Mental Ray - Shaders

[wdcstudios]

Heres the drink file for you to make the cola.
wdcstudios.tripod.com/my_glass.zip

[JeffPatton]

First, I could not find a "blur refraction" attribute to the glass(lume) shader. There is a "blur transparency"...is this what you were referring to?Yes, blur transparency is what I was reffering too. I have a bad habbit of calling that "refraction" since after all, it is a glass shader. But, sorry for the terminolgy confusion.

Now, my advice to you would be: Post a photo that illustrates the "look" your trying to achieve. While the effect is clear to you, it's very difficult for others to envision it without a clear reference. And I know you took the time to explain it in text...and I may just be speaking for myself here because I'm simply a visual person. But when I'm trying to recreate a specific material or effect, I just find it easier if I have a visual reference to guide me.

[JeffPatton]

Last thing I need to know then is how come the glow effect on yours is so smooth around the rim of the tub and the rim of the teapotIf you're specifying a FG radius that's incorrect it will look splotchy. So, turn off the FG radius (if it's on) and see if that helps.

(I haven't looked at the file you posted because I'm using Max 7.5 and not 8)

[lehthanis]

If you're specifying a FG radius that's incorrect it will look splotchy. So, turn off the FG radius (if it's on) and see if that helps.

(I haven't looked at the file you posted because I'm using Max 7.5 and not 8)

I just tried the FG Radius turn off, and I even tried radius in pixels also, and it still made those splotches...I thought it might be my bump shader...so I turned that off, and I ended up with splotches that looked more like render bucket anomalies...

My GI is 500 photons per sample
Light properties has 100000 photons per light, global multipler 1.0 decay is 1.0
FG samples is 500
trace depths/reflections are all 5, bounces set to 0.

I'm about to give up. Even though I'm using 8, I do still have 7 installed at work, and the files are forward compatible, so if you posted or emailed me your scene, I could see what the heck I'm doing wrong and go from there.

[prisoner881]

Yes, blur transparency is what I was reffering too. I have a bad habbit of calling that "refraction" since after all, it is a glass shader. But, sorry for the terminolgy confusion.

That's what I figured, but in absence of any confirmation, I didn't want to assume anything.

Now, my advice to you would be: Post a photo that illustrates the "look" your trying to achieve. While the effect is clear to you, it's very difficult for others to envision it without a clear reference. And I know you took the time to explain it in text...and I may just be speaking for myself here because I'm simply a visual person. But when I'm trying to recreate a specific material or effect, I just find it easier if I have a visual reference to guide me.

Ask and ye shall receive. Thumbnails attached. Note that I've intentionally blurred out a name on the front of the unit, so that smudge is intentional. Pics are as follows:

IMG_3976: This is the unit lit with the camera flash only. It completely washes out the blue glow, but at least this gives you an idea of the diffuse color of the unit and its relative shape and dimensions. The angle is directly in front and about three feet above, looking down.

IMG_3977: This is the unit in a dark room, no flash. The blue glow is quite obvious. The angle is directly in front of the unit with zero elevation.

IMG_3978: This is the unit in a lit room, no flash. Angle is same as prior pic.

The animation I'm trying to create here will have the camera slowly panning and pulling back from left to right across the front of the unit. It will initially be dark, then power on (looking like IMG_3977) and then external illumination will kick in revealing the entire unit (looking like IMG_3978).

Now, all this is somewhat academic because the animation has already been created and delivered to the client. "How?" you ask? I faked it. I ditched translucency altogther and went with a white, almost-pearlescent opaque material for the faceplate. The faceplate was then lit externally by directional spots, enhanced with a Glare(lume). The results, while acceptable, were not as good as I wanted, the speculars never really popped the way I wanted, and setting up all the lights was a royal, amazing pain in the rear. The client loved it, but, as most of you can understand, I am my own harshest critic. Aren't we all? I felt it could've been much better with proper translucency.

I want to learn how to do this right and improve the finished animation for our demo reel. I'm quite sure MR is capable of generating accurate representations of this. I just haven't been able to coax it into being.

[JeffPatton]

Well, most of the time the way you ended up doing the render (in passes) works well. But here's a thought I had that seems to work also...and fast. Unless you need an extremely glossy reflective surface, then it naturally slows down.

In the attached test render, I used the fast SSS skin shader...yes skin shader. Don't worry, nobody will come throw us in shader prison for using it outside of it's general area of expertise. It actually functions quite well as a translucent shader.

Just keep in mind that your SSS settings will vary depending on the shape/size/and scale of the objects. There is no "one size fit's all" when it comes to something like SSS scaling. But the setup was quite simple, I changed all the fast SSS skin shader colors to white and adjusted the scatter depths a bit, and enabled reflections...and that's it.

Give it a try and see if that works better for you.

And BTW, the image I posted is straight out of 3dsmax, I only cropped the image in photoshop to save bandwidth. Render time...less than 1 minute. :thumbsup:

[lehthanis]

I give up...I can't seem to make the material glow without the artifacts no matter what settings I use. No dice :((

[slebed]

I'm currently working on a project using the fast sss+displacement skin shader. We just found out that if you adjust the max displace, the render times a greatly affected. In our case, the object had a displacment of 1", but the 3dsmax default for the max displace setting is 1'8" (20"). Our render times were about 30 minutes a frame. By setting it to 2", our render times dropped to 10 minutes per frame.

Hope this helps anyone.

[gulio]

If I´m right, the max. displace value in the Displacement (Global Settings) determines how strong the displace effect will be. If you reduce your value from 20 to 2, were do you balance the difference? With the output value of the displacement (bit)map?

[francescaluce]

If I´m right, the max. displace value in the Displacement (Global Settings) determines how strong the displace effect will be.is that, you're not right :)
max displace has to be the lowest value for the displacement you're going to do.
it simply stops the displacement over the threshold specified in max displace.
to check the lowest max displace available, start with a really low max displace.
then increase it by little steps looking at the verbose output, when the warning
about displacement is vanished you'll have the right max displace you need.

ciao
francesca

[gulio]

uhhh, I love this thread :love:
When replying "slebeds" post I thought I had understood the 3d displace feature thorougly. But if you think you know something, you´ve already stoped learning. Thank you francesca for putting me that advice.

[lehthanis]

I'm guessing that Max8 has some changes to it that are causing me the difficulties I'm having.

Apparently the splotchiness I was getting is a side effect of the glow photons coming from the ocean lume in the bump map slot. I'm still runnign some experiments to confirm though...after this render I'm doing now I'll try it with a regular noise in the bump slot to see if the splotchy glow is a result of bump mapping the glass surface period.

I have my glass reflectivity at .75 and my transparency at .75 and my glow brightness at 10 for the render I'm on currently...I finally got to see some non splotchy glow photons on the rim of the pool at 1 transparency and 1 reflectivity with a glow brightness of 5. I still would liek to try rendering Jeff's Max7 scene in Max 8 without modifying it just to see what differences Max8 has.

[lehthanis]

This is looking a LOT closer to what I was hoping for.

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/6039/glowtest8am.jpg

I used:

Glass: reflectivity of .75, transparency of 1
--Glow: Brightness 10

There's a glare shader on the camera.
500 GI samples, 100000 GI Photons, global multiplier 1, decay 1
FG Samples 500, FG bounces 2...everythign else is default no radius specified per Jeff's instructions.

Attaching the scene. Would love to hear feedback on what else I should do with this.

BTW: Scene is Max8...and the bright glare in the middle is because I shrunk my lights focal point for the sake of seeing the glow effect better.

[ttc]

hi all! :)

in 3dsmax8 there is a hidden shader named "reflect glossy(base) "
can somebody explain me how to use it?...

[giacob]

everytime ( no matter what the setting of the scene are) i use a material with 3d displament (3dmax) in the displacement slot when calculating the fg the following warning appear many time " angle between normal and geometry normal > 90 degrees" why?... which is the mistake that cause this warning to appeare!!!how to get rid... this uncomprehensible massagges are what make me hate mental ray!!!sometimes...

[azozel]

Looks great!
I've got to get in to MR alot more then I am now.

It looks like this thread is the place to start.

[lehthanis]

Well...I made my glowy water material brightness 8. reflect .5, transparency 1. This is what I end up with...pardon the rest of the texturing and stuff...still WAY early there. Why is the glowing blue crystals and the glowing water not throwing off hardly any light compared to Jeff's gorgeous toxic water? I'm dyin here.
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/4882/brain127ol.th.jpg (http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=brain127ol.jpg)

[jvgfx]

some experiments with Mega_TK shader

http://www.filefarmer.com/2/jvgfx/p01.jpg


(autor Mega_TK Puppet, http://www.puppet.cgtalk.ru/download/index_e.shtml)

[jacquess]

hi, i downloaded that Mega_TK shader for mr, because i wanted to try that scatter_wrap. but i cannot find any tutorial, reference, manual, material or anything for the shader. is there any (for 3ds max 8)? thanks.

[jvgfx]

p_Shaders 3.0 Will be completed with the documentation


http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7158/1s4yt.th.jpg (http://img229.imageshack.us/my.php?image=1s4yt.jpg)
p_scatter_wrap example scenes (max8 sp2)
http://www.filefarmer.com/2/jvgfx/p_scatt.zip

[jacquess]

p_Shaders 3.0 Will be completed with the documentation


http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7158/1s4yt.th.jpg (http://img229.imageshack.us/my.php?image=1s4yt.jpg)
p_scatter_wrap example scenes (max8 sp2)
http://www.filefarmer.com/2/jvgfx/p_scatt.zip
thanks, it helped me a lot

[Henry Anthony]

Hello all,

I am new to Max and MR and have been learning by examining scenes generously provided by Jeff Patton and others - thank you all for those. My question refers to a Jeff Patton scene titled "Mr-Volume-text.max". I cannot find where to change the color of the blue volume light (not sure of proper terminology). Can anyone point me in the right direction? I have searched the forum and Max help but still cannot find where to change the color. I am using Max 8. Thanks for any help.

Regards,

Henry

[JeffPatton]

parti-volume shader settings.

[JeffPatton]

Why is the glowing blue crystals and the glowing water not throwing off hardly any light compared to Jeff's gorgeous toxic water? I'm dyin here.Probably because I used an almost white material and you have dark textures (dark textures absorb more light).

EDIT: Also there are several glow threads/scenes posted here in this thread as well as on my website if you want to download those and check the settings.

[lehthanis]

I never thought about the implications of the lightness of the texture...I'll try to re-render my little pool test with the sphere but with a whiter texture and see what happens. Though I must admit, I don't quite understand why you're so reluctant to post up the scene you made. I'm not complaining though, you've been a great help in understanding the finer aspects of mental ray that I didn't really know much about at all.

I just wish I could figure out how to make the water in my full scene cast more light, yet not look like primordial cartoony jello. My GI seems to want to look more like something out of a scanline renderer than mental ray.

[lehthanis]

Grrr...I'm getting really frustrated.

I've read the thread, all the posts on glow/glare, my water and my glowing crystals look like ass. No matter what I do. I've lightened the textures, I've modified the lighting, I've done all I can think and nothing seems to change the fact that the glowy bits look like crap, like afterthoughts thrown into my scene. Anyone with Max 8 wanna help me out off-forum? I don't want to keep cluttering up this place.

[JeffPatton]

Though I must admit, I don't quite understand why you're so reluctant to post up the scene you made. I'm not complaining though, you've been a great help in understanding the finer aspects of mental ray that I didn't really know much about at all.Heard of the saying "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for today. Teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime."...I'm just trying to help you to figure this out on your own.

[loran]

MMMM... I like fishes

[lehthanis]

Heard of the saying "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for today. Teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime."...I'm just trying to help you to figure this out on your own.

I'm starting to see that Mental ray is a delicate balance between fine numbers between 1.0 and 0...small changes make BIG differences. And I'm not quite grasping the differences.

Plus, I'm trying to make the transition between low-poly/cad object modelling to high poly scene modelling/rendering and not having the best of luck.

And the weirdest thing is...the water works pretty well in my non-scene test, after takign yoru advice, but when I drop it into my scene, even after lightenign up my textures a bit and darkening my scene lights, I'm still not seeing any cast photons fromt he glow :(

[JeffPatton]

And the weirdest thing is...the water works pretty well in my non-scene test, after takign yoru advice, but when I drop it into my scene, even after lightenign up my textures a bit and darkening my scene lights, I'm still not seeing any cast photons fromt he glow :(Is the scale of your test scene the same as your actual scene? Scale is ultra important in all aspects of lighting.

Also, the glow shader doesn't actually generate photons. So if your using GI with it...it's not doing anything. The glow shader only emits light because of final gather.

For testing:
I'd just make sure you turn off all lights in the scene...but if you have no actual lights in the scene, add one and turn it off. That will disable the default lights. Then hide everything except your water tank, and two test shapes (spheres, boxes whatever). Then apply the glow shader to ONE of those test shapes and adjust the glow amount and FG samples (I used 300 in mine, and my 3dsmax units are set to inches). But for testing, I'd just use 150 samples then increase for the final render (I also used 2 FG bounces).

[lehthanis]

In this render, I cut back on the glow value of my water...I don't like that though, I'm goign to have to go back up with it obviously, but look at the glowing crystals. The glare shader helps a little bit, but its still not casting hardly any light on the surrounding objects.

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/213/brain144ll.th.jpg (http://img97.imageshack.us/my.php?image=brain144ll.jpg)

As for the scene, I'm using 6 omni's that are surrounding the pool just like the 6 pillars surrounding the pool, each of the 6 omni's has a corresponding glowing crystal. I'm trying to achieve a magical glow appearance to the WHOLE scene, but all I'm getting is crap...the omni's are at .2 multiplier with alight blue color. Inverse square decay with the start set just beyond the middle of the pool...so they all overlap a little.

I guess I need to go outside of this thread to solve my overall lighting issues and come back to the glow shaders afterwards.

[lehthanis]

Is the scale of your test scene the same as your actual scene? Scale is ultra important in all aspects of lighting.

Also, the glow shader doesn't actually generate photons. So if your using GI with it...it's not doing anything. The glow shader only emits light because of final gather.

For testing:
I'd just make sure you turn off all lights in the scene...but if you have no actual lights in the scene, add one and turn it off. That will disable the default lights. Then hide everything except your water tank, and two test shapes (spheres, boxes whatever). Then apply the glow shader to ONE of those test shapes and adjust the glow amount and FG samples (I used 300 in mine, and my 3dsmax units are set to inches). But for testing, I'd just use 150 samples then increase for the final render (I also used 2 FG bounces).

I tried to make sure that scale was always accounted for throughout...yes my test scene had the same scale...I didn't think about turnign off all the lights for testing, I'll give that a go. I am using final gather though. 100 samples in the above render. Max8 I think you are supposed to halve the samples you would use in Max 7. I'm using one FG bounce, but have used 2 in the past. I'm using inches as well. Thanks again for all the help Jeff. I'm terribly sorry about all the whining hehehe.

[JeffPatton]

I'll post some additional tips here in a few minutes that should be helpful to you. Yes, it's a borderline question about lighting...but I'm sticking close to the glow shader aspect of things.

When I heard the "look" you're trying to acheive...I had a thought about something you might want to add...and a simple way to make it (glowing smoke/steam on the liquid)...but I haven't tried it...so don't hold me to this one. It's just a thought at this point. But if it works like I think it will, I'll post it.

[lehthanis]

Oh that would be SOOO awesome...one thing to consider, if you want to help out liek that, is that the brain itself is supposed to be giving off pulses of visible psychic energy, I haven't even begun to cross that bridge yet, but it may be somethign that you can add-in to your glowy smoke idea...which I will happily help you in any way shape or form if you need ;)

I am getting somewhere I think...this is what I get when I hide everythign except the pillars, the glowing gems, the pool, the floor, and the glowing water. All my lights are off.

http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/4376/glowtest7vu.th.jpg (http://img383.imageshack.us/my.php?image=glowtest7vu.jpg)

The water is looking a little better...there is a glare shader...I need ot make the water not so sparkly though...and I think to do that I need to back off the bump mapping a little...the water is casting a little light, but not enough to make me smile. The glowing gems are still casting none though. They consist of a mental ray material with a glow lume in the shader slot and a DGS material in the glows surface slot.

Edit: Yay, I just joined CGSociety ;)

[JeffPatton]

Hey, that water looks nice. The bump is certainly the culprit behind the sparkly appearance. You can of course decrease the transparency of the water and that will make the glow brighter at the cost of...well, transparancy. Another option is to use the blur transparency of the glass(lume) shader to blur what's under the water...but that will be a painfully slow render if you blur it too much.

On the blue light objects. It's simply not going to produce enough light with the glow shader. You'd need to really crank up the glow amount, and then you'll have bright spots and other problems. I think you're on the right track with using omni's for the lights instead. Don't use the glow shader on the blue light covers, instead use a glass material with the "mist" volume shader (set to blue if you like). Then right click on the glass covers and disable cast & recieve shadows and add a "mist" volume shader to the glass (blue of course). That will fog the glass. I'm attaching a sample render of this effect.

[JeffPatton]

And here's my thought on the steam. It was to simply use the glow shader & transmat shader in a mix map to create a steam pass for compositing onto your water.

I was going to post a series of images using small to large objects and the glow shader to illustrate how difficult it is to light a scene with the glow shader and small objects. But I think people already know this...and I need to get back to work. So hopefully you'll be able to piece enough of the parts together to get the result you're after.

[lehthanis]

I'm starting to get somewhere...I just read your replies, and I'll start workign on the mist for the lights, but I added a Light Point shader to my omni's to see if my lighting would have more of an effect on the scene...it added 2 minutes ot my render time and made my bump maps REALLY pop...

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/9595/brain151rk.th.jpg (http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=brain151rk.jpg)

So now I can come off my bump amount, add a little more white to my omni's, and start workign on better integration of the glowing crystals using your suggestions.

While you're in a suggesting mood though, got any ideas on how I can give the whole scene a bit of a magical glow without looking too fruity?

[lehthanis]

I must be doign somethign wrong...because now I'm getting the no photons stored warning and photon emission is taking an ungodly amount of time.

You repeat yourself in your post, and I'm wondering if that is intentional and I'm missing something or is it a typo.


Don't use the glow shader on the blue light covers, instead use a glass material with the "mist" volume shader (set to blue if you like). Then right click on the glass covers and disable cast & recieve shadows and add a "mist" volume shader to the glass (blue of course). That will fog the glass.


So what I did is set my gemstones to not cast or receive shadows. Moved my omni's inside the gemstones. And put the mist shader in the volume slot of the mental ray material. Which means I have glass lume in the surface and mist in the volume...right?

My mist shader is transparency .5...use solid color, set to blue...everything else I left default.

Do I need to do that to something else? or place that somewhere else? Do my omni's have to be inside the gemstones?

[JeffPatton]

I must be doign somethign wrong...because now I'm getting the no photons stored warning If you don't know what causes that error, then go here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=303284

Tip: Be sure to run a thread search whenever you run into problems like that.

[lehthanis]

I know what it means...I'm just wonderign why I'm getting it THERE...the only change I made was moving the lights inside the gemstones and applying the shader suggstions you made. All the examples I've seen on the Mist shader are for full scene mist...kinda like environmental fog.

[JeffPatton]

I know what it means...I'm just wonderign why I'm getting it THERE...if you know what it means then you should know why it happened and how to fix it. Correct?

[lehthanis]

Right, I've fixed that...but I still don't quite understand what you meant when you were describing the mist setup...because you repeated yourself or something.

[JeffPatton]

Ok, forget about the mist idea.

If your using the glass(lume) shader for the "gemstones", then just set the transparency of the glass .25 or so and set the surface & diffuse colors to a light blue (or whatever you want)...in this case, it looks & acts the same as if you used the mist volume shader.

[lehthanis]

So you're saying that just by putting on a colored glass shader with semi-transparency I'm automatically creating volume? Does that require caustics or something? I don't have caustics turned on, just GI.

I really like the sample you posted...but I've come to find that a lot of the glow stuff is different in max8...for example...in max8, this renders as white walls with the balls colored. no glow really. http://www.jeffpatton.net/Max6/pages/Photon-lights.html

So I'm thinking there may need to be some translation in what you are doing with 7 into what max8 does...this could be the start of that paradigm shift for this thread maybe.

I do hope I'm not frustrating you, I'm worried you might be gettign flustered, and thats not my intent at all ;)

[JeffPatton]

After stepping back and taking a breath, this should be taken up in your WIP thread and not here. I think this is getting too specific to your scene, and now it's heading over to lighting and not shaders.

You mention the difference in those old max6 files on my site in Max8, they are the same in Max7. Without going into a ton of details on lighting, the newer versions generate photons in a different mannor than in Max6. Therefore the results are different. The Max7 files on my site should render the same in Max8...however I don't own Max8 and can't verify that. But the Max6 files will need energy adjustments in newer versions. You can find more info on the photon differences in the new features guide of Max7.

anyway, I'll continue my response about your scene in your WIP thread.

[lehthanis]

Excellent, thanks again Jeff ;)

[jacquess]

...however I don't own Max8 and can't verify that.
when opening scenes in max8 (with mentalRay 3.4) just appears messageError window:

MSG 0.0 error: This file was saved with mental ray 3.3 or older. With mental ray 3.4 and later, the same number of Final Gather samples will result in a slower render. We recommend reducing the number of samples to half in order to get a similiar render time, but still at a higher quality.
MSG 0.0 warn : Shader version mismatch for "DefaultContourContrastShader ( Contour Contrast Function Levels (contour) )": file saved with version 2, library has version 3. Please check the parameter values of the loaded shader.
MSG 0.0 warn : Shader version mismatch for "DefaultContourStoreShader ( Contour Store Function (contour) )": file saved with version 2, library has version 3. Please check the parameter values of the loaded shader.

but everything goes ok

[dave-3d]

Those warnings are simply informing you that the render engine has been changed (improved) from the earlier version used to create that scene, and you should look at the parameters of the functions listed. Leaving the values the same in your scene it will render fine, but taking the time to adjust your parameters may result in faster renders for the same previous quality.

Quite a few changes have been made to the layout of some MR windows. You will just need to play around ...

Dave

[nebille]

As far as i am aware bucket sizes can be changed to cope with memmory issues ie if you have a huge scene with millions of polygons the best thing to do would be reduce your bucket size so that you dont have a huge memory overhead per bucket. Various other setting have to be changed as well but this would be one of my ports of call if i wanted to stop memory crashes.

[petere]

Hello,

I have (like many others) seen the mib_glossy_reflection and mib_glossy_refraction in the base.mi-file for 3dsmax8 and mr 3.4. Anyone have some information and can shed light on this mystery.

metal (lume) is all competent and all, but there is other things then metal that need some glossy reflections and refractions.

-P

[lehthanis]

Is anyone else that uses Max8 noticing that you can only open the CGTalk-MR matlib file once? I have to redownload it to get it to open more than once...weirdest thing.

[jacquess]

hi, i have problem with mr... when rendering, some strange black dots and edges after buckets (seems as some artifacts) appears on picture (attached image) and i don't know how to clean it up. i was searching this thread for some help and tried some tips, but nothing helped me :( using precalculated final gather didn't fixed it. could it be due i'm using distributed rendering od 2 pc? or low number of photons?

here are some settings coppied from log:

MSG 0.0 info : GI/Caustic statistics on lights with automatic settings:
MSG 0.0 info : Light GI Photons Caustic Photons
MSG 0.0 info : mr Area Spot01 10000 0
RC 0.2 info : option: shadow on
RC 0.2 info : option: shadow maps (use) (recompute)
RC 0.2 info : option: globillum on
RC 0.2 info : option: globil. accur. 200
RC 0.2 info : option: globil. radius 68.7741
RC 0.2 info : option: globil. scale 1 1 1
RC 0.2 info : option: phot.vol radius 68.7741
RC 0.2 info : option: photon depth reflection 5, refraction 5, sum 5
RC 0.2 info : option: finalgather on
RC 0.2 info : option: finalg. rays 30
RC 0.2 info : option: finalg. maxrad. 0.011811
RC 0.2 info : option: finalg. minrad. 0.0011811
RC 0.2 info : option: rebuild interactive
RC 0.2 info : option: rebuild on

thanks

[JeffPatton]

Anytime you have MR render problems, check this thread first:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=303284

And I'm not sure if I posted this in that thread or not, but if you put a fresnel falloff map into the reflection map slot of a raytrace material, and set the fresnel IOR to 14 or so and turn on final gather, it creates those black spots. I reported it to Autodesk and they confirmed it was a bug, and that they had fixed it in Max8.

[dave-3d]

Yes, Jeff, I can confirm that that issue has been fixed in Max8 SP1. Also reported it to Autodesk.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=286515

I was getting it when using large nested blend materials. It is not exactly the same as your setup, jacquess, but it might be helpful to others explain a little fix/work around with shadow options in MAx7. I explain here - but it DOES increase render times :

Faults
http://www.dmmultimedia.com/cgtalk/error_002.jpg

"Solution"
http://www.dmmultimedia.com/cgtalk/error_003.jpg

Dave

[lehthanis]

Is anyone else that uses Max8 noticing that you can only open the CGTalk-MR matlib file once? I have to redownload it to get it to open more than once...weirdest thing.

Solution: Open the matlib, then immediately save it over itself...seems to solve the problem for me.

[Fab3000]

Hi there - first of all thanks for an awesome thread. The amount of tips and tricks I've learnt from you guys is truly amazing.

I've decided to create this post, because there are two things that I can't seem to figure out. I sincerly hope that this is the right forum (!).

I've attached a picture to this post. It is a design sketch of a spline LED lamp built up from smaller parts (each shell is approx. 5*8 cm). If the attachment thingie wont work, there a direct link to the image here: http://www.eek.dk/3000/spline_sss_13.jpg

http://www.eek.dk/3000/spline_sss_13.jpg

Its mental ray in Max8, no shadows, Final Gather turned on, but no caustics or GI. Rendertimes are fine, even on my laptop, so if GI is neccessary for what I want to accomplish, thats just dandy.

So here goes;

I am using Fast SSS to create the translucensy in the shells - however, I could need some advice on how to make the translucecy look alot more smooth - how to make the light more subtle thru the material, but still light it all up. I found the LAMRUG tutorial PDF's very helpful so far, but it appears to me that most tutorials written on this subject are targeted to people who know a lot more about SSS than I do, or are only interested in human skin ;)

So - any advice on how i could create a smoother plastic or rubber material for Max8 running MR? I tried to download all of the .mat libs, but even though i can load all the materials, most (well, all) of the SSS materials render nonsense images for me, propaply because they were designed for an earlier version of MR?

The second question is - - right now I am using 3 target spots to light up each shell. I would like to skip those and instead have some geometry with a glowLume as the light sources, so I can light up the scene with a shader instead. Is this advisable, and if yes, how do I make the light coming from a glow-shader-geometry affect the SSS shell around it? Should I use GI for that, cause right now I can't seem to make that work, even in the simplest scene.

Hope you have the time to answer and share even more of your god-like knowledge,

Best regards,

FAB

[Dodgeas3d]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me how to make glass, not to refract background, but just reflections coud be seen. Background is gray, and for material environment i use hdri... i cant use mapped sphere couse it effects AOCC.

Long time ago somebody talked in this thread but cant find right page... :/

Any suggestions?
Thanks.

[JeffPatton]

Arnas - Download Stephen Gustafson's (aka -Vormav-) "Environment Ray Type" shader. You can search through the thread here for more info on it. For a quick download, visit http://maxplugins.de/mentalray.php

Lot's of custom shaders there btw.

[Jeff Dux]

Hi.
I have a Problem:
I want to make a material (with max7) that has real anisotropic properties and changes for example colors when viewed from different directions (0°,90°,180°...) I already tried all kinds of falloff maps with all different directions, but it didn´t do what i wanted it to do :sad:

So i wanted to ask if there is some sort of anisotropy shader which can be used as mask for a blend material?
Or is there even another way to do this?
I guess mentalray should be able to do this and that´s why i posted this question in this thread.

DUX

[pedersen]

Hi all. I'm trying to make a translucent shader,but i dont know where to begin. Anyone who can point me to a tutorial or any kind of info? I'm applying the shader to a lampshade. 1 lightbulb inside lampshade. This need to be physical correct

regards
P

[CupOWonton]

mr_geolight shader trouble.

Ok, well. Ive gotten back into mental ray last where I left off. The downloadble geometryshaders.
Now, My problem, is that I cant seem to cast caustics with any object lit by the geolight shader. I can however get FG off of it, but thats not what Im looking for. Does anyone have any idea on how to get this working?

[rudolph]

Hello, How can i exclude background object for GI environement could light my sphere as background is invisible ?.
I did it with VRAY, it's simple :i select background object and i just have to go in objet properties and uncheck visible to reflection/refraction and bacground is invisible to environement but appears in rendering without borring compositing.

Thanks and sorry for my english.

Rudo_fr

[rudolph]

Here pictures exemple.

[rudolph]

In Vray (with GI HDRI environement), to have light in my liquid with black background object, i selected background object propertie and uncheck visible reflection/refraction. How can i do the same with MR ?

[loran]

DGS seems to be pronblematic with envirronement mapping...
Try Dielectric material or Glass Lume which works better with it.
I tried this with Dielectric, unchecking the background black box and it ok

t'as compris? :)

[JeffPatton]

OR, search the thread for "environment"....excluding reflections via Vormav's environment shader was just discussed again on the previous page of this thread (even with download links). Unless I've misunderstood your question? :shrug:

[rudolph]

Thanks Jeff, you well understand my question, but i didn't found plugin that you are talking.Can you send me direct link for this plugin ?

Thank you, and sorry for my english.

Rudolph.

[rudolph]

ok i found it, thank you very much Jeff, you are Mister mental ray ....

[gulio]

Does anybody can give me a clue which shader can give back a differentiation between light, grazing a surface in a wide angel and the light hitting the surface in a narrow angle?

[rodrigogua]

you probably want a falloff map, but i'mnot sure what you mean

[Viper]

I'm having a small issue with MR. Nothing big and I'm sure it's easy to solve though, but I can't seem to find info on it. I have a raytrace material with metal(lume) on the MR connection, and I can't get the bump map to work in the material. Is there any reason why?

[gulio]

@ rodrigogua - unfortunatly it´s not that easy. I try to achive a similar effect, as fresnel does for eye rays only for the light rays. That means if a light ray stokes a surface at a wide angel the shader should return maybe white and if a light ray hits the surface more directly it should return a darker color. I´ve downloaded the ReflectionUtility from Horvátth Szabolcs but for now I could not get it to work the way I wish.

@Viper - If you are working with 3ds max there are two ways for accomplish it. 1st load a "bump(3dsmax)" shader in the bump slot on the upper level in the MR Material or 2nd
load a shader list shader in the surface slot and put in ther the bump(3dsmax) and the metal lume shader.

[Viper]

Thanks for the help mate :)

[francescaluce]

mr_geolight shader trouble.

Ok, well. Ive gotten back into mental ray last where I left off. The downloadble geometryshaders.
Now, My problem, is that I cant seem to cast caustics with any object lit by the geolight shader. I can however get FG off of it, but thats not what Im looking for. Does anyone have any idea on how to get this working?
what do you mean by FG off of it. GI photons ?
FG does not come from lights. Photons are
automatically handled by geolights in mentalray.
Did you try with Gi photons to see if it works ?
Try increasing a lot the photon energy to see
maybe also caustics.


ciao
francesca

ps:: who ported/implemented geolights on max ?
or are there by default ?

ps2:: OT.
can anyone here do a little test for me ? please.
I would love to see if lightprofiles can handle also
photons under 3dsmax.. so just put a light with a
light profile in a scene and with a rough photon
emission try to see if photons are spread in all
directions or if they 'follow' the light profile.
maybe post a picture. thanks. :)

[JeffPatton]

Hi Francesca,

I've attached some photon test renders of a light with IES profile. I hope this is the type of profile you wanted us to test?

[francescaluce]

great Jeff, thanks a lot !! :)






ciao
francesca

[hudbl]

Hello,

I'm sure someone has probably posted an answer to this already but i've been unable to find it with searches!

I'm a total newbie with Max but want to use the shaders from the first post in Maya. I can open up the mat file in Max but how do i export them or get access to the mi and dll files? If someone could explain this it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Dave

[em3]

Hi, can someone tell me what page to find something on wet skin shaders? I am trying to set something up for this character. Thanks!

http://www.davetyner.com/images/furryThing.jpg

[ben_n]

I was wondering whether anyone knows how to produce a material that will simulate the front of a vending machine?

[JeffPatton]

I'm a total newbie with Max but want to use the shaders from the first post in Maya. I can open up the mat file in Max but how do i export them or get access to the mi and dll files? If someone could explain this it would be greatly appreciated.I think you'd have better results by running a search (or asking) in the Maya forum. I know there's at least one thread over there on converting the lume shaders over to Maya, so there are probably other threads.

Hi, can someone tell me what page to find something on wet skin shaders? I am trying to set something up for this characterTry these tips:
http://neilblevins.com/cg_education/wet_materials/wet_materials.htm

I was wondering whether anyone knows how to produce a material that will simulate the front of a vending machine?The quickie way would be to simply snap a photo of it and map it onto your object. Or are you asking about a specific type of material? Plastic/glass/metal? Vending machines have several types of materials, so if your seeking a specific material, you'd have better luck in posting a photo of the material for reference.

[ben_n]

http://www.4mega-vending.com/images/machine-pics/snack-and-soda/refurbished/Dixie-440-round-front-webco.jpg
this is what i had in mind but ice cubes as the picture on the front. i know there's a material that someone on this thread was using for ice but i can not find it
would the material be able to emit some light as well?
im a novice really with mental ray and its for my final year film, i have a character standing in front of a vending machine and need that glow that comes from a lit vendor?
any suggestions?
cheers

[JeffPatton]

"ice" is listed in the table of contents on page 1, review that for the page & post numbers of those discussions.

[ben_n]

http://img97.imageshack.us/my.php?image=scene20mh.jpg
crits and advice please
be nice :thumbsup:

[igsiv]

great topic!

my contribution here is (and i hope it will be usefull):

1. is_mat_irradiance (http://3dcenter.ru/forum/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=62192) - mr material shader to adjust fg, gi and caustic parameters individually by material. It is analog of ctrl_irradiance but for 3ds max. Besides adjisting fg, gi and caustic, additional feature of is_mat_irradiance is "fast sky light" - fg occlusion multiplying by simple color to simulate lightning from sky,
for example:
http://www.ixbt.com/soft/images/mate/12.jpg

2. is_miObject (http://3dcenter.ru/forum/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=63469) - mental ray geometry shader for 3ds max to adjusting supersampling individually by objects and store fg maps in separate files by objects.

[igsiv]

how to setup shaders described in readme.txt

[KORBAC]

Thanks igsiv for your contribution!

[tryhard]

... has anyone tried that shader by stephen gustavson ???

http://maxplugins.de/mentalray.php?search=

i guess it´s for environment and the cordinates are for the 4 points of a square. is that right ???

what i get when i put it in envirenment is the plane but without shadows and reflections ...

how to adjust Z? does the plane cut objects?

[maxplugins]

Take a look at page 176 of this thread.
In post number 2631 Vormav (Stephen) describer the shader and what it can do.

Dave

[-Vormav-]

... has anyone tried that shader by stephen gustavson ???

http://maxplugins.de/mentalray.php?search=

i guess it´s for environment and the cordinates are for the 4 points of a square. is that right ???

what i get when i put it in envirenment is the plane but without shadows and reflections ...

how to adjust Z? does the plane cut objects?
I'd tried it. :D

It's still fairly experimental, but I can give some additional comments on using it in its current form:
First off, the coordinates aren't for the corners of the square; it is literally infinite, and as such has no corners. But what you can do with the coordinates is tweak the way that positions are interpreted, so if your procedural texture is showing up smaller than you'd like, you can adjust the scaling of the positions (that is, the values that have default values of 1) to make them appear larger..or smaller, whatever.
The coordinates should usually be left alone. Especially the non-scalar coordinate values. Try adjusting the upper-right coordinate, and you'll see why. ;)

When you apply any sort of texture - procedural, or whatever - be sure to set the mapping coordinates to "planar from world xyz", otherwise the texture will probably just display as one flat value. You can also use the tiling controls of your textures mapping settings to control the size of the texture, instead of adjusting the coordinate values directly, which is probably the safer way of doing things.

Setting up object to be occluded by the plane is pretty straight forward: Infinite_occlusion should be the base surface shader, then your object's regular (non-occluded) shader should be connected to the surface slot of the infinite_occlusion shader.


As long as you're connecting a full shader model to the "plane color" slot of the infinite_plane shader, you should be able to get lighting and shadows working without a problem. Lighting a scene with an infinite_plane can be pretty tricky though, because you can't use anything like skylights (which relies on FG in MR) -- FG and GI probably won't be possible with this kind of setup. Do note however that the typical 'material to shader'->'standard shader' connection won't work in this case. You should instead unlock the 'Illum Blinn' material (and similar shaders) from the base.mi file (track down the shader and comment out the 'hidden' line -- this process is documented many times in this thread).
I'm attaching an example scene (max7) that uses Illum Blinn - includes lighting, shadows, textures, and plane occlusions.

Like I said, still fairly experimental. Filtering problems get really bad towards the horizon no matter what kind of texture you're using. Just haven't had the time to touch it up any in a long time... Hoping to do some new stuff with it eventually though.

[tryhard]

hi stephen,

so what can I say. thanks a lot for this heavy explanation and the testscene. i´ll give it a try . i use these infinite planes (csg) a lot with vray and brazil. and you know it´s hard to miss something that your used to.

as a designer it took me quite a while to find out how powerful mentalray can be. so i´m still a novice trying to find all the tips and hints espacially here in this thread.

thanks to all the guys who keep this thread up. that is really helpfull, helpfull, helpfull ...

[ben_n]

Anybody out there be able to give me a hint on producing the glow that comes from a computer screen. not bothering about the stuff you see on the screen just the light that it illuminates. and the halo of light it gives off. i tried the gloew(lume) shader but im doing something wrong
here's a pic of what i mean
http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/15784-2/120404_Computer_by_night_006.jpg

p.s sorry for the huge image :blush:

[EquiNOX]

Oh boy 86 pages of thread! One of the HUGE tread I ever visited, Hmm I wonder where in the world is Jeff Patton now?? His last post was on 8-25-2005 and its been almost a year he haven't post anything new about MR. "Hello Jeff Where are you"? I just wanted to say THANK YOU JEFF and others for establish this thread. I really enjoy learning stuffs about MR lately.

[jvgfx]

Thanks for test scene!!

reflect/refract shaders do not worked with Infinity plane?

[JeffPatton]

Anybody out there be able to give me a hint on producing the glow that comes from a computer screen. not bothering about the stuff you see on the screen just the light that it illuminates. and the halo of light it gives off. i tried the gloew(lume) shader but im doing something wrongYou can add that effect in post, or run a search for "glare" if you want to render it directly. Just keep in mind that the glare shader currently can't be assigned to a single object, therefore it will be applied to the entire scene. So if you have other bright objects, the will also recieve the specular bloom/glow effect.

where in the world is Jeff Patton now?? His last post was on 8-25-2005 and its been almost a year he haven't post anything new about MR.Present and accounted for. Later this year I'll be revamping my website to update the older .max files and post some new scenes as well.

[-Vormav-]

Thanks for test scene!!

reflect/refract shaders do not worked with Infinity plane?

The plane itself cannot reflect/refract. Actual geometric objects should be able to see the plane through their own reflections and refractions though.
That's one of the first things I'll probably fix whenever I get a chance to mess around with it again. But even then, in all likelihood you will not actually be able to use any reflect/refract shaders, but would rather have to work with controls for reflections and refractions that are built directly into the infinite plane shader. I am not yet aware of any way around that.

[JAF]

Thanks a lot to all friends giving us a such nice thread!
I jsut wanted to know if someone could be able to give a process with mr shaders to reach something like these amazing clouds... Yes i need beautiful clouds... and your help...
Here a very good tool i've found on the net...
I hope i can post it, this is a very good tool to see good real time volumetric clouds:
http://schpok.net/research/purpl/clouds/

Jeff, i'm sure you can do something good ;) perhaps with the Solid Volume Shader (Lastsanity webpage) but i can't have shadows or transparency.

Vormav, i've tried your nice infinite plane with ocean/water/submerge shaders with hdri, and this is working fine. Irradiance_matte working fine too for me, but i can't have raytraced or mapped shadows :( only fg...

Sorry, i won't post so many things next time, but one more time, a big thanks to everyone.
:thumbsup:

[KORBAC]

Hi all,
Please don't know if someone had asked this quastion before,is there a way I can control energy for caustics and GI separately,or is there a way I can control for example specular value for caustic and GI separately in photon shader in the same material...Or can someone suggest me another way to solve this,when I asign particular value for energy i get desired results for caustic but not for GI and viceversa...and I don't want to put another light in scene if posible.:)
thanks
best regards

[Mehran-Moghtadai]

you know the Evironnement channel in the Mental Ray material... I was wondering if that works on every type of surface material? And can I use Materil to Shader and but a Glass(physic_phen) as environnement?

[EquiNOX]

With Max's material I could add alpha texture in opacity which would give transparent/solid look. (i.e.) mesh. Now question is, does it comes with Mental Ray? if so, which material/map would that be?

[tryhard]

Hi all,

is there a way to change the color of the colorbleed. a red wall normally produces red colorbleed. I want it to create green colorbleed or non at all.

i found two materials: ctrl_rays and ctrl_irradiance.

has anybody experience with these two and are they able to do the job???

[gulio]

Hi Equinox,
there are various ways to achieve this. Most equivalent imo is the use of a dgs mat for the surface, and then put a opactiy map in the diffuse. In the opactiy map put your masking bitmap in the Opacity slot. The input can be a color or bitmap. Doing so, you have to mask the glossiness and reflection seperatly. Pay attention that your raytracedepth is high enough to reach thru your object.
The most simple way is via the "material to shader".

[tryhard]

changing color of color bleed ?

OK. found out that ctrl_rays does the job.

i put the shader in the diffuse slot of a standard shader (diffuse red) and put my green color in final gather and photon slot of ctrl_rays.

[tryhard]

... no problem to create realistic frosted glass in Brazil or Vray till today. now i try to achieve a realistic result in mentalray. not so easy ...

i look for frosted glass like used on cosmetic glass bottles or in architectural glass. could anyone post some example or give some advice.

would be really nice

[EquiNOX]

Gullio thanks for replying, I tried your methods and none seem to work, here's my settings:

In Mental Ray Connection Rollout:

Surface: DGS Material(3ds Max) --> Diffuse (Black) [Mapped] -->Opacity (Base)--> Input: Color Bitmap Texture, Opacity --> B/W (Alpha) Bitmap Texture.

And I render it all I see the object turns into transparent without having bitmap displayed. so can you provide list on DGS mat, capturing alpha as "fake shadow".

Let me know

[JeffPatton]

now i try to achieve a realistic result in mentalray. not so easy ...Sure it is, just use the glass(lume)shader. For tips on the settings simply go to Help>additional help>lume tools help. Or search through this thread for frosted glass, and I think there's a few older frosted glass materials in the .mat file on page 1 of this thread. But those may be a bit outdated by now.


In Mental Ray Connection Rollout:

Surface: DGS Material(3ds Max) --> Diffuse (Black) [Mapped] -->Opacity (Base)--> Input: Color Bitmap Texture, Opacity --> B/W (Alpha) Bitmap Texture.

And I render it all I see the object turns into transparent without having bitmap displayed. so can you provide list on DGS mat, capturing alpha as "fake shadow".

Let me know

Why not just use a standard material with the transparency? Do you need to use the DGS for glossy reflections? If so, you can try this:
Surface: Opacity(base)--> Input: DGS Material--> DGS Surface = Your color bitmap. Then put the B/W alpha map into the opacity map.

[gulio]

Equinox,
If I get you right you tried to use a standard Mat and placed a DGS in the Mental ray connection rollout. I dunno how to set it up this way because the transparency will still be defined by the standard mat settings. So, you have to use a Mental Ray Material and than you can decide what you place in the surface slot. I think the way Jeff Patton discribed is most appropriate because you don´t have to concern about reflection occurs in transparent places.

---------------

I myself would like to pose a question I had posted in the blurred reflections thread but it seems not very frequented.

Does anybody knows if it is possible to use the ctrl_shading in 3ds max. I´ve read so much promissing about it over here

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthr...ighlight=passes (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=190232&page=58&pp=15&highlight=passes)

which is maya related. I ´ve tried to install the .mi and .dll as ususal but it seems not to work.

thanks for any reply
/gulio

[tryhard]

Sure it is, just use the glass(lume)shader. For tips on the settings simply go to Help>additional help>lume tools help. Or search through this thread for frosted glass, and I think there's a few older frosted glass materials in the .mat file on page 1 of this thread. But those may be a bit outdated by now.



Why not just use a standard material with the transparency? Do you need to use the DGS for glossy reflections? If so, you can try this:
Surface: Opacity(base)--> Input: DGS Material--> DGS Surface = Your color bitmap. Then put the B/W alpha map into the opacity map.


Hi Jeff,

thanks a lot for this input and this really informative thread

i finally made it using the L-Glass v2 shader. idid not like the results in lume glass. but who knows, i´m a newbiew to mentalray ...

and i found a thread about frosted glass.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=334264&page=1&pp=15

[Patokid]

Is there an L_glass plugin/shader for 3ds max? and also, if anyone knows about a plugin/shader for brushed metal I would really appreciate it.

[EquiNOX]

Just curious.... all of the shaders found in http://yashu.go.ro/ can they work with Max MR if I just change in .mi (I forgot what was the two words)? Because it looks like it was for maya only.

[tryhard]

Is there an L_glass plugin/shader for 3ds max? and also, if anyone knows about a plugin/shader for brushed metal I would really appreciate it.


... yes you can.

put the .mi file in the mentalray/shader/autoload/include folder
and the .dll file in the mentalray/shader/autoload/shader folder

[tryhard]

Just curious.... all of the shaders found in http://yashu.go.ro/ can they work with Max MR if I just change in .mi (I forgot what was the two words)? Because it looks like it was for maya only.


... yes you can use those shader.

download and look for the .mi and the .dll files

put the .mi file in the mentalray/shader/autoload/include folder
and the .dll file in the mentalray/shader/autoload/shader folder

[Patokid]

... yes you can.

put the .mi file in the mentalray/shader/autoload/include folder
and the .dll file in the mentalray/shader/autoload/shader folder

I'm sorry to bother, but I downloaded some free shaders from www.maxplugins.de (http://www.maxplugins.de)
The zip files contain only the *.mi file, but no *.dll. I tried to render with those materials, but the prompt reads "x shader not found".
Is there something else to do with it?

[tryhard]

I'm sorry to bother, but I downloaded some free shaders from www.maxplugins.de (http://www.maxplugins.de)
The zip files contain only the *.mi file, but no *.dll. I tried to render with those materials, but the prompt reads "x shader not found".
Is there something else to do with it?

at
yashu.go.ro
you can download a lot of shader all containing the .mi and the shader the .dll file
that´s all i can tell you

[Patokid]

at
yashu.go.ro
you can download a lot of shader all containing the .mi and the shader the .dll file
that´s all i can tell you

Thank you. That link seems to be down, but I'll keep checking. Thanks for your patience.

[Patokid]

I've been getting Mental ray shaders for maya and installed them on 3ds max. The extensions are the same, and I read in this thread that you could use them.
So, I setup a simple scene with no lights, just to see if 3ds max rendered those shaders, and it worked.
Then, as I put a light on the scene (a mr spotlight) the shaders refused to show. What I get is a black material, and there's not even a warning in the mr prompt.
I'll keep trying with different options, but it seems to me the Maya shaders won't go for 3ds max lights, which of course sucks.

[gulio]

Thank you. That link seems to be down, but I'll keep checking. Thanks for your patience.

Patokid, try another browser. I had the same problems first with Morzilla but IE worked then.

/gulio

[maxplugins]

I'm sorry to bother, but I downloaded some free shaders from www.maxplugins.de (http://www.maxplugins.de)
The zip files contain only the *.mi file, but no *.dll. I tried to render with those materials, but the prompt reads "x shader not found".
Is there something else to do with it?

All of the shaders on my site are downloadable, just click on the name of the shader. You have obviously downloaded the include files that I made for Max, which is why the links you clicked say this: "The Include file for Max can be downloaded here."

Dave

[JeffPatton]

Since the existing grass shader on my site is starting to show it's age, I thought I would share one of my more current methods of displaced grass. Here's the link: http://jeffpatton.net/MR_Grass_displacement.htm

I'll have more indepth MR tutorials released in the near future. :)

[tryhard]

Since the existing grass shader on my site is starting to show it's age, I thought I would share one of my more current methods of displaced grass. Here's the link: http://jeffpatton.net/MR_Grass_displacement.htm

I'll have more indepth MR tutorials released in the near future. :)


... so let me be the first one to say THANK YOU :-)

[Patokid]

All of the shaders on my site are downloadable, just click on the name of the shader. You have obviously downloaded the include files that I made for Max, which is why the links you clicked say this: "The Include file for Max can be downloaded here."

Dave


Thanks Dave, I will look into it. The reflectionutility shader doesn't have the "Include file..." option, does that mean it only works for Maya?

Shijune

[CupOWonton]

Ok, I did somethign rather rash and immature as a max user and just went through all my MI files and deleted every "hidden" instance.. and now MR doesnt realy work.. Thankfully I have a backup, but has anyone successfully removed the hidden tag for the appropriate shaders in Max 8?

[JAF]

Thanks a lot again Jeff for this new share. We're all waiting for the nice volumetric clouds shader solution you'll post soon :) (joking).
I saw you're on ZB too. A very good tool. Your grass shader is nice but the displacement solution is very expensive in polygons (not your fault).
I'm working hard with mr now but i always have problems to reach photorealistic lighting with all shaders on the same picture (standard max shaders, fast sss, metal(lume), water(lume), hdri, skylight, fg, ...)
I see, on CGTALK, realistics renders and i often don't understand what's i'm doing wrong.
Gamma settings with monitor, with 3DS ? Damn that's hard to reach good results but i'm still trying and learning with the help of everyone. Tanks again.
I'll do it one day! or not... ;)

[JeffPatton]

Ooops, I forgot to post a scene with those clouds you wanted... :)

You know, actually if I recall properly I did have a scene wherein I had some success with making clouds with the parti-volume shader. That was a long time ago though, and I'm pretty sure the render times were (and still would be) horrible for something like that. Nonetheless, I'll see if I can dig up that file from my "archives". Infact, seems like Vormav may have a thread around here on that topic too. I may be wrong, but run a thread search (if you haven't already) and see if anything comes up.

Honestly though, you may want to look into Afterburn for those clouds. Would be much easier, and faster. But alas you'll have to do some compositing work because you won't be able to use Afterburn with MR.

About the displacement scene, yeah I went a bit bonkers with the subdivisions on that ground plane. I wasn't planning on making a tutorial with that scene, it just turned out that way. You certainly don't need to use a mesh that dense in order for the displacement to work properly though. It was pointless for me to use a mesh that dense since the camera is a fair distance from the mesh itself. As such, I've gone back in and edited that tutorial to make note of that. I would've changed the mesh, but I'd have to redo the tutorial images, etc...and I just don't have time to do that right now. Hopefully the text changes will suffice for now.

While I was editing the tutorial anyway, I added some additional displacement test renders.. :thumbsup:

[EquiNOX]

Just few question to ask, first.... Thank you Jeff for sharing new grass displacement tutorial with us.... This acually make a faster render time compared to previous grass displacement (old one that's found on your website). You are correct about plane segments, I Actually only used one segment each (Length/Width) but change setting:

Celluar Size:0.005 (Height Map Displacement ->cellular Map)
(In Render Setting)
Edge Length: 0.35
Max Level: 5

And here is the result I get (see below)
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a230/APrather/MRGrass2.jpg
Render time was only 1m 35 second (Athlon XP 3200, 2GB ram). I think its pretty statifying for me but I am sure there are some way to improve render time.

Question to ask:

1.Where can I find Blur L-System scripts to make tree? I would like to have one myself instead of using foliage which is very limiting.

2.Is there a way I could learn how to use composite (of course for afterburner effect) but without using video post, I just want it render only.

3.Can anyone share set ups on velvet shaders? I am having hard time trying to make velvet to look real. I got that shader from http://yashu.go.ro/ "Madvelvet"?

4. Again got map from http://yashu.go.ro/ "MR aperture" which could create DOF exposure such as fisheye,Cubic and etc. How do I place it. I mean where do I find these material or shaders?

[maxplugins]

Thanks Dave, I will look into it. The reflectionutility shader doesn't have the "Include file..." option, does that mean it only works for Maya?

Shijune

Take another look at my site, I've added an include so that it works in Max.

Dave

[maxplugins]

Question to ask:

1.Where can I find Blur L-System scripts to make tree? I would like to have one myself instead of using foliage which is very limiting.

2.Is there a way I could learn how to use composite (of course for afterburner effect) but without using video post, I just want it render only.

3.Can anyone share set ups on velvet shaders? I am having hard time trying to make velvet to look real. I got that shader from http://yashu.go.ro/ "Madvelvet"?

4. Again got map from http://yashu.go.ro/ "MR aperture" which could create DOF exposure such as fisheye,Cubic and etc. How do I place it. I mean where do I find these material or shaders?

If you've already got the L-System plugin, and just want some formulas to make trees and stuff, take a look here (bottom of the page): http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/
But prepare to be disappointed, I don't think you will get very good foliage with L-Systems.

If you head over to my site, you can get the Max Include file for MR Aperture. It is a lens shader, so you need to add it in the 'Camera Effects' part of the render settings.

If you want basic settings for madVelvet, then you need to head over to my site again and download the Max Include file for it. The Max includes usually have a default setup for the shaders, whereas the original include files load in Max with everything set to 0.

http://yashu.go.ro/ is a great site for getting shaders, I use it myself, but all of the shaders at MAX Plugins.de have been tested in Max, and most of them have an Include file for Max.

Dave

[KORBAC]

Hi all,

There is a new collection of binary alchemy shaders at http://www.binaryalchemy.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=167, ....there is a new light shader with area light shadows option which is little bit faster than mr standard area light...Also there is some kind of occlusion shader which suport transparancy,hmm but i didn't figure out how it works...Thanks Dave(maxplugins) for compiling earlier version of mi files for max users!! :thumbsup:

[Patokid]

Take another look at my site, I've added an include so that it works in Max.

Dave

Dave.... you are my hero. You have the best page in the web.

[EquiNOX]

Thank you for website... I have visited once a while before but never knew madvelvet were in there.


If you've already got the L-System plugin, and just want some formulas to make trees and stuff, take a look here (bottom of the page): http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/


so you are saying I would need to download L-System before I could download those trees and stuff from this website -->http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/?? If so, where do I can I find L-System plugin? Because I don't have it already... And its not found in your website (Maxplugin.de)

[3DMadness]

I always like to use light cards to put some reflection in metal and glass materials, but if I put a material with high selfilumination output or just an output shader for MR, it generate light when using FG. Is there a way to make a bright object with an output like 3 that doesn't generate light with FG? I've tried excluding it from generating and receiving global illumination but it doesn't affect FG

Dave.... you are my hero. You have the best page in the web.
I have to thank Dave as well... I used to visit maxplugin since max 3 but I never notice now maxplugins have mrshader and these include files are awesome, so thanks a lot dave, specially because l_glass was terrible to set up with all values in zero without your include file. :thumbsup:

Cheers!

Flávio

[Patokid]

I've been doing tests for the reflection utility shader, from the maxplugins.de website.
Here are the parameters for the first image:

blur=50
samples=25
blurred raytrace d.=1
max. ray dist.=7.0

Other parameters are left as they were.
I have a mr omni light and a skylight
GI and FG are on, FG in preview and everything else as default.

For the second image I used same as before, but turned anisotropy to .5.

It seems that anisotropy is not working as it should, please advice.

[maxplugins]

If so, where do I can I find L-System plugin? Because I don't have it already... And its not found in your website (Maxplugin.de)

It's there, here's the link:
http://www.maxplugins.de/max8.php?search=l-system

Dave

[maxplugins]

I've just updated all of the include files for the new versions of the Binary Alchemy shaders, you can get them at my site.

Dave

[igsiv]

mr have options to switch receive/generate FG (through instance properties) but in max this option not realized yet. You can try import scene to mi-file and edit instance "by hand" then do rendering with standalone mr.

[3DMadness]

mr have options to switch receive/generate FG (through instance properties) but in max this option not realized yet. You can try import scene to mi-file and edit instance "by hand" then do rendering with standalone mr.I will give it a try, if it's only one or two objects I guess won't be that hard to edit them.

But I'll also give a try on some shaders dave put in maxplugins.de, I've seen some with FG special control, maybe it can do it.

Thanks for your help. ;)

[Mariano]

Hi guys, ive been searching for some other threads and posts about earth atmosphere, and i think this could be the better place to ask for something like that since i do not want to do it with a post effect or volumetric light or something like that. My question simply is , the earth atmosphere like the pics i left in is this post can be done with a shader? if the asnwer is yes, id really apreciate some help or guide with that, beacuse i saw other posts telling "use a volumetric light", "do it in post", etc etc... but thats not what i looking for.
thanks to all to build what i supose is the better place to search about mental ray shaders.

here´s the turbosquid link http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/259598


cheers

Mariano

[-Vormav-]

Mariano - have a look at the falloff shader. It's probably best for this. You can set the shader to perpendicular/parallel using the camera direction. Then you can use the curve controls to trim down the effect so that most of it happens at the edge of the horizon. Pipe this into the opacity of a sphere, and also apply it as a mask to a blue color channel on the sphere (so, as you look towards the horizon of the sphere, the sphere gets more transparent, and its blue values also become more intense). You could definitely get nice results doing things this way.

[Mariano]

Thanks Vormav thats exactly what im trying.

thanks

Mariano

[tryhard]

there is a thread about ctrl_multidisplace:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=251048&page=1&pp=15

really nice results.

has anybody tried it with max ?

[Spizzy]

Hey, its been awhile since I've read through everything on this thread so if this has already been addressed please just point me to the post number.

I'm working on a pair of sunglasses and I'm having trouble with the lens material. Ii can't seem to get the crispness of reflections while keeping the transparency of the lens. I used the camera lens material posted way earlier in this thread as reference but I havn't been able to get it quite right. i've attached below what I have now, any help is greatly appreciated!

[EquiNOX]

I hope this is the right place to ask.... As of now, am working on compositing object and background... I have attempted using matte/shadow (opaque alpha). and it did not statisfy me. I could clearly see artcifacts. So I thought could try to use MR's mat that work same way with matte/shadow, perhaps this could give better result than max's material, So Any idea which MR mat work same way as Matte shadow? Does anyone experienced and got statisfy result?

[gulio]

there is a thread about ctrl_multidisplace:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=251048&page=1&pp=15

really nice results.

has anybody tried it with max ?

I´ve tried this but unfortunatly without success :sad:.
What I would also like to know if someone had the ctrl_buffer shader running within max? or is it really impossible because it´s only for Maya and XSI?

[francescaluce]

Hi Gulio, I don't know if they work.
but the only problem could be the geoshader.
does max support finally them ? if yes can you or
anyone just up here a mi file that you created exporting
any scene you want in the mentalray format. I have to
see something before confirm the ctrl.buffer thing.

ciao
francesca

[gulio]

Hi francesca,
nice to hear that you will have a look on these max files .:)
I have made two simple files. One .mi file - just a simple cube with a dgs mat. The other is the verbose of mr with a file where I had setup the ctrl_buffer, ctrl_write and ctrl_api. The ctrl_api shader is connected to a mrGeomShaderObject which I had from Puppet|.
The only error and warn messages are the first three lines. I would really appreciate if there would be a way for max users like me to participate in the glorious of the ctrl shaders.

til then, gulio

[gulio]

francesca, it´s me again. I think I can supply more usefull information in form of the differences between the MR standalone and the implementation in 3ds max. I will attach a list which I have got from the side xibt.com. That´s a bit of a story to get there. As one can see ist a russian portal, I guess in the range of computer related issues. Nearly the only word one, not capable of cyrillic, can distinguish is the word "software" which has to be clicked. Than another unreadable table appers and one has to scoll down to the topic "cyrillic...3d...cyrillc". Under that topic are 11 subtitels where "mental ray" is included. I had made an online translation of the sides and as far as I can understand it is really detailed information about using MR in Max. In the chapter 2 "rendering options" the differences between MR standalone and MR in 3ds max are explained in full detail. I hope this is also new to you and can give you further information.

til then, gulio

[KORBAC]

Thanks franceska for helping 3ds max users
hmmm...Interesting I tried this shader earlier this year and it didn't work...I was getting massage canot map frame buffer....After this post from gulio I have tried it today and it seems to work.. hehe strange.Maybe it is newer version of your shader which do the job
here is the mi file so you can look at it...I am new to this and dont know if i set up everything corectly,but it works for start.
Thanks a lot Franceska!!!:bounce:
Edit:I forgot to tell that max crashes when used inside max,but it works when I render it with standalone

[igsiv]

2 gulio: the right adress will be www.ixbt.com/software.shtml (http://www.ixbt.com/software.shtml) and as I know some mental ray articles from here shortly will be translated on englesh and published

geo shader appear in 3ds max v7 with source code (max SDK)
I successfully used him with custom shaders is_mat_iiradiance (FG, GI, caustic per material) and is_miObject (aa&fg file per object).
With assistance of geo shader I have tried to connect up ctrl_objectlights and use it in 3ds max but this not work (light in scene apper by pure accident). I think in most cases ctrl_* shaders need adaptation for use in 3ds max (or for use outside from Maya/XSI).
May be francesca (thanks for you Great Shaders!) be able to do this?

Here simple max scene exported to mi with geoshader (mi geoshader torus and one omni light):

[gulio]

Hi igsiv,
maybe I´ve forgot to mention earlier that I had success with the geolight shader. But I have also encountered some inconsistencies. It seems only to work properly if I wrote out a .mi file first, then search for the instance names of the object and the light, copy and past them into the transform and light slots. After this workaround during rendering, an "autoload... .mi" file is created at the root folder of the Max file. Sometimes the objectlight needs to be moved only once, after that it shines bright.:)

[igsiv]

Hi, gulio

I do the same and because max always follow the same rule, in name fileds for transform and light can be written without exporting scene to mi-file: transform = name_of_scene_object|Instance(Mesh00), light = name_of_scene_light|Light. But adjustment parameters of ctrl_objlights not work and rendering may be like this (no changes in scene, only twice hit "render"):

[francescaluce]

ok guys. I'm looking the mi files. but you already
got the right direction.. maya does not put anything
else than the real name of the object when translate
for mentalray. now the thing is.. why lookup the name
when we can lookup the tag ? because maya does not
do that correctly. instead xsi does it. so for the these
shaders if I'm you I'd look more on the xsi shaders than
the maya one. there you lookup the tag of the object
and no matter what's its name. but those are a bit more
complex to translate for max has they come with a spdl
and not a .mi files...

now.. to see if max does the tag thing correctly I will up here
a simple geoshader that will write out the name of the object
you selected once you get its tag . so we should see if max
accepts tags and if he passes them correctly to mentalray.
asap.

ciao
francesca

[gulio]

igsiv, I´ve read about that occurrence that sometimes the objectlights will render black. But if I have got it right it can be "fixed" by moving the object to and fro. Once it´s rendered correctly it should stay correctly. As far as I have observed I can confirm this. Also, I have tried to enter the object and light names with the intended enhancements, but that worked only after I generated the .mi file. Typing error has definitly not occured. So I belive MR needs the autoload file which is created beside.

til then, gulio

[EquiNOX]

When opening JP's MR work, I discovered that there were material that assigned to MR Spot Target. I tried to do same way on my own, It didn't work, and I couldn't figure out how to assign material in spot light target, can wouldn't anyone know?

[JeffPatton]

When opening JP's MR work, I discovered that there were material that assigned to MR Spot Target. I tried to do same way on my own, It didn't work, and I couldn't figure out how to assign material in spot light target, can wouldn't anyone know?That's just a quirk. Ignore it.

[EquiNOX]

That's just a quirk. Ignore it.

Duly Noted, Thanks Jeff.

[igsiv]

why lookup the name when we can lookup the tag ?

yes, max correctly translate tags for mental ray: for example,
if type of max gui shader parameter is declared as geomtry then max understand this and allow pick-up objects from scene with mouse. Shader get from max the tag of picked object's instance.

gulio, I think shader must work right under any circumstances. Therefore all must be done as it should be :). Anyway, please can you explain in more details about autoload...mi? Is this file automatically generated at time of rendering and then deleted?

[igsiv]

francesca,
if change declaration of ctrl_objectlights for 3ds max to this:

declare shader
geometry "ctrl_objectlights"
(
geometry "transform", #instance name
boolean "autosetup", #:default 0
light "light",
boolean "lightdefaultoverwrite", #:default 0
integer "lightsampleu", #:default 4 min 1 softmax 24
integer "lightsamplev", #:default 4 min 1 softmax 24
integer "lightsamplelevel", #:default 3 min 0 softmax 8
integer "lightsampleulow", #:default 2 min 1 softmax 8
integer "lightsamplevlow", #:default 2 min 1 softmax 8
boolean "lightvisible" #:default 1
)
apply geometry
version 1

gui "gui_ctrl_objectlights" {
control "Global" "Global" (
"uiName" "ctrl_objectlights",
"category" "Material"
)

control "transform" "geometry" ("uiName" "Transform")
control "light" "light" ("uiName" "Light")

}
end declare

then 3ds max will be translate for mr instance tag of object and instance tag of light.

in max gui for shader look like:

[Almaraz]

hi all

i have a little trouble trying to get the hair works fine with ambient occlusion shader

anyone can help please?

[JAF]

Igsiv, i've just tried your .mi file; i can assign object and light into the shader slots but i have this error in the mr window messages:
PHEN 0.2 error ->no light found
Then i can't see the mr Geometry Shader tranformed into light when i render the scene (invisible). :(
That was so close. What am i doing wrong please? (i'm using the v.7.0)

[igsiv]

JAF,
this error occur because shader ctrl_objectlights now treat "transform" and "light" parameters as "string" type, not as "tag". So that work properly code of shader must be changed accordingly.

[JAF]

Thanks for your reply Igsiv. I think i understand the type mismatch error now.
So, i'll wait the incoming magic geoshader tag to string converter from Francescaluce with the hope than max's users will have access to her amazing shaders.
The ctrl_multidisplace seems to be incredible but i can't have it working correctly (just 1 displace shader working; i can't displace the displacement).
In fact, i'm not sure i can have any of all the ctrl_ shaders working properly.
So sad...
Oh and sry for my engrish, i'm learning too ;)

[gulio]

gulio, I think shader must work right under any circumstances. Therefore all must be done as it should be :). Anyway, please can you explain in more details about autoload...mi? Is this file automatically generated at time of rendering and then deleted?

Yes, you are right. Only a reliable workflow is to be desired:thumbsup:.
I have made some more test and must admit that now I get the geolight to funktion without writing the .mi file and this copy and paste thing (it sounded weird to me either). Also I have to admit that this autoload.mi thing has not occured any more. I guess it was due to other test I have made with other shaders. When I have found the reason for it I´ll post it.

[EquiNOX]

I am curious to know what's geometry shader: ctrl_objectlights are?? Perhaps I must missed something, I Already did search on this thread. But this did not get through my head on knowing what this is used for, any example and clarification?

[igsiv]

EquiNOX,
info about ctrl_objectlights here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=213012&highlight=ctrl_objectlights

[EquiNOX]

EquiNOX,
info about ctrl_objectlights here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=213012&highlight=ctrl_objectlights

Thanks Igsiv... so its basically applies same thing with Glow (Lume)? Once again Thanks

[francescaluce]

so its basically applies same thing with Glow (Lume)?
nope. it turns your geometry in an area light. or if you want
it allows arealights to use arbitrary geometric objects ala maxwell.


so guys, as igsiv posted the the mi declaration to use tags
instead of strings I do think the thing should work, but you
have to use the library made for xsi..
http://www.anotherhell.com/forum_uploads/ctrl_geolights_xsi_v1.6.zip

then the declaration schema you have to turn in a mi file is..


geometry instance;
array light light;

[optionals]
boolean lightdefaultoverwrite;
integer lightsampleu;
integer lightsamplev;
integer lightsamplelevel;
integer lightsampleulow;
integer lightsamplevlow;
boolean lightvisible;
boolean objpreset;


good luck, guys !!

ciao
francesca

[JAF]

Damn. Igsiv we need your help :)

I've tried a .mi file but i have a new error :

PHEN 0.2 error 051011: shader "ctrl_geolights" not found
The dll and the .mi file are in the good folder, and i've checked my .mi file, everything is correctly written...
Waiting the masters help :)

[-Vormav-]

JAF - If the .mi file that igsiv posted on the last page is correct, then even though the filenames are under the name of ctrl_geolights, I believe the shader name in the declaration itself should actually be ctrl_objectlights.

[Cypher666]

I was wondering if someone could help me out with a problem I'm having with the L_glass shader, I've searched around but could not find a solution anywere. As you can see in the image the edges of the buckets are clearly visible on some parts of my image, plus I have bad grain on the edges of the bottles I'm rendering. I gather this is a multithreading bug that dielectrics have, but I have no idea how to render with only one core. Even when I turn the glass accuracy up to 8 I still get this problem and it's really driving my nuts! Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[gulio]

I have renamed the ctrl_geolights.dll from the xsi version to ctrl_objectlights.dll. Max starts without complaining, but when rendering I also get the Msg. PHEN 0.2 error 051011: shader "ctrl_objectlights" not found.:sad:

[loran]

Is it possible to fing the Francesca Luce ctrl.shading for max?? It render blured reflection faster than DGS with FG I think

[-Vormav-]

I have renamed the ctrl_geolights.dll from the xsi version to ctrl_objectlights.dll. Max starts without complaining, but when rendering I also get the Msg. PHEN 0.2 error 051011: shader "ctrl_objectlights" not found.:sad:
No no, I was saying change it to "ctrl_objectlights" in the MI declaration, not the filenames.
For shaders to link up correctly using Max's autoload folder, two things need to happen: First, the name of the .dll needs to match up exactly with the name of the .mi (apart from the extensions, obviously).
Second, within the .mi file, the shader declaration needs to match up exactly with the name of the function from the source code. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the filename, because a file can hold any shader, and any number of them - just look at base.mi. In this case, judging from the post on the last page, I'm pretty sure that the source code has the function declared as ctrl_objectlights - so the shader declaration - not necessarily its filename - needs to match up with that.

[gulio]

Hi Vormav, thanks for your reply. Unfortunatly, I can not look at it now, because (fortunaty) I´m going to have a couple of days of vacation and have to leave now. But I´ll try it for sure when I´m back next week.

til then, gulio

[KORBAC]

Hmmm...No lack here too..

I changed lines in the mi declaration to ctrl_objectlights,then to ctrl_geolights, then to ctrl_geolight but nothing,I am getting massage PHEN 0.2 error 051011: shader "ctrl_........." not found
hmm....:sad:

[francescaluce]

ok guys, sorry for the lack of assistance.
you have a library called ctrl_geolights.dll , that
implements a couple of functions.. geolight and
geocolor. we're now focusing on geolight.. so,
basically in a ctrl_geolights.mi file start by writing...

declare shader
geometry "geolight"

[follow the schema above]

apply geometry
version 1
end declare
[max gui controls..]

let me know if it works.

ciao
francesca

[JAF]

Lol, i'll becoming mad :banghead:Here is the ctrl_geolights.mi i'm using...

# ctrl_geolights declaration
# ctrl.studio, 05.22.06

declare shader geometry "geolight" (
geometry "instance", #instance name
array light "light",
boolean "lightdefaultoverwrite", #:default 0
integer "lightsampleu", #:default 4 min 1 softmax 24
integer "lightsamplev", #:default 4 min 1 softmax 24
integer "lightsamplelevel", #:default 3 min 0 softmax 8
integer "lightsampleulow", #:default 2 min 1 softmax 8
integer "lightsamplevlow", #:default 2 min 1 softmax 8
boolean "lightvisible", #:default 1
boolean objpreset

)
apply geometry
version 1
end declare

I'm not using the max gui controls because i can have others shaders working without :)
This giving to me no error, no crash but no shader effect
You must know you can't find a better way to make me mad ;)

I've tried the old method from the Igsiv page (string declaration) and the shader working after the 2nd render hit...
http://www.ixbt.com/soft/mr_lights.shtml

[KORBAC]

hm same here...
shader is now loading correctly,but no shader effects.:D

[francescaluce]

ok the above last declaration seems correct to me.
setup a scene and maybe post here the mi scene
file, I will take a look at it.




ciao
francesca

[KORBAC]

Ok here is mi scene

Thanks

[francescaluce]

what's that 'autosetup' I see in the declaration ?
here the declaration that comes out from xsi when
I export to mi file...

declare shader
geometry "geolight" (
array geometry "instance",
array light "light",
boolean "lightdefaultoverwrite",
integer "lightsampleu",
integer "lightsamplev",
integer "lightsamplelevel",
integer "lightsampleulow",
integer "lightsamplevlow",
boolean "lightvisible",
boolean "objpreset"
)
version 1
apply geometry
end declare


that said could be a setup problem.
don't use already an arealight, but a point light
instead. once you got in the scene the geometry
shader and loaded the geolight, then put in the
scene the light it will be used for (if you've already
one, duplicate it and delete the old one.. this is
not required in maya for example but in xsi it is).
set verbose to info or progress, it should be lucky
you a leftover of my test that will display the obj
picked then if the light has problem it should be
shown also that. do you have any warnings ?

ciao
francesca

[JAF]

Just Perfect Francesca, working for me.

Damn that should be like driving into full night without light if you don't have max to check your work. A big Thanks to giving us access to your incredible work!!!
:bounce: :thumbsup: :eek:

[KORBAC]

Hm...It doesn't work for me..

hey JAF did you use instructions from franceska last post(making another light and deleting old one)Do you use old "string declaration"?Could you please upload simple scene with settings...
Thanks

[JAF]

i will send you a .max scen asap (v.7.1) but i have some strange grany effect and the shader not really working with others shaders, fg, etc.
I don't want to be boring with Francesca because she's a master and i'm a big noob.
I think the problem is coming from the mental ray integration inside the differents softwares.
Same renderer (MR) and so much problem with softwares...
Plz don't laugh for this web page and just click on the link ;)
http://membres.lycos.fr/jafdesign/
Lol, if the scene is not working the first time render it 2,3,4 or oo times ;)
Oops i didn't send the hdr file but it's a simple cie sky coming from the free hdrshop version with the sky.exe plugin
Let me know if you have the shader working Korbac ;).
In fact i must say the Francesca's work is amazing because i saw her shaders renders coming from Maya or XSI but MAX users aren't able to have such results... just sad (you know for my engrish...)

[KORBAC]

Ok thanks...but I don't understand,when I open scene i dont see that you attach any object as emitter...It is just mr omni area light hm...
I am going to sleep little bit,I hope tomorrow we will figure out if this works
regards

[JAF]

ok, i'll try to post things better.
There's no photon light emmiter in this scene.
I send the ctrl_geolights.mi file and the mrGeomShaderObject.dlo because i saw 2 different versions on the web, one doing the job, the other one, not... the one i'm using is coming from the Igsiv page link posted above.
If you're not english (and i know you're not, like me) i understand that's a hard work to understand everything... we have to decode english, C++, and more... lol

I'm tired too for today, i removed the grany thing with the others shaders coming from Francesca, having really good results. Good night all ;)

[igsiv]

Big thanks, franceska. XSI- shader with last declaration work in max and one problem is resolved. But it seems instead the one old problem we have some new at now. First, materials assigned for objects not appear in rendering. Second, shader work as must "per once from two (3, 4, ..)".
May be it will simpler a little modify Maya shader?

[KORBAC]

Thanks JAF,
Now I can see shader effects...but hmm on every third "render button hit" :D LOL .
In your mi declaration I saw you use array geometry "instance",and in my mi declaration it was geometry "transform",and it seems that with geometry "transform" doesnt work at all...
If Franceska could help :)
regards

[JAF]

in fact you can change all the words inside double quotes with what you want, ie:
array geometry "the objects i want to be a light"
The fact that geometry "transform" doesnt work is coming from the type of variable used into the shader, it must be an array of tags and not a simple tag. Thats' why array geometry "blabla" is working and geometry "blabla" not. Not sure my explanation is very good :shrug:

[tryhard]

works fine so far :-) if you just use a color for your objectlight


but if you put a map (for example a checker) in the color slot of the objectlight (LightPointbase) than all objects get covered with this map like shown here:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=104578&page=196&pp=15

they are not proper lit with this map but covered

any solution for that

[tryhard]

... also seems to work only with one object as object-/geolight.

if i add a second object than it´s getting all dark.

also if you add a second mentalray object and a second light and a second geotlight ...

don´t let me be misunderstood, francesca. great job so far :-)

THANK YOU

[francescaluce]

guys, one.light<->one.object. also the color of
the light must be a simple color. if you wanna
advanced colors.. you should think on the side
of the object and for that there's geocolor shader.
but that's another story.. on maya/xsi the shader
supports this advanced workflow... you actually
paint color at vertices maps to control the light
features like color, intensity, falloff and shadows
that means that you can also use multiple objs
pieces embedded in a single object and let them
behave as indipendent lights.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3361106&postcount=83
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3364211&postcount=88

but it will a bit more difficult to port on max..
but if you wanna try I'll support you for what I can,
so start by saying me if max supports multiples color
per vertex maps... then get a simple scene with a
basic object and apply a couple of cpv, flood each
one with a single color (don't use a basic color.. like
pure blue or green). post here the .mi file and the
colors you used for. I will try to decript the file.

take care that apart the cpv feature, the geocolor
should work for all the other things included a way to
attach an image (the object you use will be uv mapped)
and physical light behaviour. so if you wanna start..
from the same ctrl_geolights.mi file, include also this..



declare shader
color "geocolor" (
color "color",
boolean "shadow",
color "umbra",
integer "falloff",
scalar "start",
scalar "stop",
color texture "texture",
boolean "usetexture",
boolean "usealpha",
scalar "alphafactor",
boolean "useDynRange",
scalar "dynExpRange",
scalar "dynRangeStartLum",
scalar "dynRangeExponent",
boolean "useCC",
scalar "hue",
scalar "sat",
scalar "val",
boolean "lumfalloff",
scalar "lumfactor",
boolean "shadowtint",
boolean "usecav",
boolean "usepsyco",
boolean "psysinterp",
scalar "psyspread",
scalar "threshold",
integer "tracedepth",
boolean "colorCpv",
integer "colorsets",
boolean "intCpv",
integer "intsets",
boolean "fallCpv",
integer "fallsets",
boolean "shadCpv",
integer "shadsets"
)
version 1
apply light
end declare



ciao
francesca

[KORBAC]

One suggestion in connection with ctrl_geolights...when setup a light,
insert it in a top viewport so the z-axis points upward in local
coordinant space,otherwise-if you insert light in a left or front viewport
your emitter object will transform according to coordinant space of your omni light
end will be placed somewhere else in the scene...Dont know is this was mentioned
earlier..

[loran]

ok, This look fantastic !
so now does it works or not? If it does, could someone post the correct mi and dll of this shaders? and could you then post a sample of the use of it? thx!
I ask before if ctrl-material could be enabled to max but no-one answer me :/

[rlph.]

Thank you francescaluce! Awesome work :)

I got the geocolor to show up and it at least changes the light color and fall off works too, haven't tested anything else yet.

I'm having a little trouble with the geolight. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just renders black. And sometimes the light geometry is there and next time it doesnt show up in the render. Also the lighting varies on renders, quite strange. Also if you use the mental ray point light base shader, how do you control the intensity of the light? :blush:

[KORBAC]

HI,

to Loran, yes ctrl_shading can be anabled,and Vormav posted mi file earlier in this thread,try search i dont know where is it exactly.
regards

[rlph.]

what's that 'autosetup' I see in the declaration ?
here the declaration that comes out from xsi when
I export to mi file...

declare shader
geometry "geolight" (
array geometry "instance",
array light "light",
boolean "lightdefaultoverwrite",
integer "lightsampleu",
integer "lightsamplev",
integer "lightsamplelevel",
integer "lightsampleulow",
integer "lightsamplevlow",
boolean "lightvisible",
boolean "objpreset"
)
version 1
apply geometry
end declare





Korbac and loran, this one worked for me. And I'm using the ctrl_geolights_xsi_v1.6 dll

[JeffPatton]

Great work so far! I hope the "quirks" can be hammered out because this looks to be very useful! :thumbsup:

http://jeffpatton.net/cg-post/mr-obj-light.jpg

[JAF]

Probably my fault but i can't have shadows with geolight shader... Anyone?

[JeffPatton]

Probably my fault but i can't have shadows with geolight shader... Anyone?When you setup the light shader on your light source (not geometry), did you enable the shadows option?

[JAF]

yes :sad: . Using a point light or disabling the shader (using only the mr area omni) casting shadows but no more shadows with the geolight shader. Could you say what kind of shader are you using to receive them (for the ground) ? Do you use a standard max material or a special mr shader? I'm lost now...

[JeffPatton]

By chance did you mean to say you aren't getting shadows with the ctrl_Geocolor shader instead of geolight? If so, that doesn't work here either.

EDIT: I used a light point (base) shader on the omni light in the scene above.

[JAF]

yes, sorry this is exactly what you said. And i have always 3 kinds of bugs with the geolight object when hiting render:

-invisibility or
-black or
-bugged checker
Ok thanks for the edit. Your picture is amazing like always ;)

[EquiNOX]

Maybe I am missing something... where do I find Geolight in Material Browser list? I pulled up MR and didn't find geolight in list. If you are asking yes, I have created ctrl_geolight mi. , and placed mi. in Max8\Mental Ray\shader_autoload\include and as for .dll in shader. but it doesnt show up in Material brower list Can anyone help?


ctrl_geolight.mi that I have as of now.

declare shader
geometry "geolight" (
array geometry "instance",
array light "light",
boolean "lightdefaultoverwrite",
integer "lightsampleu",
integer "lightsamplev",
integer "lightsamplelevel",
integer "lightsampleulow",
integer "lightsamplevlow",
boolean "lightvisible",
boolean "objpreset"
)
version 1
apply geometry
end declare

[JAF]

You need the mrGeomShaderObject.dlo installed. Then you'll have a new mental ray section in your geometry panel. Use it and you'll have a shader slot where you'll be able to choose the geolight shader.

[EquiNOX]

You need the mrGeomShaderObject.dlo installed. Then you'll have a new mental ray section in your geometry panel. Use it and you'll have a shader slot where you'll be able to choose the geolight shader.

Okay where can I find mrGeomShaderObject.dlo, isnt that the third party plugin?

[JAF]

In this thread, post #2656 or on the Igsiv page. Take a look at post #3176 and follow the link, you'll have some pictures to help, or use a free online translation tool like i did ;)
I hope Igsiv won't blame me for posting a link to his page... :(

[EquiNOX]

Oh! I already looked at it before but not so long mainly because I didn't know any Russian also didn't know I need to download the dlo from there. But thanks....

[francescaluce]

Jeff, great !!! :):)






ciao
francesca

[EquiNOX]

I still don't get how this work....

1. I placed ctrl_Geolight.mi in Max8\Mental Ray\shaders_autoload\include folder, and ctrl-geolight in shader folder

2. I place mrGeomShaderObject.dlo in max\plugin folder

3. run Max, created sphere... Under roll out from standard primative, I select MR and assign geolight from the list

4. render it... It doesnt lit show anything on sphere.

Also, there still isnt any ctrl_geolight shader in the material browser list. Perhaps can anyone give me proper step by step prodecure on getting this ro work?

[JeffPatton]

Since a lot of information has been posted, here's a summary post for now. I've attached a single .zip file that has the three items needed for this to work:
ctrl_geolights.dll | ctrl_geolights.mi | mrGeomShaderObject.dlo

The .dll file came from Francesca's link to the XSI shaders here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3565892&postcount=3166

The .dlo & .mi files came from JAF's post here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=3569696&postcount=3183

Place the mrGeomShaderObject.dlo into your 3dsmax/plugins folder.
Place the ctrl_geolights.mi file into your 3dsmax/mentalray/shaders_autoload/include folder
Place the ctrl_geolights.dll file into your 3dsmax/mentalray/shaders_autoload/shaders folder

Now you're ready to build a scene, so start 3dsmax.

1. Create a plane for your ground object, apply any material.
2. Create a teapot that sits on the ground plane, apply any material.
3. Create whatever shape/primitive object you wish for your light source.
4. Add a mrOmni light into your scene at world location 0,0,0.
5. In the create tab, go into the geometry rollout, scroll down to "mental ray". Then you'll see a mr Shader button, click it and in the top viewport, drag out a small box into your scene. Go ahead and create this item at worldspace 0,0,0 as well...but I'm not 100% sure that it needs to be at that location in order for it to work.
6. With the mr Shader box still selected, go to the modifier tab and add the geolight shader to the shader map slot. Then drag it as an instance over to the MEDIT.
7. Select your mrOmni light and under the "mental ray Light Shader" rollout, add a Light Point (base) shader. Also drag this shader to the MEDIT as an instance.
8. In the MEDIT, select the geolight shader and in the "instance" box, "add" the shape/primitive object you designated in step #3.
9. Enable the light checkbox and add the mrOmni light.
10. Enable "lightdefaultoverwrite", lightvisible, and objpreset.
11. Start with these settings for the samples:

lightsampleu = 4
lightsamplev = 4
lightsamplelevel = 3
lightsampleulow = 2
lightsamplevlow = 2

12. In the MEDIT, select the Light Point (base) shader. Change the color if you wish. Enable the "shadows" checkbox. You can enable attenuation if you wish as well.

RENDER...if it doesn't look right...render again. You may have to render 2 or 3 times at first before the scene works properly. And then if you change a setting, it may require additional renders to make it work again. Hopefully this glitch can be ironed out soon.

(Hopefully I didn't leave any steps out)

[loran]

thanks Geff for this!
What a mess to make this works! dam it!
But cool solution to test :)
thanks to all of you who work on this

[EquiNOX]

Thanks Jeff and others for help, Honestly, IMO its useless for now, no offense... It took me 8 times to render this to make it perfect. Why not use glow shader instead of this geo shader. When render they look the same..

[JeffPatton]

Thanks Jeff and others for help, Honestly, IMO its useless for now, no offense... It took me 8 times to render this to make it perfect. Why not use glow shader instead of this geo shader. When render they look the same..
It's a bit buggy at the moment, that's for certain. Hopefully we can all work together to get the kinks out becuase this is FAAAAAR from useless (IMHO).

Don't get this "system" confused with the simplicity of the glow shader. The two biggest benefits of the geoshader are: The ability to function as an area light, and the ability to produce photons.

[fgdf]

It's a cool way to fake f.e. GI - but atm useless for animation :( ( lots of errors in random frames)
I't also works with SSS materials and gives some great potential possibilities.I hope someone will figure out how to make it more stable.

[francescaluce]

RENDER...if it doesn't look right...render again.
Hi Jeff,

what does it means.. it does not render at the first time ?
it doesn't happen in maya and not in xsi. nor I generally
ever heard anything like this.. what do you think could be ,
maybe the geoshader implementation in max, I mean the
.dlo ? do you have some info from the geolights itself..
something like warnings or I don't know. I'm starting to be
a lot curious about this thing...

ciao
francesca

[fgdf]

It seems to be a common problem I managed to render my ring on 3th attempt. It's not an exception!

[KORBAC]

what does it means.. it does not render at the first time ?
it doesn't happen in maya and not in xsi. nor I generally
ever heard anything like this.. what do you think could be ,
maybe the geoshader implementation in max, I mean the
.dlo ? do you have some info from the geolights itself..
something like warnings or I don't know. I'm starting to be
a lot curious about this thing...


It seems that this errors are caused by geoshader implamentation in max...,
This dlo doesn't come with in max by deafoult...It comes on max third installation disc,it needs to be instaled manualy but first compiled :) and no one from disctreet confirmed that it works..I just think this dlo is work in progres
regards

[JeffPatton]

Francesca,

I've ran some tests and here are the results, some file data, and my thoughts on what might be causing the problem.

I setup a simple scene and rendered it four times without making any changes. From the MR log, it seems as though the leaf instances/sizes change...dropping one object from time to time. I'm assuming it's the geometry light that is being dropped. I say this because I found that if I disable "lightdefaultoverwrite" and "lightvisible" in the geolight parameters, I can sucessfuly render many frames with no problems...except of course my geolight isn't visible (but it does still produce light).

Anywho, here's the renders, a .mi file of the scene, and a .txt file of the MR log for each render if you (or anyone else) wishes to review the data.

[francescaluce]

Excellent Jeff.


I say this because I found that if I disable "lightdefaultoverwrite" and "lightvisible" in the geolight parameters, I can sucessfuly render many frames with no problems...except of course my geolight isn't visible (but it does still produce light).
infact the lightdefaultoverwrite, lightvisible and also objpreset
are facilitations that I don't implement in maya, I leave the user
free to do what he thinks it's the best for its workflow. the workflow
is a bit less 'easy' but more robust. the only thing we've now to see
is if max will permit this. so.. some crucial questions.. does max allow
any omni/point light to be turned in an area light ? I mean you put
a simple point light in the scene, only after you enable also its area
light properties, is that possible? so you don't need to use the overwrites
that comes with geolight and you just do it manually. basically you use
your light as always tweaking its parameters from the max interface
instead of using the geoshader, there you just link the obj to the light.
same for the object. you need a panel where simply exclude the obj
visible, trace and shadows.. but the object should be put anyway in the
translation by max (so actually to recognize something exclude it just
from visible and shadow rays and leave the trace like refract).
what I mean is.. setup the scene with a simple point light turned into
an arealight. then setup the object as it should be seen only in refract
rays(you can progressively try to remove it from any rays.. but just take
care that max will put it in the translation). then link them with the geolight.
render.. :)

ciao
francesca

[KORBAC]

Hey this seems to work here...I hit 10 times render button and i got same result:) .Can others confirm this,or I am just lucky...
Thanks Franceska for this tip,thanks Jeff for inspecting mi files....

EDIT:Hmm I cant bealive..After 24-th hit I got error render:sad:

[Dashkevicz]

First off, thanks for all your hard work guys! funny, it seems to work perfectley for me. I'm running max 8 sp1, on a dell laptop. oops, i had to open my big mouth, i just got my first artifact: it looks like an un-illuminated copy of my light rendered coincident with the lit copy. a rerender fixed the problem. otherwise looks great! i put the light shaders in the mat editor first then instanced them to the objects if that makes a difference. also, i used an output map as a color shader in the "light point (base)" shader to controll the brightness,color of the light. I also just tryed making the object light non renderable in the object props. it still showed in the render, maybe that would fix the coincidence problem

Thanks again

EDIT: nevermind, its being flaky now...

[JeffPatton]

Francesca,

I've tried a simple setup with both a mrOmni (area light), and a photometric area light...without using a light shader. I could control the light as you mentioned, but I basically ran into the same problems at render time (varying renders).

KORBAC may be on to something with the thought about our problems being related to the actual geoshader implementation?

[igsiv]

Actually,
mrGeomShaderObject go with maxSDK (beginning with 3ds max ver.7) as C++ source code.
Typically it resides in: "disk:\3dsmax7\maxsdk\samples\mentalray\mrGeomShaderObject\mrGeomShaderObject.cpp"
To get mrGeomShaderObject.dlo this code need to be compiled with MSVS.

May be it make sense recompile mrGeomShaderObject for 3ds max 8. Unfortunately I don't have access to max 8 SDK and can't do this right now.

[JAF]

found this link about Light Object. Take a look at the bottom pics, here are some of the random renders we're having without changing settings http://www.slash.de/andiscorner/sp_geolt1.htm

[JAF]

I think i'm close to have correct settings with the shader...
http://membres.lycos.fr/jafdesign/CGTalk/l-glass_test.jpg
With, off course, the help of this thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=177401
Plz don't leave this thread dying...

[Mhyrdin]

First of all thanks to all the contributors of this thread that i follow since the beginning :thumbsup:

I have tried these days the geolights in 3DSMax8 SP2 without any problem
Infortunatly i had always the shadows of my lightobject which was a bit sophisticated (edges a dodecaedron) but i found the reponse in the link of JAF ... :cool:

The lightobject in the object properties must not cast shadow :p


Once more thanks for all you do there :)

[monkeydonut]

A quick question for Jeff Patton - I'm following your mr grass displacement tutorial. Is there any way to achieve different level of detail for displacement within the same scene.

i.e. close up hills have smaller edge length / greater subdiv than distant hills? Thanks

[EquiNOX]

Mhyrdin

Look nice, curious what did you have on geoshader setup?

[JAF]

Thanks Mhyrdin, i'm trying again

[JeffPatton]

A quick question for Jeff Patton - I'm following your mr grass displacement tutorial. Is there any way to achieve different level of detail for displacement within the same scene.

i.e. close up hills have smaller edge length / greater subdiv than distant hills? ThanksSince the edge length setting isn't mappable, I don't think this is possible.

Now if you have multiple meshes of course you can manually control the displacement settings, but I'll assume you're asking this for one single displaced mesh. For one big mesh, you could distance blend between two materials. One that has displacement and one that uses a bump map instead of displacment.

[JAF]

I don't know if you missed the info but there is a nice plugin supporting Mental Ray called GroundWiz. There is a "Completely free for personal non-commercial use!" version and the full version is cheap enough (i think).
Here is the link: http://www.gugila.com.
:shrug:

[Mhyrdin]

Mhyrdin

Look nice, curious what did you have on geoshader setup?
My setup for the geolight is rather simple you'll find it at the bottom of this post

I wrote also a complete explanation (in french :blush: ) for my students
If somebody find some interest for it ....
http://3d.mhyrdin.fr/Tutos/Geolights/geolights.htm

[CupOWonton]

Just curious. Vray does multi-reflections and multi-refractions faster than MR, is there any setting that can speed MR up so it can render near the speed of Vray when it comes to reflective and refractive materials bouncing around many times?

[monkeydonut]

Since the edge length setting isn't mappable, I don't think this is possible.

Now if you have multiple meshes of course you can manually control the displacement settings, but I'll assume you're asking this for one single displaced mesh. For one big mesh, you could distance blend between two materials. One that has displacement and one that uses a bump map instead of displacment.

thanks Jeff, I will give it a try

[rlph.]

Does anyone know if there is a way to make material overrides ala Brazil with a mental shader? For an example the override shader would only change the diffuse color of all materials used in a scene and inherit the other properties from the original materials? Basically a material override with more control.

[gulio]

Hi all,
I´ve played a bit with the geolights shader Jeff had posted and I´ve also got some unpredictable results. I only used a mr_area_omni and tested the differences with and without the use of a Light Point (base) shader. I´ve also tried to use global illumination with the geolight, most of the times it works as intended but than max crashes with the "mental ray fatal error msg:
mental ray has encountered a fatal error and the application will now shutdown. The error is:
DB 0.2 fatal 041008: attempt to access null DB tag". I hope this helps to encircle the bug.

[JAF]

same thing

[Mhyrdin]

Does anyone know if there is a way to make material overrides ala Brazil with a mental shader? For an example the override shader would only change the diffuse color of all materials used in a scene and inherit the other properties from the original materials? Basically a material override with more control.

In the render setting panels, you will find one called Processing
there you can choose "material override" and copy/paste it from the material editor
that's all :)

[JAF]

one more stupid post deleted, sorry :shrug:

[JeffPatton]

In the render setting panels, you will find one called Processing
there you can choose "material override" and copy/paste it from the material editor
that's all :)I think he was asking if there was a material override that would only affect the diffuse color across all the existing materials (so it wouldn't affect bump or displacment, etc).

I personally don't know of an option for that, but it would certainly be a nice option to have!

[Mhyrdin]

I think he was asking if there was a material override that would only affect the diffuse color across all the existing materials (so it wouldn't affect bump or displacment, etc).

I personally don't know of an option for that, but it would certainly be a nice option to have!

Oh yes ! So sorry !:blush:

[rlph.]

I think he was asking if there was a material override that would only affect the diffuse color across all the existing materials (so it wouldn't affect bump or displacment, etc).

I personally don't know of an option for that, but it would certainly be a nice option to have!

Yes, Jeff, that is exactly what I meant. It would be ace to be able to override any component (diffuse, specular, bumb...) of all the materials in the scene. Francesca? :D (JK!)

[Richardst]

hello , i'm new on this forum, as a subscribed member.
i tried to make a worldglobe, that worked
but.. when i want to have a sun behinde it startes the problem... i want to have the sun with the (in photoshop called) Lens flare lik the picture added.
http://www.cg-cars.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4928&d=1148942489
i can't get it any further than this:
http://www.cg-cars.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4929&d=1148942489

i tried the MR-glaremist and Lightme2 versions of Jeff Patton, but i can't get the point and settings right.

what am i dooing wrong?
http://i-sysweb.nl/3d/earth_with_sun.zip
PS... no i do not want to edit the picture in Photoshop, becouse i want to create it in 3dsm, becouse i want to make a trailer.

[dimaxyz]

rendered 320x240
time 2min. 12 sec. :)
(click to enlarge)
http://images4.pictiger.com/thumbs/d1/8be119093589d34a06e886a83ea02ed1.th.png (http://server4.pictiger.com/img/334638/picture-hosting/1.php)

[JAF]

This lens flare effect is not a Mental Ray shader effect. You should try to go into Rendering>Video Post... and render from here to have it working.
Then take a look in the Help>User Reference... and search "Flare" for tweaking the effect as you need.
Oh and this file is coming from http://www.noirextreme.com/earth... (Jean-Christophe Francois)
Hope this helps.

[igsiv]

Hi to All.
So, turning buck to problem with geolight, is exist one very simple solution for it. Last days I'd export variuose max and Maya scenes to mi format and found that result of rendering depend only from scene entities order in root group list. Then, solution is:
1. Create and setup scene with geolight as needed;
2. export scene to mi file (ASCII, not binary);
3 open and edit mi file in text editor: find root group and change (cut+paste) entities order so as instance of geometry shader stay before the instance object for shape light and instance object for shape light stay before light instance, save changes. Now rendering scene with standalone mr will be always the same and right.

For example, export simple scene can give next:

instgroup "SceneRoot|Group"
"Box01|Instance(Mesh00)"
"Omni01|Instance"
"Object01|Instance(Mesh00)"
"Torus01|Instance(Mesh00)"
end instgroup

Here Object01|Instance(Mesh00) is instance of geolight shader, Omni01|Instance is light, Torus01|Instance(Mesh00) is object-shape for light. Then, right order must be:

instgroup "SceneRoot|Group"
"Box01|Instance(Mesh00)"
"Object01|Instance(Mesh00)"
"Torus01|Instance(Mesh00)"
"Omni01|Instance"
end instgroup

Box01|Instance(Mesh00) is some scene object and his position in list is not important.
I understand that solution is "not for all" and therefore is not satisfactory.

Interestingly, if do export scene from Maya and reorder entities in root group then can get reverse result - scene will be rendered wrongly (if light stay before instance geolight). The same will take place for "pure" mi scene created "by hand" in text editor (not by export from any 3d program).

And what is more interestingly, Maya mi export always automatically follow rule for list order described above. And this is why geolight work in Maya and not work in Max.

I think may be the main problem occur from those fact that geoshader main purpose is to create new scene elements but not to adjusting properties of existing entities.

[EquiNOX]

Hmm... I am not sure I catch what you are trying to achieve? does your methods avoid MR Geolite shader's error? Basic on my opinion, I think its geolight.dll is what causes error in MR because it just doesnt get perfect render for first time.

[rlph.]

Igsiv, excellent research! I haven't tested this solution yet but I really hope this is the work around for now.

[igsiv]

EquiNOX,
yes it does. Reordering elements in root group eliminate error.

[maxplugins]

But re-ordering is only of any use if I've got MR standalone...
If I haven't got the standalone renderer, does that mean this shader won't work properly in Max?

By the way, Igsiv, thanks for your really informative articles over at ixbt.com!!
Any chance of getting them translated?

Dave