walk you through installing the Superellipse PBR Importer plugin and loading your texture packs into Cinema 4D as fully wired V-Ray node materials — in seconds.

What You'll Need
Before getting started, make sure you have the following:

• Cinema 4D 2024 or newer
• V-Ray 7 for Cinema 4D installed and active
• Windows or macOS
• The Superellipse PBR Importer — Download it here

Why the Plugin Exists

Cinema 4D has no native PBR importer for V-Ray. When you purchase a Superellipse texture pack, you receive a folder of image maps — basecolor, roughness, metallic, normal, AO, height, and more. Without the plugin, combining those into a properly configured material means manually creating bitmap nodes, setting colour spaces for every map, wiring twelve or more connections, building AO compositing, configuring the PBR workflow settings, and setting up displacement. The plugin does all of that in one click.

The Superellipse PBR Importer reduces the entire process to two clicks: run the plugin, select a folder, done.

Step 1 — Install the Plugin

Close Cinema 4D completely before copying the files.

Unzip the downloaded file Superellipse_C4D_V-Ray_PBR_Importer.zip. Inside you'll find a folder called Superellipse V-Ray — this is what you need to copy.

Copy the entire Superellipse V-Ray folder into your Cinema 4D plugins directory. Replace [version] with your Cinema 4D version number — for example 2025 or 2026.

Windows

• C:\Users\<YourName>\AppData\Roaming\Maxon\Maxon Cinema 4D [version]\plugins\

macOS

• ~/Library/Preferences/Maxon/Maxon Cinema 4D [version]/plugins/


Make sure you copy the entire Superellipse V-Ray folder — not just the .py file inside it.

Can't find the plugins folder?
Open Cinema 4D, go to Edit > Preferences, then click Open Preferences Folder at the bottom left of the Preferences window. Navigate into the plugins subfolder — this is the correct location.

Reopen Cinema 4D once the folder is in place.

Step 2 — Import a Material

In Cinema 4D, go to Extensions > Import Material (V-Ray).

A folder picker will appear. Navigate to your Superellipse texture folder and select it. The plugin remembers your last used location between sessions, so subsequent imports are even faster.

An options dialog will appear before the material is built:

• Triplanar Projection (Optional) - Tick this for world-space projection that doesn't require a UV unwrap. Leave unticked to use standard UV mapping set on the object.

Click OK — the plugin takes over from here. Done!

The material is added directly to your scene and named automatically from the folder name. For example, Boucle_Fabric_Willow_4K becomes Boucle Fabric Willow — Superellipse. A confirmation dialog appears when everything is complete.

Housekeeping Note: Keep your unzipped texture folders in a permanent location before importing — the material references wherever the files are at the time of import, so moving them afterwards will disconnect the textures.

Apply and Edit the Material

Once the material appears in the Material Manager, drag it onto any object in your scene to apply it.

Open the Node Editor by double clicking the material from the C4D Material panel, to inspect the graph. All texture nodes are named with the SE_ prefix so they're easy to identify at a glance.

Step 3 — Enabling Displacement

Displacement requires V-Ray 7 Update 2 or later. Material-level displacement via the node graph was introduced in that specific update — it was not available in V-Ray 6 or the initial V-Ray 7 release. If you're unsure which version you have, check Extensions → About V-Ray in Cinema 4D.

If you're on an earlier version, use the V-Ray Geometry Tag instead: right-click your object → V-Ray Tags → V-Ray Geometry Tag, enable Displacement, and point the Texture slot at your height map directly from your texture folder. Note that with this method, displacement sits outside the material graph — it won't inherit any Triplanar projection or tiling from the node editor and would need to be matched manually.

Using Triplanar with Displacement

When Triplanar Projection is enabled at import, the height map is wrapped in a triplanar node like all other maps. This should project correctly, but results can vary depending on object scale and V-Ray build. If you see misalignment between the surface texture and displacement, try disabling triplanar on the height map and using standard UV-based displacement instead — the two don't always agree at seams.

Step 4 — Adjusting Tiling and Projection

Without Triplanar

To adjust tiling, select your object and click its material tag in the Object Manager. Set Tiles U and V to the same value to scale all maps proportionally. This is V-Ray's standard tiling workflow and applies instantly without touching the material itself — ideal when the same material sits on objects of different sizes.

With Triplanar  — SE_Tri_Size, SE_Tri_Offset, SE_Tri_Rotation

Three master nodes control every triplanar projection in the graph simultaneously:

• • SE_Tri_Size — scales the projection. Lower values = larger texture tiles. Higher = smaller, more repeated. Start here when adjusting scale.
  • SE_Tri_Offset — shifts the projection position in X, Y, Z world space. Useful for breaking up obvious repetition across flat surfaces.
  • SE_Tri_Rotation — rotates the projection per axis. Default is (180, 180, 180) which in V-Ray's convention means no rotation. Adjust from there to reorient the pattern.

Triplanar bypasses UV coordinates entirely, so the C4D material tag tiling has no effect when triplanar is active. SE_Tri_Size is the only tiling control that matters.

Scale — Adjusts tiling scale for all maps simultaneously.
Offset — default 0. Every whole number ie. 1.0 = 100% shift. To offset by 50% use 0.5 in either direction.
Rotation — default 0, 0, 0. Enter a value in degrees.

Batch Import

To import multiple materials at once, use Extensions > Import Batch (V-Ray).

Select the parent folder containing your texture sets as subfolders — you can either click the folder to highlight it and press "select folder", or open it and press "select folder" from inside.

The plugin then presents a scrollable checklist of every texture set it finds. Tick the sets you want — use Select All or Deselect All for large libraries — then click OK to import.

You will also have the option to enable Triplanar Projection across all selected materials in this step where possible.

A summary dialog confirms how many materials were created and flags any that failed.

Tips & Best Practices

Smart Defaults & Material Specifics

A few material parameters are set automatically based on what maps are present in your texture set, others are at artists direction and require additional settings being tweaked dependant on lighting and scene variables:

Clearcoat weight — 0.9 — (Carbon Fiber, Laquered wood, Car paint etc). Applied when clearcoat colour or roughness maps are found but no weight map. Gives a visible clearcoat effect out of the box. Adjust in the Material node under the "Coat" tab if needed.

Normal Strength — If the normal map is too dominant for your scene, you can alter the intensity of the height simulation by lowering the "Multiply" value on the SE_Normal_Bump node.

Anisotropic strength — Default 0.8 — (Brushed metals, woven materials etc). Applied when an anisotropic angle map is present but no weight map. Ensures the anisotropic highlight is visible. Raise toward 1.0 for stronger brushed metal or carbon fibre effects. Found under the materials "Reflection" tab under "Anisotropy"

SSS & Transmission (Glass, wax, resins)

In complex transmissive materials the plugin applies sensible defaults, but understanding the key variables will help you dial in the look for your specific lighting setup and object scale.

Refraction Color — Controls the tint and weight of the transmission effect. When a transmission weight map is loaded, it drives this per-pixel. Without a map, white = fully transparent, black = opaque.

Refraction IOR — Index of refraction. Default 1.6. For water use 1.33, glass 1.5, diamond 2.4. Leave at default for most Superellipse glass packs.

Affect Shadows — Checked by default when a transmission map is present. Lets coloured light pass through the material in renders. Always leave this on for glass.

Translucency Type — Set to SSS automatically when an SSS colour map is detected. Leave on SSS for skin, wax, and resin. Switch to None for standard glass without scattering.

SSS Amount — Overall strength of the subsurface effect. Default 0.2. Increase toward 1.0 for softer, more translucent materials like wax or milk. Decrease for denser materials like dark resin.

Scatter Color — Driven by your SSS colour map. Controls the colour of light scattering beneath the surface. Tint per RGB channel for skin (warm red/orange), wax (warm yellow), resin (amber).

Fog Color (= Scatter Radius in SSS mode) — In SSS mode this controls how far light scatters per colour channel — not a colour tint, but a per-channel scatter distance. Driven by your transmission colour map if present. Default is neutral.

Depth / Scale (cm) — Overall scale of the SSS effect in scene units. Default 0.2 cm. Scale this to match your object size — a 2m rock needs a much higher value than a small wax candle. If the SSS looks too aggressive or too subtle, this is the first thing to adjust.

Fog Depth — Secondary depth multiplier for volumetric falloff. Leave at default unless doing deep volumetric effects.

Emission weight — 0.0 — always set to zero when no emission map is present. Prevents unwanted glow from V-Ray's material defaults.

All of these can be overridden directly in the node graph after import.

Supported Channels

The plugin automatically detects and wires the following maps when present in your texture folder:

Base Color, Roughness, Metallic, Normal, Ambient Occlusion, Height / Displacement, Opacity, Emission, Specular, Anisotropic Weight, Anisotropic Angle, Clearcoat Weight, Clearcoat Colour, Clearcoat Roughness, Transmission Weight, Transmission Colour, Subsurface Weight, Subsurface Colour

Troubleshooting

The plugin doesn't appear in the Extensions menu — confirm the Superellipse folder was placed in the correct plugins directory and that Cinema 4D was fully closed before copying. The folder itself must be inside plugins/ — not the .py file directly.

No maps found — check that your texture filenames have been unaltered since download. The C4D console (Extensions > Console) will list any files that were skipped.

Textures appear missing or pink after import — the material references the original location of your texture folder. If you have moved, renamed, or deleted that folder since importing, Cinema 4D will no longer find the image maps. Re-run the plugin pointing to the new folder location to reimport fresh.

Displacement isn't showing in renders — see the Enabling Displacement section above. The SE_Displacement node needs one manual wire connection in the node editor — disconnect the brdfvraymtl wire from V-Ray Material's BRDF port and connect SE_Displacement's output there instead.

Batch import finds 0 sets — confirm you selected the parent folder containing your texture set subfolders, not a texture folder itself. If that's correct, the console will show what was scanned. The plugin handles one level of nested zip folders automatically, but sets nested more than two levels deep won't be detected.

Questions?

If you run into anything not covered here, reach out at support@superellipse.co and include the name of the texture pack you were importing, along with the software version.