Mental Ray - Shaders

[tryhard]

... thanks for that explanation. that makes things understandable. and on the other hand it saves a lot of time, otherwise spend useless for try and error :thumbsup:

Klaus

[EnigsDesigns]

Well Kristo Vaher that is a lot more close than i ever got my mats. it could use some tweaking but that's because os the use i want to put it to, but its very realistic. thanks

[KV99]

Well Kristo Vaher that is a lot more close than i ever got my mats. it could use some tweaking but that's because os the use i want to put it to, but its very realistic. thanks

Glad I could help :)

I pretty much jumped out of my Chair at siggraph when they demonstrated this as a "feature" of teh self-illum/glow of the A&D material.

That is so totally backwards to the design intent. This is not object lighting, never was claimed to be. It is actually primarily intended for the exact opposite, i.e. NON-illuminating objects.

Thank you, that's what I actually thought when I read some documentation about it, that it can be used for non illuminating objects, but looking at the demonstration videos and seeing it listed as a 'new feature' literally made me confused.

Because without it being area lights, it is essentially the same thing as Max 9 with Glow shader or Output in Illumination slot. That's why I thought there's more to it since it was advertised as one of the major new mental ray features. It's good to have the FG-off feature on it though, without needing to create basically same light look in post after rendering, but that's seemingly the only difference with Max 9 mr. It'll be handy, I just was secretly hoping for an actual mesh light objects with light emitted from surface normals and their interpolated density. Something new mr features demonstration video convinced me would be there, but perhaps in the future. I'll keep my hopes up.

Thank you for clearing all that up Zap, appreciate it :) Is there a specific reason why mental ray has stayed away from object lights?

[EnigsDesigns]

You did help, i'm very new to this and i probably won't have a similar result to you'res but now i know what and how to tweak.

Great way to learn though. :D


Edit:
Well it's harder than i thought...
Will post when i get some decent results.

[MasterZap]

Thank you for clearing all that up Zap, appreciate it :) Is there a specific reason why mental ray has stayed away from object lights?

Yes. Physically incorrect "object lights" is trivial to implement (mental ray has had them for a long time)

Physically correct "object lights", that does not mean "bring the noise" are very difficultto implement. And at least for max, the product designers do not want to introduce features that at least can be used physically correct.

You can do object lights in max with the francesca geo shader trick, but you'll quickly see it isn't terribly useful and more gimmicky than an actual useful tool. Either you have a non physical falloff (like linear, or none), or the noise leveles (or render time, to combat them) are prohibitive.

/Z

[EnigsDesigns]

Still coudn't do it, you said that it has no diffuse color, so if i put the diffuse value to 0 i get black no matter what. I tried to put it near some other object with different shaders (chrome, car paint and a brick texture+bump) but still black no reflection whatsoever.
Oh all this used with mr Sun.

[simmsimaging]

I'm still trying to work out this mixed material type in Mental Ray. I was able to get around the caustics problem by using the 'material to shader' and sticking the Blend material inside the diffuse colour slot of an A&D material, and then doing the alpha map on that material, but now its seems punishingly slow to render. Also, I find that using 'material to shader' produces slightly different results than the actual material and it's harder to control the look.

I had another run at JS_Multilayers but it seems to put me in the same boat - having to use material to shader because it doesn't seem to mix actual materials. Does anyone know of a different way to do this that is more efficient? It seems like a simple thing - I must be missing something obvious. I really need the equivalent of a Multi subobject material, just one that can be weight-mapped instead of split by material IDs.

Any help would be much appreciated.

b

[KV99]

Still coudn't do it, you said that it has no diffuse color, so if i put the diffuse value to 0 i get black no matter what. I tried to put it near some other object with different shaders (chrome, car paint and a brick texture+bump) but still black no reflection whatsoever.
Oh all this used with mr Sun.

This is strange, you're saying you're not getting any reflections? You do have reflections spinner right up on 1.0 and color as white right?

Oh and I made a little DGS mistake there, actually it's better for you to use Diffuse, set it to white (or barely gold'ish white, some white gold has this slight subtle gold look to it) and give it a minimal weight value (like 0.1 or 0.2). Make sure you use minimal roughness. Reflections must be 1.0. Thing is that I thought too old-school about it, thinking that since I had 1.0 on reflections you won't need diffuse, actually it's simply a weight value of the overall behavior, use minimal diffuse on white color.

I'm not exactly sure how mr deals with physically correct light behavior (or more exactly - in what order), overall it means that the total sum of light that hits the target must be reflected (glossy and mirror), diffused or refracted (mirror and glossy) the same 100% that originally hits it. But basically you need majority of the light reflected glossy and small minority of the light make up the white'ish surface. If you have diffuse too high above 0.2, then you'll end up with pearl'ish surface since diffuse takes too large a role.

Could you possibly make a screenshot of your base material settings? (Diffuse and Reflection) Since the problem lies there most likely. Though I'm still not sure why you're having problems not seeing any reflections. Make sure you have Ray Tracing enabled under Renderer settings (one of the tabs from the Render menu) and that it's 'trace depth' is not 0 (you need a minimal of 1 for trace depth for reflections to show up)

[EnigsDesigns]

Ok n00b question, i have the ray tracer enabled, it auto-enables when i choose the mental ray render. And the max depth is 6.
With what shader do you start to work on? i use the standart and to reduce the diffuse i have to use the maps, but in the maps i get 1-100 choice and you talk about 0.65 glossyness and 1.0 reflection. what am i missing?

Anyways a did some googling before, and i came across this tutorial.

http://www.tresd1.com.br/conteudotutoriais.php?t=14616

Its in brazilian but still i did everything there and still it didn't worked. so i really must be missing something.

[KV99]

A&D material of course. It's not recommended to use Standard max materials for mental ray, mental ray does convert between the two very well but it's like sawing your own feet off once you want to tweak the subtle details.

Change the material to A&D and you'll get all the properties I've been talking about. Since you seem to be really new to this, I recommend you read through the help documents that come with Max about mental ray and it's shaders. It's a really tough renderer to start learning if you don't have much rendering experience in the past, and it benefits for you to get to know the basics.

I'm recommending a focal press book "Rendering with mental ray and 3ds max" (by Joep van der Steen). It's a good book for mental ray beginners and intermediate users, and offers some good tips for already experienced guys as well. Another good book is with a similar name, "Rendering with mental ray" by Thomas Driemeyer, and it's an awesome book but extremely difficult for an average user since it is basically a science book (and costs like one). Also, Driemeyers book is for mental ray as the renderer, it doesn't have anything directly to do with 3ds max. I got my feet off the ground with Driemeyers book, but probably only because back then there wasn't no other choice :)

[EnigsDesigns]

Well off i go tomorrow to the local book store. Lol, but anyways, here's the SS for you.

http://defaultcreation.com/datas/users/5-gold.jpg

[KV99]

Well off i go tomorrow to the local book store. Lol, but anyways, here's the SS for you.

http://defaultcreation.com/datas/users/5-gold.jpg

It's hard to find in bookstores (I assume). You can order it through Amazon though.

And it's strange the material doesn't work, could you show the render as well?

[EnigsDesigns]

Sure.

Still quite grayish, but as you saw the both colours were white.

http://defaultcreation.com/datas/users/5-gold1.jpg

[KV99]

Sure.

Still quite grayish, but as you saw the both colours were white.

http://defaultcreation.com/datas/users/5-gold1.jpg

Trying out with daylight, yes, it is too gray. I could not see that before since the contrast of white and black on my own tests in the environment did not reveal this issue.

The reason why my render looked good was because the plane below was already white, making it look more white gold than it really was, thanks for pointing that out.

I did a few more quick tests, to get somewhat more close on your renders, increase diffuse a bit more (it takes out more grey as a result - because daylights ground has alot of grey in it and it keeps reflecting all that). I saw good results from 0.5 to 0.8 really. Another thing that seems to be off is the reflection curve, open the BRDF tab and adjust the curve of the reflection to suit your needs. 0 degree reflection 0.8 and 90 degree 1.0 reflection gave me good results. It's a bit trial and error, since daylight alone isn't also a good environment to test materials quality, but with these slight changes you should get alot closer to the result.

[EnigsDesigns]

Well i got to play with it, and i'm very happy with the results.

Some of the tests
http://defaultcreation.com/datas/users/5-golds.jpg

One thousand thanks Kristo Vaher

[Bao2]

Hi all -
I have been away from Mental Ray for a while and now I'm trying to figure out how to create materials to match some things I have done in Maxwell and Fry.

Have a look at this material test:

This is a 4-5 layer material I made in Fry that is just placed on a basic cylinder with an alpha/opacity/cutout map to define the shape. I cannot figure out how to create something similar with Mental Ray.


Create an Arch & Design material and call it "Label base"
Create an Arch & Design material and call it "Label gold"
Create an Arch & Design material and call it "Label silver"

Label base:
Diffuse map: Label_Diff2.jpg
Cutout: Label_Alph2.jpg
Bump: Label_Diff_Bump2.jpg

Label gold:
Diffuse map: Label_Diff2.jpg
Cutout: Label_GoldWMap3.jpg
Bump: Label_Foil_Bump.jpg

Label silver:
Diffuse map: Label_Diff2.jpg
Cutout: Label_SilverWMap.jpg
Bump: Label_Foil_Bump.jpg

Create a Composite Material. Drag "Label base" material as instance to the
Base material box. Drag instance of "Label gold" to Mat1 and drag "Label silver"
to Mat2. Let Mat1 and Mat2 in 100 value both.

Apply the composite material to the object. Adjust the three materials and the
instanced in the composite will be updated.

I haven't Maxwell render so I can't see if this is what you want achieve. I downloaded
your material from maxwell material site because I was curious about the maps you used. I suppose I applied above them as you did but I am not sure. Also I don't see what are the 4 layers you talk, I used only three as you can see so perhaps I am missing something or some effect?

Edited: I was trying the above with a bottle and I have render errors (the label disappears in some places). So you must apply the composite to the bottle object and then the base material must be the glass bottle and mat1 mat2 and mat3 are the above. Also in the Arch & Design material you need turn on Back face culling on the Advanced Rendering Options rollout.
I would like to know why Composite material don't works with two objects (bottle object and label object with the composite). I get always bottle object showing in front of composite material. Weird... But with Composite applied to Bottle object it seems work fine .

[simmsimaging]

. Also I don't see what are the 4 layers you talk, I used only three as you can see so perhaps I am missing something or some effect?

Bao2 - thanks for the help. To answer your question: when using Maxwell or Fry the best way to make shiny or glossy materials is to have two or more layers, each with the same basic diffuse map, but one set with low glossiness and one with high - then you can weight map the blend to fine-tune how glossy the object is. For that material there are actually 2 different diffuse layers, 3 different gold, one silver, and a neutral ghost mat used to knock out the alphad parts. Sounds complicated, but it really is pretty striaghtforward once you get the hang of it.

In any case, with A&D mat you don't need all that since most of the per material effects can be done within the one material, but you still need to blend different materials.

I am trying the Composite material again now as per your directions, but it's still not working for me - I don't know why. I have the 3 basics mats, and each one works fine on it's own. When I put them, or any one of them, in the Composite material then right off the bat the alpha doesn't work. It cuts the material into the label decal, but I still see the rest of the cylinder in the render.

What am I doing wrong?

b

[simmsimaging]

2008 just arrived today and I wanted to play with Jeff's tip about using sky portals as area lights. Just a question since the general subject came up in another post too: would this be the "better" way to do area lights in MR? These seem to render very clean very quickly by comparison to the photometric "free area light" I was testing against the sky portal, so it looks like a good candidate to replace area lights entirely. Is that about right?

Sorry if it's a dumb question but I am still struggling to get my head around the best/most efficient way to create nice lighting in MR that also gives good realistic light reflections for highlights.

b

[Bao2]

I am trying the Composite material again now as per your directions, but it's still not working for me - I don't know why. I have the 3 basics mats, and each one works fine on it's own. When I put them, or any one of them, in the Composite material then right off the bat the alpha doesn't work. It cuts the material into the label decal, but I still see the rest of the cylinder in the render.

What am I doing wrong?



Please attach a image with the problem.

[simmsimaging]

Please attach a image with the problem.

Sorry for the delay:

Here is a (very rough) scene setup with just one A&D material for the diffuse label:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/basicAD.jpg

Here is the exact same material loaded as the base material in a Composite material:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/Composite_Mat_AD.jpg

Here is the gold foil A&D applied on it's own:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/goldAD.jpg

And here is what it looks like when I add it to the Composite material above, where things get *totally* weird:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/composite_mat_2AD.jpg

For the last one I chose the "M" option for the Composite Type, but with "A" or "S" it was still messed up, just differently. None worked as I thought it would.

Any clue what I am doing wrong?

Thanks very much for the help.

b

[Bao2]

Here is a (very rough) scene setup with just one A&D material for the diffuse label:

Here is the exact same material loaded as the base material in a Composite material:


Yeah, I was seeing the same thing. I just changed the bottle material from a gray to
a glass one and now I have the same issue as you: the rendering is different when it
is in a Composite material or if it is alone. It seems a bug in the Composite material. I hope MasterZap tries to fix this in first service pack ;-)

So the only way left seems the Blend material way you was trying (with the caustic issue also...)

Really we need a better way to do materials in layers error free! :sad:

[simmsimaging]

Really we need a better way to do materials in layers error free! :sad:

Thanks for looking into it regardless.

I am quite surprised that this is such a problem in a mature render package like Mental Ray. I would have thought this was a common requirement or that there would be simple way to do it. I am still hoping there will be, but for now I have given up on it and am testing out juxtaposing three copies of the cylinder with the three different materials and hoping that the alphas will clip them well enough that they line up and look like one. I'll run a higher res render tonight and see how it goes.

If there any other ideas I would love to hear them though :)

Thanks
b

[maxplugins]

I am quite surprised that this is such a problem in a mature render package like Mental Ray. I would have thought this was a common requirement or that there would be simple way to do it.

I think you'll find that this hasn't got anything to do with mental ray. The problem is with Max and layering shaders / materials. Mental ray just renders what Max gives it, and if that is wrong, it will be rendered wrong...

Dave

[cris castro]

Is it possible to apply the mia_light_surface shader to a mesh, i saw this was possible thru nodes on maya but i dont find this shader in max or is it just part of mia monolithic material?

[MasterZap]

Sure.

Still quite grayish, but as you saw the both colours were white.

http://defaultcreation.com/datas/users/5-gold1.jpg

This looks like you forget to turn up the "brdf 0 degree angle" to get a fully reflective object.

For metals, ALWAYS:

1. "reflective" color to white and reflectivity 1.0
2. "brdf_0_degree" color high, much higher than default 0.2
3. Check "Metal Material" checkbox
4. Put the desired color in the *diffuse* slot

You can also try this.

5. In the BRDF check "By IOR (fresnel)" mode
6. Set the IOR to 25 or higher (yes, that is an actual IOR for metal, conductors IOR work differently than dielectric (transparent) things IOR)

Also, metal is 90% about reflections, you generally need something "cool" to reflect. A simple sky never is more than "ok", but so will a gold object photographed in a cloudless desert also look "boring".

See "gold in the sun" (reflecting just sun&sky)...
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f366/MasterZap/goldl-in-sun.jpg

...vs "gold in the kitchen" (exact same material, reflecting good old "kitchen.hdr")
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f366/MasterZap/gold-in-kitchen.jpg



/Z

[MasterZap]

Sorry for the delay:

Here is a (very rough) scene setup with just one A&D material for the diffuse label:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/basicAD.jpg

Here is the exact same material loaded as the base material in a Composite material:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/Composite_Mat_AD.jpg

Here is the gold foil A&D applied on it's own:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/goldAD.jpg

And here is what it looks like when I add it to the Composite material above, where things get *totally* weird:

http://simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/composite_mat_2AD.jpg

For the last one I chose the "M" option for the Composite Type, but with "A" or "S" it was still messed up, just differently. None worked as I thought it would.

Any clue what I am doing wrong?

b

The composite material is a very bad way of doing this (for a ton of technical reasons).

A much more efficient way to do this is either
a) the blend material
or even more efficient (but harder to do)
b) actually have maps that modify the parameters of the A&D material to your desired look, i.e. a glossiness map, reflectivity map, etc. etc.

For this case, though, I think the easiest/best is the blend map. And if you want to blend three things, well, the "nested blend map" trick should work.

The reason I suggest this metohd is that only the blend map "plays nice" with photons, the composite map... not so much.

/Z

[DBKenn]

Does efficient mean longer?, lol.

Also, using maps white is 100% and black is 0 correct. So just a thought, if you want 63% from a map, would you place a white layer over a black background in photoshop and set it to 63% opacity? Just a guess. That should be equal to 63% correct? So I guess you would need to figure out your settings before hand.

[MasterZap]

Does efficient mean longer?, lol.

No, just more render-efficient.

But if your masks are (largely) pure-white and pure-black, "Blend" is very efficient too. It's in the areas where you have a non-white or non-black "Blend" value both materials get evaluated, which can take longer (render time).

This is a single nested "Blend" material on the teapots...

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f366/MasterZap/squelchy-blubber-1.jpg



Also, using maps white is 100% and black is 0 correct. So just a thought, if you want 63% from a map, would you place a white layer over a black background in photoshop and set it to 63% opacity? Just a guess. That should be equal to 63% correct? So I guess you would need to figure out your settings before hand.

Yes, but Blend works nicely too, so the "other" method was really just the "if you really want the ultimate render efficiency", which you may not need in this case.

/Z

[EnigsDesigns]

Hey MasterZap that tip helped a lot. the IOR - 25. it really worked out really good.
The "brdf_0_degree" i already had .08 so you're late in there but the IOR looks really nice. gonna try it with a HDRI environment to check the reflections.

[MasterZap]

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f366/MasterZap/squelchy-blubber-2.jpg

Another example.

/Z

[simmsimaging]

Thanks Master Zap.

I will go back and try the Blend material again, but that is where I started with this problem with caustics:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4729248&postcount=3992

This is why I ended up going to composite maps and "material to shader" options - because I couldn't seem to get around this issue. I was using only A&D materials in there. For your example, are the glass and label materials part of the same Blend, or are they two mats on two objects? I'm wondering if that would make a difference, since in my case the label is a different object so it can have thickness so the bottle had it's own simple A&D mat.

I actually had already decided to try and do it all in one material with mapping as you suggest, but I could not figure out a way to do the BRDF reflections properly. How would I create a map to do the paper BRDF reflections at around .2 and the metal foil parts at around .9 or 1? Also, is there a way to map the "metal material" function?

Thanks again!
b

[MasterZap]

Thanks Master Zap.

For your example, are the glass and label materials part of the same Blend, or are they two mats on two objects?


A single teapot object, one material, so both glass and label is a single material. I re-use
the mask as a bump map to get a bit of "edge" on the label.


I actually had already decided to try and do it all in one material with mapping as you suggest, but I could not figure out a way to do the BRDF reflections properly. How would I create a map to do the paper BRDF reflections at around .2 and the metal foil parts at around .9 or 1? Also, is there a way to map the "metal material" function?


Exactly, this is why the "blend" material is better. I didn't consider the fact that certain parameters are not really mappable.

Of course, there are ways around a most things, for example, all "metal material" really does is (roughly) copy the diffsue color to the reflectivce color. Changing the "BRDF" curve can instead be "emulated" by using a Falloff map in the reflectivity slot and use 1.0 in both 0 and 90 degree reflectivity slot and let the "Falloff" map do the job... etc. etc. etc....

But truly, "Blend" is "easiest".

/Z

[simmsimaging]

But truly, "Blend" is "easiest".

Thanks - it really does seem that way. I just need some time to test if the caustics problem is still happening. I have installed 2008 since that first test, maybe that will help too.

I'll let you know how I make out - thanks for the help
b

[EnigsDesigns]

Well in another project of mine. a hot rod. i have a situation i dunno how to handle.

In the taillights, i made a lightbulb but i tried using the glow(lume) shader but the light is too weak or not showing at all, so i must be doin' something wrong about that. And the other thing is the glass. How do i make the glass textured (with a proper tail light texture) but still allowing to be lighten up from behind by the lightbulb?

[KV99]

Don't use lume glow for lighting anything up at all. It's not meant to light anything, it's only meant to display the material as being 'lit'. You need to use actual lights for everything else. As for the glass, without showing any pictures, I really have no idea. Just model it out properly and let raytrace do it's job if realistic light is your aim.

On a low polygon model, you simply use a texture and don't create a light inside at all. A texture shadered and illuminated properly with a separate light object simply outside the tail-light model usually does the trick.

a very simple and quick light solution (Jeff's asphalt material used here). Basically one point light inside each light, with a glass mesh covering the light cone itself and mudelled to have a slight texture in it. Not very real, but again, it's an example of how common sense can work.
http://www.waher.net/simplelights.jpg

[EnigsDesigns]

Actually i'm making this for rendering and by the pace of it its going to be very high poly so idk how many polys it gets... its gonna take several hours anyway on the final render.

Well by my question was how do i texturize the glass mesh and still let the light go through it?

EDIT: Well i'm doin' a slow ass render to show you what i got so far.

[KV99]

Why do you want to texture it if you plan to make it very high poly? Actual carlights are not textured, they are simple plain plastic or glass. You just need to model it.

Even if you don't want to model the inside of the carlight glass texture, you'd be using displacement map instead in the inside, or even bump might work, and again that does not stop any light going through it.

mental ray shaders don't obstruct light going through them as long as raytrace settings are high enough, from what I know this entirely depends on the materials transparency. Direct light will go through depending on material transparency alone. Though without raytrace depth the material itself will look black.

[EnigsDesigns]

Vaher what kind of light u used in that scene?

[KV99]

Vaher what kind of light u used in that scene?

Regular photometric point light.

[EnigsDesigns]

Ok, i'm making a few tests now.
But from what i can see it works pretty good, even though in viewport on prespective the ligth would seem to light all the scene, reflecting in the car mesh, but after rendering it didn't, only light up what it was suposed to.

[EnigsDesigns]

http://defaultcreation.com/datas/users/5-hotrod8.jpg

Although that appear 2 lights under the right tail light, wich weren't there before.

And the right light is brighter although the left one is a copy of the left.

And yes there is a scene light, it is on the right side.



Front Side ..............0 mr Sun
| ........................./
\/ .....................\_
________
| .........|
| .........| -> Car
|______|


Soz for the drawing... just too lazy to open paint. -_-''

(this probably gave me more work though xD)


And i just rendered with the mr Sun turned off, the left TailLight still appears to reflect outside light (wich there isn't one) and the 2 light reflections from under the Right Tailight are down to one.

[DBKenn]

I have issues with doing scenes at real world scale. I'm a graphic designer and I'd like to beable to render package designs. Thats the paper rendering questions. Anyway, say if I hand an object that in real life is 2 ft x 2 ft. In the viewport it clips. I deal with real scale for a few number of projects because I do things like game design and stuff. I use real world scale because I read, or someone told me to do it that way for rendering. Use mm for lights and what not for Mr.

and also any more on rendering realistic paper materials/ packaging. Thanks.

[ienrdna]

I have noticed that using low values on fast misss shaders produce nasty artifacts. Only way I found to get rid of them is make lightmap 300% of rendersize and that creates killer render times. Are there other ways to deal with them?

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f349/ienrdna/sss.jpg

[joske]

Yes. Physically incorrect "object lights" is trivial to implement (mental ray has had them for a long time)

Physically correct "object lights", that does not mean "bring the noise" are very difficultto implement. And at least for max, the product designers do not want to introduce features that at least can be used physically correct.

You can do object lights in max with the francesca geo shader trick, but you'll quickly see it isn't terribly useful and more gimmicky than an actual useful tool. Either you have a non physical falloff (like linear, or none), or the noise leveles (or render time, to combat them) are prohibitive.

/Z

a workaround for square shaped 'object lights':
bin doing some testing with the new skyportals
one could use them as glowing light squares in the scene
ad a little glare and voila, instant neon light object...
+ they transmit photons!! ok there's no physical correctness any more, but you can make it look great
here's a testrender with a skyportal on the cieling (and also one in the window)
http://www.minedfield.be/forumimages/skyportalneon.jpg

[MasterZap]

a workaround for square shaped 'object lights':
bin doing some testing with the new skyportals
one could use them as glowing light squares in the scene
ad a little glare and voila, instant neon light object...
+ they transmit photons!! ok there's no physical correctness any more, but you can make it look great

Actually it's completly physically accurate, and the portals are explicitly written to be able to double as light cards!

1. Open their "advanced" rollout and set their "source" to "Custom map" but don't actually put in any map (It'll default to "white")
2. Make it "Visible To Renderer"
3. Now "muluiplier" can be interpreted as a cd/m^2 luminance value - crank it up!
4. Add glare, as noted above for a neat look.

Bingo, physically correct low-noise photon emitting light card shader.

/Z

[joske]

SWEAT !

http://www.minedfield.be/forumimages/skyportalneon2.jpg

[simmsimaging]

and the portals are explicitly written to be able to double as light cards!

Thanks for that - they work great! I have two questions about using them though: would it be a good rule of thumb to also use them to replace other types of area lights as well as light card materials? They seem to render cleaner and faster than other illuminated mats *and* area lights. Also - is there a way to build in a gradient so they reflect/show up in renders as a softer edged square - more like a real light box might? I tried grad maps in the "custom" slot but they just show up as solid anyway.

Thanks in advance
b

[machadoj]

I would like to know how to edit my "base.mia" in Max.

I open the file, do the necessary changes, and when I go to save the Windows Vista doesn't allow me. I do the changes in Note pad, but can't do the saving one.

Thanks in advance. :)

[JeffPatton]

Is it marked "read only" by windows? If so you should be able to right click on the file and un-check read only and then save the file (assuming that's the problem and not something in Vista).

[machadoj]

No, it's unchecked "read only".

I was trying to make the changes you've pointed in your blog about:
- 3ds Max 2008 Portal light tip-.

I don't know what to do.....would it be possible sending me the "base.mia" file already modified?

Thanks again,

Jomar Machado

[machadoj]

sorry.......

[machadoj]

sorry..............

[machadoj]

Sorry triple posts..Maybe my connction is out of order too. :(

[dave-3d]

a very simple and quick light solution (Jeff's asphalt material used here). Basically one point light inside each light, with a glass mesh covering the light cone itself and mudelled to have a slight texture in it. Not very real, but again, it's an example of how common sense can work.


That is the way I basically did it a while ago on a little test using the glare lume (also looks like jeff has done something very similar for the damp patches on his asphalt). I used a standard MrSpot for lighting - no FG or GI. The glare was just used to glare the light bouncing around - no added diffuse textures to the glass material on the lenses, just glass. I'll need to post this scene file when I dig it out ... think I was using max 8.

Animation is on my website : http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_04c.htm

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/lights/test_lights_007e.jpg

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/lights/test_lights_007d.jpg

Dave

[MikeBracken]

Also - is there a way to build in a gradient so they reflect/show up in renders as a softer edged square - more like a real light box might? I tried grad maps in the "custom" slot but they just show up as solid anyway.
You can add the gradient (or whatever texture) ,then drag into the mat editor, then change the mapping to "planar from object XYZ".

Regards,
Mike

[simmsimaging]

You can add the gradient (or whatever texture) ,then drag into the mat editor, then change the mapping to "planar from object XYZ".

Great - thanks!

b

[simmsimaging]

You can add the gradient (or whatever texture) ,then drag into the mat editor, then change the mapping to "planar from object XYZ".

I don't seem to be doing this correctly, but not sure what is wrong. It either renders as black, doesn't show at all, or goes black and I get Mental Ray errors popping up. I've tried all the mapping options and no joy (world xyz, object xyz etc) and I've tried using gradients, HDRI loaded as bitmaps, etc. Just for the hell of it I even tried putting a UV Mapping modifier on the sky portal light but that just crashed Max :)

You've been able to get this to work?

Thanks,
b

[MikeBracken]

Yep, it works fine here. I used a gradient , an american flag texture, and a couple other maps.
I will try to post a screen shot tomarrow.

Regards,

Mike

[simmsimaging]

I will try to post a screen shot tomarrow.

If you have time that would be appreciated. I've had no luck at all putting even an HDRI in the custom slot and having it affect the sky portals reflection/ direct render.

b

[MasterZap]

Is it marked "read only" by windows? If so you should be able to right click on the file and un-check read only and then save the file (assuming that's the problem and not something in Vista).

Nah, it's vista insanity. You have to start notepad as administrator with that "run as administrator" thingamabob. At least that's what I had to do (only I use visual studio, not notepad, so maybe you need a powertool like visual studio to edit a text file in Vista.... *gak*)

/Z

[drdubosc]

I'm looking for ways get a shader to isolate projecting convex edges, corners, as a base for wear and tear, burnishing, other effects.

( I can't get Tom Cowland's tc_curvature shader to work. If somebody could point me towards info on how to write .mi flies for 3ds, that would be great.)

Got this far by baking an AO map of the object with its normals flipped, and applying the map to the right-way-out version, using it as a blend mask. It's a bit laborious... Has anybody written this 'flipped AO' as a regular shader?

Is this reinventing the wheel? Perhaps there's a better way?

[MikeBracken]

Here you go. Hope this helps.

http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=checkhz2.jpg

http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flaguw9.jpg

http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gradfl6.jpg

[machadoj]

Nah, it's vista insanity. You have to start notepad as administrator with that "run as administrator" thingamabob. At least that's what I had to do (only I use visual studio, not notepad, so maybe you need a powertool like visual studio to edit a text file in Vista.... *gak*)

/Z

Thanks "MasterZap", I copyed the file to the desktop then I edited it
and saved the changes on it, later I copied the file to his original folder.
This way the WVista accepted it.

[simmsimaging]

Here you go. Hope this helps.

It does - thanks. I was trying to use the mib_cie shader inside the gradient or loading only HDRI bitmaps because I thought it was necessary for light output. Looking at your screens show it's not - that helps hugely.

Thanks again!

b

[3DMadness]

Thanks for that - they work great! I have two questions about using them though: would it be a good rule of thumb to also use them to replace other types of area lights as well as light card materials? They seem to render cleaner and faster than other illuminated mats *and* area lights.
...
I would like to know that too... photometric area lights are so slow...

[CyberBanshee]

Good day to everyone.

Can't unhide mia_roundcorners in 3D Max 2008.

"#" do not works, also as deleting , "hidden".

How to solve this.

THNX for your attention.

PS: sorry for my english.

[simmsimaging]

Can't unhide mia_roundcorners in 3D Max 2008.

I also could not get that to show up.

b

[tryhard]

and here is the solution

... go to your materialeditor
... get material
now you see round corners
... put it into your materialeditor
now you can copy and past it where you want


you cant access it directly anymore

[CyberBanshee]

and here is the solution

... go to your materialeditor
... get material
now you see round corners
... put it into your materialeditor
now you can copy and past it where you want


you cant access it directly anymore


It is a little strange but effectively
Thanks a lot!!! :thumbsup:

[dave-3d]

Here you go. Hope this helps.

http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=checkhz2.jpg

http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flaguw9.jpg

http://img513.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gradfl6.jpg

Mmmm ... That doesn't work on the version of max I am using. I've been trying all manner of tweaks, but my lightcards will not map.

And why can't I add a UVWmap to the skyportal, Zap ?

And being able to add the gradient to the actual "Filter Color" might be good for creating light cards. Sharp edges are what I am trying to avoid.

Also noted that if I have an empty, new scene and add a Portal Skylight it will not render (even if I select visible) when there is no other object in the scene ???????

Dave

[thorsten hartmann]

Hi Guys,

i have a problem with sky_portal and reflexion. Behind me is a Window and in front of me i can see in the other windows the sky_portal light.

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_sk_bug_1.jpg

mfg
hot chip

[Airflow]

Can anybody tell me the exact steps to unhide and use this shader in max 2008. I spent a whole day trying to find out.
Thanks in advance.

[DBKenn]

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com

[Airflow]

Any specific link?, or you want me to search the whole blog. :)
I spent the whole morning on there.

[DBKenn]

o sorry looks like I'm the one guilty of not reading, lol. I thought it was Production Shaders sorry.

[JeffPatton]

Can anybody tell me the exact steps to unhide and use this shader in max 2008. I spent a whole day trying to find out.
Thanks in advance.Open the base.mi file in a text editor of your choice...scroll down to the mib_illum_hair shader GUI and disable the "hidden" tag by putting a pound sign (#) in front of it.

[Airflow]

Thanks for that..

[lehthanis]

Has anyone experimented with SSS Physical as a sub-map for the A&D Material? I notice that it appears in the slots....But I have no idea which slot I should throw it into.

If anyone has experimented though I'd love to see it.

[lehthanis]

I did some testing and I could have sworn in previous versions of Max I coul duse the SSS Physical Shader as a material...I figured I'd test my SSS settings by themselves outside of the A&D material but it won't apply to my object. Now I'm stuck.

[lehthanis]

This thread dead now?

[lehthanis]

I experimented and FINALLY found out that i can get what I think may be some scattering if I put the SSS Physical shader in the Refraction Color slot of the A&D Material...but I'm not sure...This is the result of that experiment...the round red part is car paint material.

[micco]

One mans thread. Dead as my Rat.

[JeffPatton]

1. I really don't notice any SSS effect in the render you posted.
2. Personally speaking, I wouldn't use the physical SSS shader at all if possible. Instead I'd use the fast SSS skin shader. The physical SSS shader is very difficult to control/predict, and it requires the use of photons. So if you're just using FG, nothing will happen. Ultimately, I'd like to see an SSS option added to the A&D material, but for now you may get by with the translucency effect of the A&D material. Beyond that, there are several existing pages with various SSS options/settings listed in this thread if you want to explore those posts (early in this thread).

[3DMadness]

Mmmm ... That doesn't work on the version of max I am using. I've been trying all manner of tweaks, but my lightcards will not map.

And why can't I add a UVWmap to the skyportal, Zap ?

And being able to add the gradient to the actual "Filter Color" might be good for creating light cards. Sharp edges are what I am trying to avoid.

Also noted that if I have an empty, new scene and add a Portal Skylight it will not render (even if I select visible) when there is no other object in the scene ???????

Dave
I've got some weird results too, sometimes it works, sometimes not... mapping behaves really weird in skyportal. :shrug:

[KV99]

Shame this thread is slowly dying, I guess it's a sign that mr is becoming easier and easier to use these days. Nevertheless, I was studying mental ray subsurface scattering shaders and in one of my tests ended up using a Daz Poser model for fast skin sss shader, after building up a simple scene and creating the material, ended up with this simple render:

http://www.waher.net/playboy_thumbnail.jpg
full resolution (http://www.waher.net/playboy_full.jpg)

Enjoy :)

[3DMadness]

Really nice image to bump the topic. :D

I would just reduce the bump in "some areas"... :D

[MikeBracken]

Does anyone know how to tell maya to pass the zdepth channel to a tif or tga instead of
an iff file when rendering with Mental Ray ? I am primarily a Max user, but am starting to take most of the rendering tasks for the charactor side of our studio. I am pretty comfortable with Mental Ray, but it does work a little differently in Maya.
BTW....using 8.5.

Regards,
Mike

[nec977]

great skin render i like bumps on that one :)

[younglion]

Does anyone know how to tell maya to pass the zdepth channel to a tif or tga instead of
an iff file when rendering with Mental Ray ? I am primarily a Max user, but am starting to take most of the rendering tasks for the charactor side of our studio. I am pretty comfortable with Mental Ray, but it does work a little differently in Maya.
BTW....using 8.5.

Regards,
Mike
well in the render layers where you have set it to render out as z depth click the render global on that layer and right click where it says image format right click on the words and select layer overide (if you only want that layer to render out as a different file format) and from the drop down menu select tiff or tga

[DBKenn]

Nice Mental Ray Ice

http://www.tr3d.com/index.php?f=31&oku=5336&basla=10&r=408&id=bilgi&islem=bak

[MikeBracken]

well in the render layers where you have set it to render out as z depth click the render global on that layer and right click where it says image format right click on the words and select layer overide (if you only want that layer to render out as a different file format) and from the drop down menu select tiff or tga

Thanks !

Mike

[simmsimaging]

Hi all -

Having an odd problem. I'm using Max 2008 and if I render as scene with an HDRI environment on a single node it renders fine, but if I use distributed rendering it either crashes, renders with odd spots, or renders darker - depending on what sort of image I am using for my environment. See the pair of images below: both are the exact same scene. The lighter was rendered on one machine, the darker one is all the same, except distributed render was toggled on:

http://www.simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/Coke_rendered_single-machine.jpg

http://www.simmsimaging.com/forumstuff/Coke_rendered_distributed.jpg

This happens with other scenes as well, and with various environment setups and images. Using .hdr provides the above result (darker on distributed, but no errors on render). If I use the *same* shot, but converted to .exr it works fine on a single node, but distributed render gives all kinds of weird raytrace error messages in the Mental Ray message window and then crashes Max. If I use the same image converted to LDR (like .jpg) it renders fine, and looks the same, either way.

So.... does anyone know why this is happening or a way around it? I want to use HDRI environments for better quality.

Thanks!

p.s Mike Bracken - if you catch this: I have tried many times to get an image mapped to a Sky Portal the way you demonstrated several months ago, but no joy. Is there some other setting you are using other than what is shown in your screen caps? Nothing works for me!

b

[MikeBracken]

p.s Mike Bracken - if you catch this: I have tried many times to get an image mapped to a Sky Portal the way you demonstrated several months ago, but no joy. Is there some other setting you are using other than what is shown in your screen caps? Nothing works for me!



I have the scene file at work. If I get a chance this week i will upload it for you to take a look at.


The first thing that comes to mind about your hdri problem.... are the other computers able to see the hdri through the network ? There are several ways to be sure. You could send one frame through backburner to one of the machines and see if it renders correctly.

Regards,
Mike

[simmsimaging]

I have the scene file at work. If I get a chance this week i will upload it for you to take a look at.

That would be great - thanks! I have tried it everyway I could think of, and more than once.

The first thing that comes to mind about your hdri problem.... are the other computers able to see the hdri through the network ? There are several ways to be sure. You could send one frame through backburner to one of the machines and see if it renders correctly.

The image files are on networked drives accessible to all computers I've tried, and it works fine with LDR images - so I don't think that is it.

Thanks for the help
b

[Skyraider3D]

For over a week I've been trying to achieve a bare metal aircraft skin look in Mental Ray (in MAX 9) without success. Whatever I come up with looks either wet, glossy or satin grey - not metallic.

Here is what I try to do... these were done with standard materials and scanline renderer:
http://skyraider3d.cgsociety.org/gallery/189884/
http://skyraider3d.cgsociety.org/gallery/304443/

I hoped to take the quality of my work to the next level with Mental Ray but so far I'm not succeeding... :sad:

Any suggestions would be most appreciated! :)

[simmsimaging]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the environment/distributed render issue? It's really a pain to lose the network speed when you want to use IBL - hopefully there is a simple fix.


b

[ToddD]

Hey Skyraider3D, what sort of settings have you tried? Are you using A+D materials? Have you tried checking the metal material checkbox in conjunction with altering the BRDF settings?

Always a fan of your amazing images, I am sure you will be blowing us away with MR renders in the near future!

Regards,

Todd

[MasterZap]

As always with metals, it's mostly about reflections. Do you have something to reflect? You can never get "metal" in a solid colored environment (or a black environment)... sure it would be "correct" but we never actually see metal like that in reality.

If it's truly "bare metal" you are looking for, read this blogpost (http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/10/making-better-metal-with-miamaterial.html) and then maybe this blogpost

(http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/11/more-hidden-gems-miaenvblur-gloss.html)However, for an aircraft fuselage I would not use the "metal" mode, because aircraft metal tends to be coated. For most run-of-the-mill fuselage (think commercial jet look) there is a distinc clearcoat layer, which would reflect the surroundings white, not with the color of the underlying metal. So the "Is metal" switch should definitely be OFF in those cases.

WWII aircraft may be a bit more dull in the paint, but it's still paint, not actually colored metal (== gold, silver, copper, etc). I still think the key is a fresnel-ish falloff to the reflections, which are *not* colored by the underlying paint (since it's a surface effect, even w/o coating).

/Z


(http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/11/more-hidden-gems-miaenvblur-gloss.html)For over a week I've been trying to achieve a bare metal aircraft skin look in Mental Ray (in MAX 9) without success. Whatever I come up with looks either wet, glossy or satin grey - not metallic.

Here is what I try to do... these were done with standard materials and scanline renderer:
http://skyraider3d.cgsociety.org/gallery/189884/
http://skyraider3d.cgsociety.org/gallery/304443/

I hoped to take the quality of my work to the next level with Mental Ray but so far I'm not succeeding... :sad:

Any suggestions would be most appreciated! :)

[dave-3d]

Using Zap's Blog as a base, I previously mucked about with the settings to get dirty alloys ..

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_10.htm

Dave

[Skyraider3D]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

After some more tweaking I am slowly moving into the right direction.

Currently I am using an A&D material. The specular mask I previously used in the Specular Level slot of MAX's standard materials (and which now doesn't exist anymore), I now use in the Specular Color slot. Then in the Glossiness slot I use a black&white falloff mixed 50-50 with inverted instances of my specular mask. I don't know if this makes any sense but at least it's starting to look like something. By inverting the spec mask the shiny bits get bigger highlights and by mixing this with a falloff I still maintain a fresnel-alike look to my reflections.

For some reason the Logarithmic Exposure Control wrecks my colour textures and makes them look really flat. I can boost this a bit by tweaking the Color Map curve, though I am not a fan of this approach as it's a pain to tweak when you use a lot of textures. Alternate suggestions are more than welcome.

As Zap pointed out, the Metal Material checkbox doesn't do it any favours (especially with the painted-on markings and all) so that's off.

For the BRDF I use custom values: 0.5 at 0 deg., 1.0 at 90 deg. and a curve shape of 5.0. I've tweaked this curve a million times and never really like the result, nor do I like the result of IOR fresnel reflections, no matter what the value. But these figures work ok-enough. The previously mentioned falloff bends this curve a bit in the direction I want it to (or so I like to think).

O the reflection is provided by an inverted sphere with tiling sky texture. It's a plain 8-bit image and perhaps HDRI would improve things, but I have no problem with the look of my reflections (I can get them sharp, colourful and contrasty enough). It's more the material itself that's bugging me. I think the flat look of the diffuse textures with the daylight logarithmic exposure control is one of the main reasons.


By the way, excellent blog Zap! Seriously helpful, many thanks!
And Dave, your cars look great and I've seen your aluminium tutorial but it's not quite the effect I'm after.


When I am getting somewhere with this I'll check back in :)

[em3]

Hello everyone. Can someone point me in the direction of a nice tutorial of bump mapping with FG enabled. It seems that when FG is enabled, it makes my bumpmaps look very flat. Is there a good way to apply bumpmaps with FG enabled to get a nice bump effect?

[joske]

make sure u use other lights than skylight
skylight alone and bumpmaps don't work (if i'm not mistaken)

[MasterZap]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

After some more tweaking I am slowly moving into the right direction.

Currently I am using an A&D material.


That's a given ;)


The specular mask I previously used in the Specular Level slot of MAX's standard materials (and which now doesn't exist anymore), I now use in the Specular Color slot.


Yes, that amounts to the same thing.

However, I often suggest this:

"Whatever you used to have in your 'specular level' slot, instead put it in the 'glossiness' slot".

Why? Because the max old specular isn't energy conserving; modulating the level really modulated the peak level. Modulating the glossiness only modulated the "width" or "size" of the specular, with no regard at all to where the energy went.

Now, if you map what you used to have in your "spec level" to the "glossiness", you'll see that the fact of the glossiness lowering, also lowers the peak of the specular (since the energy is now dissipated), making the effect similar, but more realistic.

So I suggest to most people to not actually modulate the spec level much at all, but modulate the glossiness instead.

Then in the Glossiness slot I use a black&white falloff mixed 50-50 with inverted instances of my specular mask. I don't know if this makes any sense but at least it's starting to look like something.

I think this is the wrong direction you are heading here. Having your glossiness map in two places seems like it is fighting itself for control.

Sure you could add some additional effects w. such tricks, but I wouldn't start out with that...

By inverting the spec mask the shiny bits get bigger highlights and by mixing this with a falloff I still maintain a fresnel-alike look to my reflections.


Hmm, but you know, shiny bits, such as highly polished ones, should get smaller highlights (more sharp, focused highlights, albeit at a stronger intensity).

For some reason the Logarithmic Exposure Control wrecks my colour textures and makes them look really flat. I can boost this a bit by tweaking the Color Map curve, though I am not a fan of this approach as it's a pain to tweak when you use a lot of textures. Alternate suggestions are more than welcome.


Unfortunately you are in max 9 "hell" when it comes to linear workflows. The old Log control does a curve very much like a gamma correction. This in itself is good, until you actually turn the real gamma correction stuff *on*, in which case the display gamma will be applied *on top of that* and you get a double-gamma-wash-out situation.

There are a few ways around this:

- If you are not already using the gamma correction in preferences, turn this on, set the display gamma to 1.0 (since the Log control is "like" a gamma already). Set your Output gamma to 1.0 but your inputgamma to 2.2, to linearize your sRGB textures.

- Upgrade to max 2008 and use the "photographic" exposure control. This is more "gamma aware" and you won't run into the double-gamma problem if you turn gamma correction on.

- You can also, as you do, add a "curve" control on the texures, although that's more work than you'd normally want.


For the BRDF I use custom values: 0.5 at 0 deg., 1.0 at 90 deg. and a curve shape of 5.0.


Default "shape" is fine, but I feel your 0.5 is too high. I wouldn't go past the default 0.2, I would even lower it for a coated material. If you don't see enough reflection, then, your background is too dark.

You said yourself you were using a plain .jpg for the background, which in that case could be the problem.

Have you tried using the physical sun & sky? That would be my first go for these renderings. Then only apply your "cloudy sky" as background (either in comp, or by using the built in "background" feature of the physical sky).

I've tweaked this curve a million times and never really like the result, nor do I like the result of IOR fresnel reflections, no matter what the value. But these figures work ok-enough. The previously mentioned falloff bends this curve a bit in the direction I want it to (or so I like to think).

I think also this is a case of fighting things. I'd ditch the falloff and fix the curve myself.


O the reflection is provided by an inverted sphere with tiling sky texture. It's a plain 8-bit image and perhaps HDRI would improve things, but I have no problem with the look of my reflections (I can get them sharp, colourful and contrasty enough).

Well, here's the thing; if your lighting (i.e. the luminance of things around your plane is wrong), and you try to "fix" it by tweaking the material, you are just tweaking the material away from the physically correct. Sure you may reflect the sky the way you "want", but this may cause the plane to, say, reflec it's own wings too much.

When the "physically correct" result would been a reflectivity of 1/10:th and a 10 times brighter sky. This wouldn't change how much the sky reflects in the fuselage, but how much the wing reflects in the fuselage.


It's more the material itself that's bugging me. I think the flat look of the diffuse textures with the daylight logarithmic exposure control is one of the main reasons.


Try to use the gamma correction tools to linearize your textures, which probably are in sRGB color space (you painted these in photoshop or something, right?)



By the way, excellent blog Zap! Seriously helpful, many thanks!


Thanks.

If I had infinite time (I don't) and you provided me with one of your scenes, I could perhaps make a "tweaked version" for you. Although.... not sure I still have a running Max 9 here, when I think about it..... have to look.

Anyhow, try the above tips, see where it leads you, if anywhere.

I really think plane fuselage would be easy with the A&D material. Heck, default values and a color (and proper exposure control and gamma workflow) and you should be golden pretty much out-of-the-box.


/Z

[MasterZap]

Hello everyone. Can someone point me in the direction of a nice tutorial of bump mapping with FG enabled. It seems that when FG is enabled, it makes my bumpmaps look very flat. Is there a good way to apply bumpmaps with FG enabled to get a nice bump effect?

You should get a nice bump effect with FG, at least when using the A&D material.

The thing is that your indirect lighting must contain some hint of directionality, or it won' treally show up much.

I.e. if you are just using a flat skylight, you won't really see much (but that you wouldn't either in a completely flatly lit overcast day either, if you could find a completely flatly lit overcast day).

If, however, it's indoor indirect lighting with, say, bounce-light from a red and green wall, you should definitely see the bumps, since FG points store directional data (think spherical harmonics)

/Z

[dave-3d]

- Upgrade to max 2008 and use the "photographic" exposure control. This is more "gamma aware" and you won't run into the double-gamma problem if you turn gamma correction on.



This alone is a great step forward. I always detested the Log exposure, it just gave me wishy-washy colours - like I left a photo out in the sun for months. The photographic exposure is a completely different animal !!

Dave

[em3]

make sure u use other lights than skylight
skylight alone and bumpmaps don't work (if i'm not mistaken)

I have an IES sun in the scene as well. I am using Jeff Pattons skydome which provides great outdoor lighting but washes out the bump maps. What is the solution there? Attach lights to my characters to accentuate the bumps?

http://www.davetyner.com/images/utx/hellbenderCityDrivingRoninClose.jpg
models and textures courtesy of Unreal Tournament 3

[JeffPatton]

Not sure that would be related to the skydome. Check the bump maps, amount of bump on your materials, and of course the FG settings (maybe too low causing a lack of shadow definition?).

Skydome bump tests:
http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/Skydome-bumps.jpg

[em3]

or maybe because I suck :D I'll check it out, thanks for the reply Jeff!

btw, what are your bumps in that image set at?

[JeffPatton]

btw, what are your bumps in that image set at?They are all A&D materials and the bump strength varies from 0.5 to 0.85.

[JeffPatton]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the environment/distributed render issue? It's really a pain to lose the network speed when you want to use IBL - hopefully there is a simple fix.I recently ran into a crash situation when trying to distribute render a .hdri scene. The .hdri's were very large (8000 pixels). Manually installing large files like that on each render slave and using the "Distributed maps" option on DBR may solve your issue too.

[em3]

Jeff, the AD material is the best render yet. I will post more when it's looking a bit better. Thanks heaps!!

[arkmark]

Anybody knows, where is the right place for the RPC mental ray shader “RPC_texture” and why?

Tanks

[simmsimaging]

Thanks Jeff - I will give that another try.

b

[simmsimaging]

Well, distributed maps definitely didn't fix it - but something else seems to have :|

With a .exr file in the environment slot distributed renders crashed every time for me. Using .hdr I was able to make it work okay, but I was still finding the render darker with distributed render active - and it didn't matter if the maps were distributed or not. I think that it has something to do with some kind of Max gamma thing though - because I re-did the scene and re-loaded the hdr files and then even the single node was darker. The difference was the apparent brightness of the hdr map - and I could see it change in the mat editor, even though I loaded the exact same file the same way.

(I have had problems with inconsistent light levels with hdr files before and couldn't figure out why - which was why I was hoping to use .exr instead.)

Anyway, the problem is looking like it has more to do with how the HDR file is loaded, but what that means i have no idea - because I am *reasonably* sure I did the same thing everytime. Clearly not, but I don't know what it is.

b

[MasterZap]

(I have had problems with inconsistent light levels with hdr files before and couldn't figure out why - which was why I was hoping to use .exr instead.)

b

When you load anything HDR into max, please always always use (in the file open dialog) the "Default Exposure" and "Floating Point" modes. If you want to change the epxosure of the HDR, do this in the "Output" section of the Bitmap plugin instead.

/Z

[simmsimaging]

Thanks Zap - the will probably solve the issues. However, there still seems to be something amiss with the way the satellites handle the images from the main render machine. I can open the scene on either node and it renders fine, and the exposure issue occurs the same way regardless of which one is used as the node and which as the main render machine (stricly using distributed bucket rendering). The inconsistency is *only* with distributed bucket, and .exr files always seem to crash it (at least when used as environment maps).

Thanks again

b

[MasterZap]

Hmm. This seems to remind me about something icky about gamma correction and DBR, something like... max stores the gamma settings in the .ini files... on each machine.... so if it's on on some and not on others (or if the input/output gammas are different) you can get strange results... I think.... I may be dreaming that last part tho, someone said it to me recently, and I havn't verified it myself if this is true or not. Could be.....

/Z

Thanks Zap - the will probably solve the issues. However, there still seems to be something amiss with the way the satellites handle the images from the main render machine. I can open the scene on either node and it renders fine, and the exposure issue occurs the same way regardless of which one is used as the node and which as the main render machine (stricly using distributed bucket rendering). The inconsistency is *only* with distributed bucket, and .exr files always seem to crash it (at least when used as environment maps).

Thanks again

b

[soontekk]

Hi peeps,

Been following this thread from time to time.
I landed a project that finally allows me to use the insanely cool morpher material in max just to find out it has never been supported by mR.
Needless to say i was a bit dissapointed and my mR love-o-meter is losing pressure :o

If anyone has a solution for this plz share if you can.

Regards,
stk

[soontekk]

___________________________

[simmsimaging]

Well, I tried several variations and I can't seem to get around this problem with HDRI environments and distributed bucket rendering. I am not sure exactly what Zap meant about the gamma and .ini files (over my head), but the notion of leaving the hdr settings at default and upping the output in Max did not do the trick for sure. Nor did distributed maps.

I have tried loading .hdr files with 32bit float, def exp: that renders fine on one, but compeltely crashes if I use DBR.

If I use 16 bit/channel and then pump up the output (which was how I normally did it before) then it renders fine on one machine, but much darker with DBR turned on. I tested it to be sure, and it is not the same as rendering on one machine with the output left at 1 (I thought that might be it).

.exr files just crash it no matter what I do when I turn DBR on. Are there any other possible things I could be doing wrong here?

<edit> Just tried a floating point .tif file: it renders darker with DBR on, and with some funky weird colours in the highlights (although it didn't crash or give me the NaN errors that 32bit/def exposure did with DBR)

Thanks in advance for any help!

b

[Spacelord]

Hi Simms,
I have the same problems with Hdri images crashing satelite rendering, I posted on mymentalray and got no response, its good to see its not just me.
I'm amazed nobody else has this problem.
If satelite rendering does start I get all the NAN errors and an over exposed image as if
it wasn't using any tonemapping, then it crashes anyway.


As far as the 3dsmax.ini file goes, it doesn' seem to be installed on the render machines.
Since you don't start 3dsmax it doens't get to create a user profile where the 3dsmax.ini is stored. Maybe I can stick it in the 3dsmax root directory, it might read it.
I will test it.

Well, I tried several variations and I can't seem to get around this problem with HDRI environments and distributed bucket rendering. I am not sure exactly what Zap meant about the gamma and .ini files (over my head), but the notion of leaving the hdr settings at default and upping the output in Max did not do the trick for sure. Nor did distributed maps.

I have tried loading .hdr files with 32bit float, def exp: that renders fine on one, but compeltely crashes if I use DBR.

If I use 16 bit/channel and then pump up the output (which was how I normally did it before) then it renders fine on one machine, but much darker with DBR turned on. I tested it to be sure, and it is not the same as rendering on one machine with the output left at 1 (I thought that might be it).

.exr files just crash it no matter what I do when I turn DBR on. Are there any other possible things I could be doing wrong here?

<edit> Just tried a floating point .tif file: it renders darker with DBR on, and with some funky weird colours in the highlights (although it didn't crash or give me the NaN errors that 32bit/def exposure did with DBR)

Thanks in advance for any help!

b

[simmsimaging]

Hey Duncan - how are things?

I'm amazed nobody else has this problem.

I was pretty surprised too but maybe using DBR isn't as common as I assumed it would be. Please let me know if you figure something out - I've hit the wall on it.

b

[JeffPatton]

Personally speaking, in a recent 3dsmax 2008 / mental ray class I used DBR consistently across quite a few PC's and the only problem we encountered was with extremely large .hdr images (over 8k). They would actually crash 3ds Max 2008 when trying to use DBR with those large hdr's. However, when I used smaller .hdr files or the hdr's that ship with 3dsmax we had no problems rendering DBR scenes illuminated with .hdr images. There were no different shaded buckets, etc.

As Zap discussed it kinda sounds like the different machines may be applying different gamma's to your .hdr's (which should be 1.0). I would think that if you're using a pre-2008 version or something other than the photographic exposure control then it has a good chance of being related to a gamma problem. But if you're using 2008 and the photographic exposure control, I don't think the gamma would be the issue...Zap, please correct me if my logic there is screwy.

[simmsimaging]

I have had no end of trouble trying to get my head around the max gamma setups, so it wouldn't surprise me to know I've done something wrong.

The DBR machine I am testing with right now is set for absolute defaults - as I have not even fired up Max once - just installed it to get the satellite node in as default as I could.

For my main box I am using 2008 and photgraphic exposure control. As directed by the photo exp control rollout, I have turned on gamma and LUT in max. It's set for display gamma of 1.0 and Bitmap files havin an input of 1.8 and output of 1.0. In the Exposure control rollout I found setting the midtone value to the same as the bitmap gamma (or close to it) seemed to give the best match for contrast. I have no idea if that is right or not though.

Am I close? I tried turning gamma off and now the DBR thing renders the same as without, but both are totally washed out looking.

Thanks Jeff.

b

[Spacelord]

Hey Duncan - how are things?

Simms everything is going well here.

I set all my gamma bitmaps and display output etc.. I set all of the them to 1.8.
I find I get what I put in, no need to degammer bitmaps or anything like that.
Max takes care of that.


Jeff I'll try some of the 3dsmax's hdri's and see if I have luck.
I've been trying the Hdris I got from Maxwell, I think there Dorsch ones.


cheers

[simmsimaging]

Jeff I'll try some of the 3dsmax's hdri's and see if I have luck.
I've been trying the Hdris I got from Maxwell, I think there Dorsch ones.

I don't think that is it - I've used the same ones, and several others as well with the same result.

An update: disabling gamma entirely worked okay, but the images were washed out so I had to mess around with the mr photo exposure settings to get it working again.

After further messing around I found that it seems to be the input/output bitmap gamma values that cause the problem. If those are anything but 1.0 I have problems with DBR (mismatched render output or total crashes). Right now I have the main gamma at 1.8 and the others at 1.0 and it's rendering fine with DBR. Haven't tried using .exr files again yet, but I will.

b

[Skyraider3D]

- If you are not already using the gamma correction in preferences, turn this on, set the display gamma to 1.0 (since the Log control is "like" a gamma already). Set your Output gamma to 1.0 but your inputgamma to 2.2, to linearize your sRGB textures.You are a star, that totally solved it!

Sorry for the late reply by the way, I hardly manage to work on this stuff.

[kaizerscythe]

Is there any way to create a layered material with mental ray? I want to create a material in wich the bottom part material, the first layer is a dull plastic material and the upper material, the second layer, is a transparent, shiny plastic material. I`m trying to use shellac in wich i combine 2 AD material in it. But the result isn`t satisfying, the shiny part seems like come from bottom material, not from the upper material. I`m stuck here, please help. Thx before.

[JeffPatton]

Is there any way to create a layered material with mental ray? I want to create a material in wich the bottom part material, the first layer is a dull plastic material and the upper material, the second layer, is a transparent, shiny plastic material.Use a blend material or a top/bottom material.

[simmsimaging]

Use a blend material or a top/bottom material.

Just be careful if you are using caustics - I don't think they work that well with Blend materials, but I never did figure out the problem. See the link below to see what I mean.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4729248&postcount=3992
(http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4729248&postcount=3992)
b

[kaizerscythe]

Thanks jeff, simms, i`ll try it tonight. Can you give a quick advice/tips regarding blending a material one on top of another? kinda material-mixing guide type of mini tutorial? :) i want to broaden my understanding of A&D material. Thanks so much of the response.

[JeffPatton]

I think I misunderstood your question. I thought you wanted to mix materials based on height, instead it sounds like you want a coating type layer? If so, then I think you're best bet is to use the shellac material as you originally stated.

The TS shader offers a "coating" option that might be helpful, more info:
http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/archive/2007/2/
(see my Feb.21 2007 entry)

You could also do this via geometry. Apply your base material to the base object. Make a duplicate copy of the mesh and add the push modifier with a small value. Apply your clear material to the "pushed" copy.

I have no idea what you're modeling or what the final output should be so I'm somewhat limited on what advice to offer. But why can't a single glossy A&D material would work for what you need?

[kaizerscythe]

Thanks Jeff, i`m trying to model a phone that`s have a visible coating in it, the base material is a dark black plastic, but on top of it is a very shiny transparant plastic.

I`m sorry i don`t have camera to give you the pic of the phone, but yeah, your sample pic of
T2S_Illumination shader is close to what i search for. I`ve also read the t2_s doc about the coating, but the language is, well, a bit too technical :P i didn`t really get it.
From your opinion, between t2_s and shellac, who`s better with coating Jeff? It`s sad that mental ray haven`t yet have the support for coating, i hope they did it like maxwell did it to their material. (i`m not using maxwell though) For now i`ll try your trick with push modifier. Thx so much.

[TnB]

hi,im in need of a material like the t2s_ill shader,and after installing it[as i read in the blog]i came up with this-see attachement.is it supposed to work only with the mr material or i forgot to add a link in the "standard_mi" ? some help jeff :D

[Spacelord]

Hi TnB, you do realise that you click on that t2s shader it will pop up with a dialogue box with lots of settings ?

cheers

hi,im in need of a material like the t2s_ill shader,and after installing it[as i read in the blog]i came up with this-see attachement.is it supposed to work only with the mr material or i forgot to add a link in the "standard_mi" ? some help jeff :D

[TnB]

=)) you got me wrong :D i know that i can use it like that but could i use it as THIS[see attachment,its a modified screen capture]

[MasterZap]

Please avoid "Shellac" for coating, it will never be physical, since Shellac is inherently additive.

Better is to use "Blend" and blend the a material based on a fresnel-ish falloff. Blend will direct energy properly so it will never sum above 100%.

Although for the material you seem to be talking about, the actual real offset between the two surfaces may be important, so you may need to really model the actual layer. Maybe. Depends on how close you need to see it.

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f366/MasterZap/coating.jpg

From left to right:
- totally reflecting A&D material
- dull-ish plastic A&D material
- "Blend" between the second and the first using a Fresnel Falloff mask

/Z

[thorsten hartmann]

hi masterzap,

and when i put only the falloff/map in the reflection glossiness, is that not the same?

edit: ok i see is not the same :rolleyes::)

mfg
hot chip

[kaizerscythe]

Thx masterzap, here`s my attempt to create a coated material. you`re right, the blend does better, shellac can`t do it (or i did it wrong?), but the best still using actual 2nd mesh on top of 1st layer, but for tiny object it creates a surface overlapping problem. Please help :)

[TomMannington]

kaizerscythe: I tried to do the same thing for an mp3 player I was modelling (a sandisk sansa which is in my portfolio). By far the best way to replicate it is to use a second mesh layer and make sure both are very high in terms of polycount, mine were 65K each (the limit for a rhino mesh) which allowed about half a milimetre of clearance if i remember correctly. I also seached for advice on this in this thread and posted some of my experiments which might also help. Good luck with it.

[Skyraider3D]

For more than three weeks I've spent every single evening trying to come up with a good Arch+Design material that combines aluminium with paint. Basically I am trying to create an aircraft skin, alike this: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled/Untitled/1328990/L/
I.e. a worn and fairly flat but reflective aluminium look with painted areas.

Basically I have tried every combination of bitmaps, output maps, falloffs, lighting, reflection and BRDF curves I could think off and nothing looks convincing to me. I don't want to give up on Mental Ray, but I am running out of steam on this.

The two things that are bugging me most are the inability to use a bitmaps to control the Reflectivity value (modifying reflectivity color looks wrong and glossiness only blurs) as well as the 0 deg. refl. value on the custom BRDF curve (I don't like the IOR falloff curves).

Would it be possible to modify the Arch+Design shader in a way that it can accept bitmaps to control reflectivity and the 0 degree reflection value?

[Dashkevicz]

Skyraider3D, try this:

Load chrome preset
Put a falloff map in the reflection color
Put your (black and white) mask in the top , black slot of falloff
Use the mix curve to get a frensel-ish falloff ( i like to use besier handle to do this )
Put your color map in diffuse, turn down roughness.

The chrome presset has an almost mirror reflection, and you use the reflection color to "subtract" reflection from the "mirrorness". I also gave the reflection some samples to blur the reflection a bit.

This should work... though it would help to see a render of yours.

excuse my spellin' :)

[Skyraider3D]

(black and white)Haha, that's what I did wrong! :banghead:
Thanks Dashkevicz, I had actually tried something very similar but due to the high 0 deg. refl. value the painted bits came out very faded. What I did wrong though was not using a black and white mask. Instead my "paint" bits were dark grey (as I wanted them to have a satin finish) and with the high 0 degree reflection value this meant they came out looking badly faded. Countering this by lowering the 0 deg refl meant my aluminium started to look grey. To make it worse my "aluminium" bits were light grey (as I wanted to make it look worn) resulting in a glossy grey rather than a metallic look.

I also tried playing with bitmaps in the IOR setting and got very decent results, with the exception of certain semi-shallow angles where high IOR settings make a drop in reflectivity. This mean that near-headon views made the aircraft look grey again!

Another thing you pointed out was tweaking the curve. I usually stay away from curves and mess with the falloff spinner or keep the default perpendicular/parallel setting. The reason for avoiding curves is that they are often not reproducable and curves can't be copied. However setting the bottom-left point to bezier and dragging it all the way to the right-bottom corner is reproducable and produce better results than either p/p or any fresnel setting.

So thanks very much for two extremely useful tips! I hope to post something decent here soon! :)

[MasterZap]

Thx masterzap, here`s my attempt to create a coated material. you`re right, the blend does better, shellac can`t do it (or i did it wrong?), but the best still using actual 2nd mesh on top of 1st layer, but for tiny object it creates a surface overlapping problem. Please help :)

For surface overlapping problems, that's a modelling issue, and I can only model teapots (and that, only because there is a built in teapot primitive), so don't ask me ;)

Query; are you using exposure control in your renderings, and a proper gamma correct workflow? Your images are leaning towards a "gamma 1" look.

/Z

[MasterZap]

For more than three weeks I've spent every single evening trying to come up with a good Arch+Design material that combines aluminium with paint. Basically I am trying to create an aircraft skin, alike this: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled/Untitled/1328990/L/
I.e. a worn and fairly flat but reflective aluminium look with painted areas.


I'd think this would be fairly easy to do....

Me, as I said before, would play with a variantion in reflectivity, but also in the glossiness, maybe more in the glossiness (see my "gun metal black" entry on the blog, view the animation)

The two things that are bugging me most are the inability to use a bitmaps to control the Reflectivity value (modifying reflectivity color looks wrong

But it is exactly the same. The reflectivity actually used is the "reflectivity" value, multiplied by the reflectivity color, multiplied by the BRDF curve. So changing the reflectivity color is totally and 100% the same as doing a (monochromatic) change to the reflectivity color.



and glossiness only blurs)


...and affects the peak intensity of highlights, due to energy conservation; this is an important effect.

as well as the 0 deg. refl. value on the custom BRDF curve (I don't like the IOR falloff curves).


If you do want to map the "0 degree" value you can do it, but you'd need to do it "manually" in the sense that you won't use the build in curve, but a falloff map. Set 0 and 90 degree reflectivities both to 1.0, main reflectivity to 1.0, and a "falloff" map in the reflctivity color slot. Now, you are in total control and drive your reflectivity any which way you want (even build tricky custom brdf curves w. retro-reflectivies and whatnot)

Would it be possible to modify the Arch+Design shader in a way that it can accept bitmaps to control reflectivity and the 0 degree reflection value?

As per above, no modification is needed. It is already 100% possible to do all the things you want to do.

/Z

[Skyraider3D]

Thanks for your help, Zap! Over the past weekend it's all started to make a lot more sense to me. I did use the falloff-in-the-color-slot trick before, but in combination with a curve in the BRDF falloff and the results weren't as I suspected and everything started to look very dark (leading me to think I should leave the specular color white). By putting the reflection to a solid 100% all over the range I do get closer to the effect I want.

I still have a problem with the overall look of the material though. Directly lit it looks too dull, while in the shadows it looks too shiny. (The partly lit areas look great.) I tried to remedy this with a light-shadow falloff, but this creates weird artefacts, especially when used in combination with exposure control. Any ideas how I could keep a more consistent looking finish to the surface?



Also, a bit off-topic here, I get weird shadow artefacts when I use a mr Matte/Shadow/Reflection together with mr Camera Map and an Environment Switcher in my scene. Basically the shadow edges become wavey. As soon as I hide the Matte/Shadow plane the shadows look fine. Any clue what could cause this?



PS. My light setup is a single Direct light with MR shadow map and a Sky light, using the environment.

[TomMannington]

I can't seem to be able to get enviroment maps in A+D materials working when I light a scene with MR sun+sky. If I add an HDRI map in the environment slot then the material renders very flat and dark, if I move the MR Physical sky from the scene environment slot (I need a white background but am rendering some flat metal surfaces and want some contrast and simple reflective features/highlights) into the material slot then all hell breaks lose.

I'm guessing it's something to do with Log exposure control, some help would be much appriciated. I'll post some images tomorrow to better show my results.

[kaizerscythe]

kaizerscythe: I tried to do the same thing for an mp3 player I was modelling (a sandisk sansa which is in my portfolio). By far the best way to replicate it is to use a second mesh layer and make sure both are very high in terms of polycount, mine were 65K each (the limit for a rhino mesh) which allowed about half a milimetre of clearance if i remember correctly. I also seached for advice on this in this thread and posted some of my experiments which might also help. Good luck with it.

thx, yes i`ve tried that, and that`s the best for now, thought i still battle some poly overlapping issue, because if i just "push" the 2nd layer, sometimes some part of it will intersect with first layer. well i just delete the problematic poly.


Query; are you using exposure control in your renderings, and a proper gamma correct workflow? Your images are leaning towards a "gamma 1" look.

/Z

Yes, i use exposure control, but not gamma correct workflow, i`m still confused about that. Should my monitor calibrated before using gamma? or if done by software, should it be from control panel (display option) or from within max itself? if i read correctly, i should just use one of the method isn`t it? still confused about that... thx.

[auden]

Does anyone know where p_MegaTK and associated shaders can be downloaded? I cant access Pavel Ledin's site, and maxplugins.de points there as well.

On a similar note, does anyone know if there will be buffer pass integration coming soon?
I'm learning Mental Ray and the more I use it the more I like it, but this is the MAJOR shortcoming IMO. I know this on the host side, but couldnt Mental Images focus on developing some kind of flexible output shader? The production shaders are great, but it seems to me that using MR as a built-in renderer for visualfx is severely limited until there's a better way (or ANY viable way!) to deal with outputs.

Oh, and this thread has been an amazing resource!

Michael

[MikeBracken]

I can't seem to be able to get enviroment maps in A+D materials working when I light a scene with MR sun+sky. If I add an HDRI map in the environment slot then the material renders very flat and dark, if I move the MR Physical sky from the scene environment slot (I need a white background but am rendering some flat metal surfaces and want some contrast and simple reflective features/highlights) into the material slot then all hell breaks lose.

I'm guessing it's something to do with Log exposure control, some help would be much appriciated. I'll post some images tomorrow to better show my results.


You have to crank up the output on the maps when using exposure control. I have had the output as high as 5000 befor on some HDR images.

Regards,
Mike

[Dashkevicz]

Skyraider3D,

It sounds to me like you would want to increase the diffuse contribution of your material and lower the reflectivity so that it doesn’t get to bright. If you put a mirror in a pitch black room, but it reflects an open window the mirror will be bright, like the parts of the metal that you’d expect to be dark. Adding more diffuse to the material will allow "direct light" to control the illumination of your surface, but you have to reduce the reflectivity (probably by editing the curve, making it more "concave"). MasterZap mentioned that the material is energy conserving, so the material does not "reflect" more energy than it receives. Also, what are you using for the environment; it is very important for very reflective objects.

[Skyraider3D]

Dashkevicz, you are spot on with your observations! Tonight I finally managed to get a good result and several things played a key role in that:
- enabling the "metal" checkbox (which unfortunately forces me to use a Blend material for the painted areas, but so be it)
- changing the diffuse to pure white
- lowering the contribution of the reflection (as you suggested)
- using a better HDRI for the reflection (as you suggested)
- having more variation in my textures
The results are pretty cool and behave fine in both bright light and deep shadow. Please see the attached image.

Thanks very much for your help, I finally have a solution I am happy with :)

[Skyraider3D]

- enabling the "metal" checkbox (which unfortunately forces me to use a Blend material for the painted areas, but so be it)I just managed to by-pass the metal checkbox by putting an inverted copy of my specular mask into the diffuse channel. It looks identical and not having to set up a Blend material saves a lot of hassle.


I guess the reason it took so long for me to get to this effect is that it's very "fragile". If I make the specular mask slightly darker, the whole thing looks like it's covered in dust, while if I make it slightly brighter it starts looking like stainless steel. But I got the effect I want now - finally - and am very happy with the result.

Thanks again guys!


PS. Images below: Left shows metal enabled, diffuse = white. Right shows metal disabled, diffuse is inverted spec/glos map.

[TnB]

please help, why are those splothes appear?
the scene is lit by a sky dome with mr_raytype swithcher with a hdri instanced in eyes rays, fg rays, and refl rays, with output at 84 and mr sun with ,using log. exposure [outdoor daylight checked]
note that if i use a smaller res hdri the annoing spots dont appear, and if i use a bigger one [10000 by8000 px] either it gives an error or the shadows form the mr sun dont appear..
could this be a memory error or some bug? i have 2 gb RAM please someone give feedback ,thanks;)

http://funkyimg.com/viewer.php?img=82626splotches.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Looks like you simply need to use higher quality FG settings.

HDRI TIP: You're not going to get ultra sharp/accurate shadows from a hdr. So it's generally best to use a small blurred copy of your .hdr for the lighting (with a regular light source for the sun) and the full resolution hdr for the reflections only. The small blurred hdr will require far less FG samples to clear than a large detailed HDR.

The really large HDR is probably causing problems due to memory/address space issues. You may want to try the Bitmap Proxy option to see if that helps free up some space.

[TnB]

Thanks jeff,ill try the blurry hdr thing ,havent thought about that;and the bitmap proxy-where is that located :D ?
-i forgot to say that the fg settings were Medium preset and only that hdri makes those spots no matter how high i set the fg settings[i dont use GI],wel i havent tried very high preset ,but..

[JeffPatton]

the bitmap proxy-where is that located :D ?Render settings (F10). More info including what it is/does is detailed in the help file.

[jokenadrian]

Awesome stuff on this wip. Anyone want to collaborate and try to figure out a good realistic snow shader?

[jokenadrian]

Jeff, what does the Bitmap proxy do?? Im not quite sure I understand what that is.

[TnB]

hello,the blurred low-res hdri worked ,now both hdri work[attached a pic http://funkyimg.com/u/64513splotches_gone.jpg];) thanks for the tip and ill try the proxies too.
bye

[MasterZap]

The really large HDR is probably causing problems due to memory/address space issues. You may want to try the Bitmap Proxy option to see if that helps free up some space.

Or use a tiled exr w. a mipmap - mental ray will take that and smile.

/Z

[moidphotos]

Hi Zap

Any hints on which of the five compression types for EXR would create the tiled EXR? or do they all do this by default?

Thanks

[MasterZap]

Hi Zap

Any hints on which of the five compression types for EXR would create the tiled EXR? or do they all do this by default?

Thanks

You need to use the "exrmaketiled.exe" command line tool to build tiled exr's, it's available in the free openexr toolkit from openexr.com

/Z

[moidphotos]

Thank you very much Zap :thumbsup:

The program is only available in an uncompiled version from the Open EXR website, but if you need a compiled version it can be found here - direct link to 33MB zip file (http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/openexr/openexr-1.4.0-vsnet2003.zip)

The tool is inside the zip file inside the Bin folder.

[loran]

ih there,
do you have any A&D settings or others tricks to create this transluscent effect?
I just try differents settings and I cant achieve this :/
http://www.benita-loca.com/images/lampe%20rouge.jpg

[Cinemantica]

Hi loran + all!

Is this something close to what you are after?
I made a A&D-material with lots of translucency. Together with a mrAreaOmni-light. Check out the screendumps for the settings I changed. They are in the zip-file.

Hope this was to any help. Maybe you can tweek things to get the effect you want.

Best regards,

[Glain]

Hello guys, nice thread, very usefull

I was looking at the area and found a nice tutos to make a glowing shader.
I already have some with blinn but I tried last week to make one with mia_material.
This shader was made in 3DS and I can't find the luminance cd/m2 slot in Maya like in this image

http://area.autodesk.com/images/tutorials/the%20area/080305_0735/architectural.jpg

for those who have an account the tutos is there :

http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/tutorials/tutorial_index/material_tutorial_glowing_material_with_mental_ray/

I put a color in the AO light color but doesn't work as well.
Any idea how to achieved this in Maya ???

Thanks

[bgawboy]

There are still spots available for mental ray training starting next week in London by the mental images' training group.

5 Artist classes March 31-April 4
Performance Optimization April 7-8
Writing Shaders April 9-11

You can see a complete list through June on the left panel of the LA mental ray user group web site.
http://www.lamrug.org/

Also each track has more information on prerequisites, cost, etc.
http://www.lamrug.org/artist-track.html
http://www.lamrug.org/td-track.html
http://www.lamrug.org/programmer-track.html

Please email training@mental.com (http://forums.cgsociety.org/training@mental.com) to register, or if you have further questions.

[loran]

Thank you Cinemantica.

I have just publish a maxscript to control several Arch&Design ambient Occlusion settings in one time. It works on selected objects. you can select all objects and adjust all AO setting with this UI.
Enjoy! :)

Global AO settings (http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/loran-maxscript.html)

http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/images/tuto/GlobalAOsettings.jpg (http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/loran-maxscript.html)

[XenObuS]

Nice work Loran!

just one question.

-çà n'agit que sur les objets selectionnés avec des A&D? (sorry french)

le light override correspond a quoi ?

[Mhyrdin]

Fine script and very usefull !:thumbsup:
Thanks Loran !

[loran]

My Global AO Settings script change A&D material AO settings only, if another material is in the object selection it do nothing.
the light override is usefull when Exposure control is activated because a standart AO will show anything in this case. Light overide simply put a OUTPUT in the Custom Ambiant Light Color channel . The spinner value = the RGB Level

[ctrl.studio]

Or use a tiled exr w. a mipmap - mental ray will take that and smile.

/ZHi Zap ! Wanting to add that on 3dsmax to enable texture caching, the true benefit from having a texture tiled, you have to enable 'Distributed Maps'. You know that texture caching is only for 'local' textures. So without Distributed Maps, that actually flags a texture as local, niet caching on tiles. To allow mentalray to see the prefiltering probably also 'Use mr Map Manager' should be checked. That will add a 'Filter' keyword to the texture definition, without that, hardly mr will use the prebuild piramid, ie. it will use just the first level. last requirement if you use an exr is that it should be in rgba_fp, not _h, or you'll have mr warnings that the conversion will be done on-the-fly.

max

[slebed]

Hi Zap ! Wanting to add that on 3dsmax to enable texture caching, the true benefit from having a texture tiled, you have to enable 'Distributed Maps'. You know that texture caching is only for 'local' textures. So without Distributed Maps, that actually flag a texture as local, niet caching on tiles. To allow mentalray to see the prefiltering probably also 'Use mr Map Manager' should be checked. That will add a 'Filter' keyword to the texture definition, without that, hardly mr will use the prebuild piramid, ie. it will use just the first level. last requirement if you use an exr is that it should be in rgba_fp, not _h, or you'll have mr warnings that the conversion will be done on-the-fly.

max

That's interesting. This is problably why I've been having difficultly getting tiled maps to render. So would I check both Distributed Render and Distribute Maps, and leave all the slaves unselected? I imagine so, else the scene would get sent to the slaves for rendering.

[ctrl.studio]

In my tests I did so. Distributed Maps shouldn't be under Distributed Bucket Rendering. Also with that name anyone outthere will think actualy that he's going to distribute something over the network, while it's just the opposite. When Distr Maps is enabled, the slaves will need to have their maps locally on their hd. Also it's required by texture caching, so I'd think some better name and place where to put that checkbox.

max

[fyckfaco]

Anyone got the mr_subscatter shader to hand? lightengine3d has been down for a wihle, and i have a few of jeffs shaders to test out that require this to be installed.
Also anyone know how to do the frosted center of an icecube?

http://www.artofdrink.com/img/ice.jpg

Also does anyone know why Jeffs ice shader is barely visible on a black BG? His render seems to self illuminate?! Has this been done with HDRI or any particular lights?

[MarcoTomaselli]

hi all....i don´t know how to do,for example...a coke,with drops...but the drops is not the problem, i want the aspect of wet...iced tin...i heard something about noise map in glossines...but i tried and it doesn´t looks good....

anybody can help me?

(my english is wrong sometimes)

[Bao2]

I was playing with the new Max 2009 trial and I was testing renders with Jeff's matlab scene and I was horrified what I saw.

The 2009 renders of the matlab scene are very bright and are pinkish compared to renders with max 2008.
To achieve the same level of light in the render I must adjust the intensity of the light from 800 in max 2008 renders to 500 in 2009 with near the same level of light in the scene.
But the pinkish tonality (lack of green) is just insoportable. I was wondering why it was this way until I noted the light has changed. It shows D65 but now just below it and to the right of the kelvin it shows a pinkish slot and not a white color as was in 2008 so lacking of green. What a mess in my opinion. Could anyone know the way of obtaining a white light again without color correcting the rendering? I was trying and I could not achieve a 255,255,255 light in 2009. Call me silly because I don't want the "new enhanced tonalities in light to achieve photorrealism" but I just want the light white again! Perhaps I am missing something obvious like another type of light or something????

[JeffPatton]

You should be able to match your photographic exposure kelvin setting to the kelvin setting on the light source and get a neutral (white) result.

[Bao2]

You should be able to match your photographic exposure kelvin setting to the kelvin setting on the light source and get a neutral (white) result.

Thanks Jeff. Instead the kelvin thing I changed in the logaritmic Exposure Control checking the color correction and setting it at the same value that shows in the light (254,248,255) and now the render is again with white light.

I don't understand why they decided eliminating the only white light (D65) present. Now there is not more white light photometric in Max and we must color correct the output, using the exposure control or photoshop. It seems absurd. Why just don't add a D65 White light or call it D65 Legacy White Light or whatever...

Also it seems incredible we have now to fix the light in matlab scene, I am using 460 to obtain the same 700 I was using in Max 2008 (the original was 800).

[KV99]

http://waher.net/discforarelith.jpg

A little render test with Max 2009, testing out ProMaterials basically, in this picture, plastic. Different plastic ProMaterial settings are used for floor, the disc transparent and non-transparent parts and the same with the box. As for realism, I'm quite satisfied with ProMaterials so far.

[fyckfaco]

Nice, looking forwards to my upgrade to try these out :) Nice model also.

Is this 2008 2009 thing likely to continue? ie 2010 2011 etc? I wonder if they'll take the chance to look at some of the base code that is still in there from max version 1. Though i guess once we're all 64bit that wont matter as much.

[JeffPatton]

Nice test Kristo. :thumbsup:

[JeffPatton]

FWIW, last night I made a blog entry on how to create this clay material using the A&D material:
(click image to enlarge)
http://jeffpatton.net/Blog-images/Clay_test-thb.jpg (http://jeffpatton.net/Blog-images/Clay_test.jpg)

Link to blog is in my sig.

[thorsten hartmann]

Hi KristoVaher,

look very realistic. How to make the chromatic abberration, mental ray or postproduction?

mfg
hot chip

[CyberBanshee]

Hello to everyone!
I got one question.
How to produce SSS pass when using Render elements in MAX 2008?
Diffuse pass got some shiny specular spot :(

[flatulentFuzz]

Ive just started using the mental ray material and was wondering about a few of the shaders and slots

Can someone tell me what the "Photon Volume" slot and the Metal shaders do,or how to use the metal-lume shader correctly.

[CyberBanshee]

Ive just started using the mental ray material and was wondering about a few of the shaders and slots

Can someone tell me what the "Photon Volume" slot and the Metal shaders do,or how to use the metal-lume shader correctly.

Here
http://www.jeffpatton.net/Downloads.htm
take a look. In this sample scenes you can find all what you need for good and quick start.

[MarcoTomaselli]

anybody knows how to do a cold bottle of beer?

sorry if you don´t understand...my english sucks haha

[JeffPatton]

anybody knows how to do a cold bottle of beer?As far as the liquid in the glass goes, there's information on that in the A&D material documentation. For the beer material itself, I'd probably render the liquid out as an A&D material using the "Max Distance" and "Color at Max Distance" parameters to control the color of the liquid. Then render the foam separately and combine in post.

Example:
http://jeffpatton.net/Tests/guiness.jpg
(this is a quick/simple concept test, you'd want more realism by adding bubbles, more realistic foam, etc.)

Ive just started using the mental ray material and was wondering about a few of the shaders and slots Can someone tell me what the "Photon Volume" slot and the Metal shaders do,or how to use the metal-lume shader correctly.There's documentation included in Max on the (lume) tools shaders (and in the early pages of this thread)....Although I have to say that unless you're still using Max6-8, using shaders like the metal(lume) shader today is a bit like trying to use an 8-track player with an iPod (outdated).

mental ray material ultra-quick explanation:

Surface = Defines the diffuse surface (what you see).
Shadow = Controls how the material casts/generates shadows (has nothing to do with the material receiving shadows)
Photon = Controls how photons interact with the material. EX: Do the GI/Caustic photons bounce off the material, or penetrate the material, what color are they, etc.
Photon Volume = Photon volumetric effects. Mainly used for volume caustic type effects (rarely used in 3ds Max).
Bump = Place your bump maps here.
Displacement = Use your displacement maps here inside the 3d displacement or height map displacement shaders.
Volume = This "fills" the object that the material is applied to with volume. Generally speaking the surface shader needs to be somewhat transparent in order for this effect to be visible.
Environment = Defines a local environment reflection map.
Contour = Contour shaders (ex. outlines the mesh with ink lines).
Light Map = Allows the material to read/write a light map. Can be used in 3ds Max for the creation of SSS effects, although by default the lightmap shaders are hidden/disabled.

[jokenadrian]

Could anyone help me out on making sweat. I have a human character I made, Rampage Jackson. I want to put sweat running down his chest and around his face but I cant seem to get anything to work. The base material for him is the SSS Skin Material. Any tips would be great!!

[MOSS]

I tried asking about this in the main forum, but I didn't get a response. I'm having an issue with anisotropic highlights in Mental Ray. It seems that they are getting messed up at the very top and bottom of objects, the area where the highlights should come to a point. I'm having this problem with all the shaders in Mental Ray, but I would be happy to get it to work with just the A&D Material. Here is an example of the problem.
http://www.3dmoss.com/A&D%20Error.jpg

Can anyone please help me with this?

[flatulentFuzz]

Jeff Patton,
Thanks for the help...i really appreciate it.

[Cinemantica]

I want to put sweat running down his chest and around his face but I cant seem to get anything to work.

Hi John!

First:
I would do a particle system that is attached to the surface of the skin. Adding gravity for the droplets to run downwards. Here is a good tut about sticky raindrops with gravity, perhaps it's useful and tweakable for your puropses:
http://www.allanmckay.com/tutorials.html
direct link to tutorial:
http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/waterdrop_tut.avi
(It seems he has exeeded his bandwidth limit at the time I was there.)

Then:
Adding a waterish A&D material to a BlobMesh assigned to the paricle system.

[flatulentFuzz]

Ive been messing with the AnD materials and ive been trying to get this one scene right,using a glass and spheres that should be made up of something like jelly/silicon/rubber,but clearer.I used an AnD physical glass template and changed the color.
Now my problem is that the spheres have waaaay too much black in them,and the actual objects,which i have sitting right in front of me have NO dark areas at all.Theyre a bright blue with better than decent reflections and I have no idea how to get the refraction they have.

What i have here looks nothing like them,and more like glass than anything at all.Could someone tell me how to get rid of the darker areas?

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n302/flatulent_fuzz/glass2.jpg


I would also like to know if the glass itself looks realistic,and if the rim should be so dark.Also,could someone explain what happened to the caustics in the render with the spheres?

http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n302/flatulent_fuzz/glass.jpg

[drdubosc]

Could someone tell me how to get rid of the darker areas?


You may just be running out of rays .. Check out Jeff Patton's blog (http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/), Feb 2008, for a clear explanation. (In fact, check out the entire archive ... twice at least! :) )

[KV99]

This is raytracing problem, without knowing more it's one of the two things:

* Your environment is black, aka has a black background, no matter what objects you have in the scene. This means that the black background may be reflected and refracted in the scene since rays -when traveling- may end up shooting into nothingness, in which case it finds scene environment, background, etc.
Solution 1: add a model around the scene and camera which takes out the possibility of rays hitting background.
Solution 2: use a more convenient environment map or background color.
Solution 3: under A&D material you can use max distance of reflections and refractions and fade them to specific color

* Your raytracing depth is too low. To get a true pixel color on your material, an 'eye' ray is being shot at the pixel which - when it hits a material - it may reflect and/or refract it bounces according to the model and material properties. Since the amount of rays in the scene, especially with high samping may be very large, these calculations need to be limited since at some point you don't need rays being calculated so long that your render time literally crawls. So this is limited as a 'trace depth', aka how many times a ray may change direction when gathering information. If you have many glass objects in the scene, then raytrace needs to have more depth.
Solution: increase reflective, refractive and total raytracing depth under Renderer tab in Render settings.

[flatulentFuzz]

I actually have an HDR map in the environment slot,but should it be in the local environment slot of the material,or in the render environment slot?
Then again,Im not too sure about how to use HDR maps

Thanks for the help

EDIT:You guys are the greatest
I checked out the values for the max trace depth,etc on the blog and tweaked them a bit and managed to fix the glass.Ill work on the spheres next.Even the spheres to reflect off the bottom of the glass like in real life
The only oddity I encountered was when I used something like max trace depth 30,15 for reflection and refraction respectively,the upper edges of the glass remained black.
Then I lowered them to 20,10 for reflect/refract respectively and they were clear like in my render.
One more kinda stupid question,are the edges of the glass supposed to look the way they do?I mean like two seperate lines

http://s115.photobucket.com/albums/n302/flatulent_fuzz/?action=view&current=glass3.jpg

http://s115.photobucket.com/albums/n302/flatulent_fuzz/?action=view&current=glass3.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Could anyone help me out on making sweat. I have a human character I made, Rampage Jackson. I want to put sweat running down his chest and around his face but I cant seem to get anything to work. The base material for him is the SSS Skin Material. Any tips would be great!!In Addition to what Jonas mentioned above, you may want to go by the WIP forum and check out Jonas Thornqvist's Hulk WIP. He has a great looking sweaty skin material there (and he's using 3ds Max / mental ray). Perhaps he'd share some information with you on his configuration.

Link:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5104969&postcount=122

[KV99]

With the recent increase of questions around various forums regarding SSS and reflections, Zap has come to help and made a simple shader available in his blog posting:

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2008/04/beauty-isnt-only-skin-deep-combining.html

Thanks :)

[KV99]

And a quick example below. I wonder if it's possible to do the same with refractions and opacity though? And other A&D shader benefits. In fact, does anyone know how possible would it be to integrate base fast-SSS or physical SSS (and skin, if it's not too complicated) options together with A&D material?

http://waher.net/masterzapsss.jpg

[moidphotos]

With the recent increase of questions around various forums regarding SSS and reflections, Zap has come to help and made a simple shader available in his blog posting:

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2008/04/beauty-isnt-only-skin-deep-combining.html

Thanks :)

Thanks for that KristoVaher (and Zap too) but (and feel free to call me stupid:)) but I can't find the actual link to the file in Zap's blog? There's plenty of links to Jonas Thornqvist's work, but I can't see the actual file itself...

[JeffPatton]

In fact, does anyone know how possible would it be to integrate base fast-SSS or physical SSS (and skin, if it's not too complicated) options together with A&D material?It may not be what you're looking for but I've used the SSS Fast Render shader inside the additional color map of an A&D material (configured for water) to create some funky, slimy stuff before.

Example:
http://jeffpatton.net/Tests/slimer.jpg

[JeffPatton]

I can't find the actual link to the file in Zap's blog? There's plenty of links to Jonas Thornqvist's work, but I can't see the actual file itself...See the blue text...those are links. Simply click on the "skinplus.mi" blue text located near the bottom of his post.

[KV99]

Thanks for that KristoVaher (and Zap too) but (and feel free to call me stupid:)) but I can't find the actual link to the file in Zap's blog? There's plenty of links to Jonas Thornqvist's work, but I can't see the actual file itself...
It's right there in the post, search for skinplus.mi :)

It may not be what you're looking for but I've used the SSS Fast Render shader inside the additional color map of an A&D material (configured for water) to create some funky, slimy stuff before.
What do you mean by using SSS Fast shader inside 'additional color map of an A&D material'? Through Material to Shader?

[JeffPatton]

What do you mean by using SSS Fast shader inside 'additional color map of an A&D material'? Through Material to Shader?No. Open the subsurface.mi file with a text editor. Scroll down to the "SSS Fast Render Shader (mi)" section and put a pound sign (#) in front of the "hidden" tag of this shader to 'unhide' it. Exit & Save the changes made to the subsurface.mi file & start 3ds Max. Now you can assign this Fast Render shader directly to the additional color map of the A&D material.

NOTE: I've also enabled other things in my subsurface.mi file, like the light maps & skin specular shader. I've found them to be useful at times for various things.

[KV99]

Any chance you could upload your 3ds max 2009 related mr *.mi files? I've taken out hidden tags from the files before but without too much trial and error into testing out what shader is useful and what's simply unnecessary, I usually tend to unhide too much and end up with shader and map lists full of unnecessary items. It would help if you'd upload your *.mi files since you've likely gone through the process and know what's useful to unhide and what's not :)

Thanks though, I'll look into the idea in a few days once I'm done with my tomorrows exam :)

[MasterZap]

It may not be what you're looking for but I've used the SSS Fast Render shader inside the additional color map of an A&D material (configured for water) to create some funky, slimy stuff before.


...yeah but doing *only* that gives you nothing. The "SSS Fast Render shader" doesn't do any actual SSS without wiring up the lightmapping shader, which is a complete chore to do in max. (It *can* be done, but there's a reason we simplified it to the material phenomenon ;) )

/Z

[MasterZap]

See the blue text...those are links. Simply click on the "skinplus.mi" blue text located near the bottom of his post.

Not to mention that the topic title itself links to the file... ;)

/Z

[JeffPatton]

Afriad I don't know of any other way (besides light maps) to make the Fast SSS materials work inside other materials like the A&D material. :shrug:

Also I don't know if it's just me or what but I wasn't able to use the skinplus material in 3ds Max 2008 (or 9) until I added a "min version" statement at the beginning of the declaration.

[CyberBanshee]

Afriad I don't know of any other way (besides light maps) to make the Fast SSS materials work inside other materials like the A&D material. :shrug:



Mr. Patton, can you describe how exactly setup SSS Fast Render Shader (mi) and it's light maps for correct working? (or perhaps give some links...)

[ctrl.studio]

Afriad I don't know of any other way (besides light maps) to make the Fast SSS materials work inside other materials like the A&D material. :shrug:
Hi Jeff,

I'll show you one way to do it properly. Or better it's all there ready for you to tweak it !
Take up the adsk_Mtl_Ceramic.mi file. In the 'adsk_Shd_Ceramic' phenomenon, set mia_material_x multiple output to ON (it's the last param at the end). Then in the 'adsk_Mtl_Ceramic' simply put this name 'mia_sss_switcher__instance' instead of the current 'adsk_Shd_Ceramic__instance' in the 'max_mia_mat_renderelem__instance'. Uncomment the lightmap slot in the material root. Unhide these parameters to control SSS in the GUI section at the end of the file : front_sss_color, front_sss_radius, sss_samples. Set the material to Porcellain.
There you go. You have an SSS effect with a mia_material (and only two params !, ok.. they mainly work just for ceramic but you can take a look at the phen and see the implementation).

http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/5999/sssswitchporcelainbuddhwi8.png

max

[moidphotos]

Not to mention that the topic title itself links to the file... ;)

/Z

Thanks to Zap and Jeff and KristoVaher for the help, however I discovered why I could not use basic internet skills like links:rolleyes:... it's because on my PC for some reason the links are not visible in either Firefox or IE!! When I view Zap's blog there are no headers for that post, nor any links aside from the ones I mentioned! I even went through the HTML for the page and there's no sign of them there! Very weird... anyway I tried this on my wife's PC and lo and behold, both links are visible :) So I now have the shader, thankyou... although I'm wondering why my Firefox and IE aren't capable of displaying links on Zap's blog!

[JeffPatton]

Excellent! Thanks for the tip Max! :thumbsup:

[tryhard]

Hi Max,

... could you post the modified ceramic.mi file

must have done something wrong

does not work here


Klaus

[mickatt]

hi MasterZap
Is it possible to update your skinplus.mi to add a displacement slot near the bump shader (like the fast skin material+displacement)

thanks a lot for your great work!

Mickael

[JeffPatton]

It's actually fairly simple to add displacement to Zap's SSS+ shader. I just compared the original displacement version (in the subsurface.mi file) and then copied & pasted the displacement verbiage in the original version over to his new .mi file. Presto-bingo, displacement added.

[mickatt]

ok thanks a lot jeffpatton you rules


because I opened the skinplus.mi file and I did not find where to set this parameter (the famous hidden )

and thanks for sharing your knowledge in mental ray

[3d_vlk]

hi everybody, i have very lame question - i`m trying to figure out how to do per object anti-aliasing ( thats the name in Maya for it ) in 3ds max 2008 (64bit) with MR, as far as my searching goes, i read about mrGeomShaderObject, but i cant figure it out how is it working :banghead: , or if i have the right files - this plugin (http://3dcenter.ru/forum/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=107520) ( 64bit plugin version of mrGeomShaderObject.dlo for MAX9 ) and these shaders (http://3dcenter.ru/forum/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=63469) ( is_miObject.dll & is_miObject.mi ), can anybody please guide me ? :shrug:

EDIT :

I figured it that it needs to be created via create object>mental ray>mr Shader, then load into shader slot is_miObject , but it is not working, MR prompt this :

LINK 0.0 error 191007: cannot load .\shaders_standard\shaders/is_miObject.dll, unknown error code 193, check Win32 manual
API 0.0 warn 302004: .\shaders_standard\include/is_miObject.mi, line 138: while defining declaration "is_miObject": declaring nonexisting function is_miObject

EDIT 2 :
also I noticed in is_miObject this : hardware rendering , but since is_miObject is not working, I cant try it - so how much does it `speed things up` ?

EDIT 3 :
here is just plain test scene with 2 teapots http://www.rado.vitrum-sk.com/temp/test_geom.zip

[tryhard]

... seems to be the 32 BIT version of that is-miObject.dll file?

The plugin mrgeometry Shader should be OKfor max 9, there is a new version for max2009 that you can find at maxplugins.de

...

[3d_vlk]

i think that the mrGeomShaderObject.dlo is okay and the problem is in is_miObject mentalRay shaders, please, anybode can help ?

EDIT :

Or please someone give me directions what i have to do to have per object anti-aliasing in 3ds max 2008 64bit with mentalRay

[ArticSpider]

Sorry I posted in the wrong place.

[Skyraider3D]

I would like to combine glossy and semi-matte paint in the same material. How would I do this? The problem is that I can only get a pleasing looking matte paint using the "Highlights + FG only" only option (alike the A+D Rubber pre-set material), but for the gloss paint I need reflections (alike the default A+D material). With the "Highlights + FG only" option unchecked, the matte material looks too reflective. If I lower its specular and/or its glossiness, I completely lose the highlights.

Any ideas? (besides using a Blend material)

[prisoner881]

And a quick example below. I wonder if it's possible to do the same with refractions and opacity though? And other A&D shader benefits. In fact, does anyone know how possible would it be to integrate base fast-SSS or physical SSS (and skin, if it's not too complicated) options together with A&D material?

Is there any way you can post the material you're using in ths render? Or a copy of the scene file?

[joerka]

Hi guys,

I'm quite new to the whole mentalray stuff, so I've got a bag full of questions ;-).

I think in other renderer like FR there is a "real" dirtmap, because it's not only AmbientOcclusion but simulates real dirt with streaks, noise and so on. Is there a shader or other ways to do that in mentalray? Because I've a fairly complex object and I'm interested if it's possible to skin that thing without unwrapping and manuel texturing, so a dirtshader over metalshader and so on would be great!
Thanks so long

[CaioLamas]

...Is there a shader or other ways to do that in mentalray? Because I've a fairly complex object and I'm interested if it's possible to skin that thing without unwrapping and manuel texturing, so a dirtshader over metalshader...

Hi joerka,

You can just compose materials using the AO shader, for example: Create a blend material, put the AO shader composed with procedural maps like noise in the mask input. In the other imput channels you just put the metal and the rust materials, keep in mind the withe areas result of the composed AO shader have to be the rust, and black areas the metal material.

So, I think is that all.. and sorry for the bad english... :blush:

[ctrl.studio]

i think that the mrGeomShaderObject.dlo is okay and the problem is in is_miObject mentalRay shaders, please, anybode can help ?

EDIT :
Or please someone give me directions what i have to do to have per object anti-aliasing in 3ds max 2008 64bit with mentalRay
try this.

max

ps: I added also some other things I needed recently. take care that the fg_file per-object works only when you have one object in the list. also don't forget that per-object AA need to be in the range of the options AA.. you can't just put any value there.

[Spacelord]

Woo Hoo Max, I cannot wait try this :) thanks

try this.

max

ps: I added also some other things I needed recently. take care that the fg_file per-object works only when you have one object in the list. also don't forget that per-object AA need to be in the range of the options AA.. you can't just put any value there.

[3d_vlk]

try this.

max

ps: I added also some other things I needed recently. take care that the fg_file per-object works only when you have one object in the list. also don't forget that per-object AA need to be in the range of the options AA.. you can't just put any value there.

hi max,
i tried those files, but they are not working in max 2008 x64, assuming the dir names, they are working only in max 2009

EDIT:

i tried this shaders on max 2009 x64, but something i`m doing wrong, cause mr debug windows shows this :
PHEN 0.3 error: ctrl_object->object:: Teapot01|GeomObject(Mesh00)

i attached a test scene, please Max, if you have time, take a look on what is wrong, thanx in advance ...

[Bao2]

It's actually fairly simple to add displacement to Zap's SSS+ shader. I just compared the original displacement version (in the subsurface.mi file) and then copied & pasted the displacement verbiage in the original version over to his new .mi file. Presto-bingo, displacement added.

In Post 170 of this page
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=43&t=616122&page=12&pp=15
Jonas posted a updated zap skinplus with height max displacement and two bump maps (diffuse and specular)

[Spacelord]

AA per object is not working for me either, I get the same error,
Using 3dsmax 2009 Design 32bit.
PHEN 0.3 error: ctrl_object->object:: Teapot03|GeomObject(Mesh00)

[maxplugins]

I get the same error, but the shader is working fine in 32-bit 2008 and 2009. I like the per object AA, but what I like even more is that labels now work in Max. I tried it with the Glare shader (I had to add back the label options which were removed in Max 2008 / 2009) and it works just great.

Thanks a lot Max!

Dave

[ctrl.studio]

AA per object is not working for me either, I get the same error,
Using 3dsmax 2009 Design 32bit.
PHEN 0.3 error: ctrl_object->object:: Teapot03|GeomObject(Mesh00)sorry, it's not an error, it's a kind of verbosity I used to check what was the tag passed to the geoshader.

then take care that per-object AA is a bit tricky.
let's say you have a 0-2 as min/max samples (1, 16) in the render setup.
the per-obj AA values you can use are 0/0, 0/1, 1/1, 1/2, 2/2. just those that are in the range of the option AA. here the best is 1/2. so that if you have a global AA for your scene like 0-2 (1,16), then to increase AA for your object you could just put 1-2 (4,16).

max

[MikeBracken]

Thanks Max ! This works great.


Regards,
Mike

[Spacelord]

Thanks Max,
That works a treat,
How come Object AA has to be in the Scene AA Range ?

[Cinemantica]

Hello everybody.

I have a problem. I'm rendering out files using Max9 (ext1) with .exr as output with the following channels:



Z-Buffer
UV Coords
Velocity
Normal
Obect ID
I'm also outputting the following Render Elements:

Atmosphere
Diffuse
Reflection
Self-Illumination
Shadow
Specular
Refraction
My problem occured when I applied a Daylight System to the scene and adding a Logarithmic Exposure Control. The beauty render looks fine but the Diffuse Render Element is clearly over exposed (see pic's for reference).

My comp guy uses Nuke to put it all toghether and he can't get the values to match.
I have tried to deactivate the exposure control, lowering the mrSun, lights and mrSky but that kills all the SSS and colour dynamics in the scene (see test_dna-strand-03_no_expctrl.jpg for reference).

Is ther a work-around to this, anyone?

[ctrl.studio]

render elements are not tonemapped. so if you plain to export them and recomp'em after, you should tonemap them in nuke, and the tonemapping you are applying in 3dsmax should be used only as a general guide. in fact shoudn't be hard to resemble the look of a logexp with another tmp in a compositing apz.

best thing is that if you know in advance that your elements will be comp'ed after, you should try to achive the look you want directly in your comp apz and not in 3dsmax.

or just go for a custom tmp, where you have a shader to apply in 3dsmax and a counterpart plugin for nuke that does exactly the same.

max

[MikeBracken]

Hi Max. Great stuff as always.

I was wondering if you could explain how the fgmap option works. This looks very usefull.

Regards,
Mike

[Cinemantica]

render elements are not tonemapped. so if you plain to export them and recomp'em after, you should tonemap them in nuke, and the tonemapping you are applying in 3dsmax should be used only as a general guide. in fact shoudn't be hard to resemble the look of a logexp with another tmp in a compositing apz.

or just go for a custom tmp, where you have a shader to apply in 3dsmax and a counterpart plugin for nuke that does exactly the same.
max
Thanks a lot for your prompt answer, Max!
I'll look into this more together with the comp guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_mapping

[Spacelord]

Hi,
I've tried adjusting adsk_Mtl_Ceramic.mi a couple times and never got it to work.
It seems I screw something up, I don't know if its changing the hidden tags or whats going. I would love to see exactly what you a changing.

cheers

Hi Jeff,

I'll show you one way to do it properly. Or better it's all there ready for you to tweak it !
Take up the adsk_Mtl_Ceramic.mi file. In the 'adsk_Shd_Ceramic' phenomenon, set mia_material_x multiple output to ON (it's the last param at the end). Then in the 'adsk_Mtl_Ceramic' simply put this name 'mia_sss_switcher__instance' instead of the current 'adsk_Shd_Ceramic__instance' in the 'max_mia_mat_renderelem__instance'. Uncomment the lightmap slot in the material root. Unhide these parameters to control SSS in the GUI section at the end of the file : front_sss_color, front_sss_radius, sss_samples. Set the material to Porcellain.
There you go. You have an SSS effect with a mia_material (and only two params !, ok.. they mainly work just for ceramic but you can take a look at the phen and see the implementation).



max

[flatulentFuzz]

I have a few questions about the car paint material in mental ray.

Ive tried using it with a skylight,and alternatively,a spotlight.Now my problem is that sometimes when I use the skylight,certain patches of the geometry are slightly blackened,as if theyd been covered with ash,but the overall result is good as far as reflections and spec go.

When I use a spotlight,I dont have any problems with darkening of geometry,but the flakes and difference in facing/edge color make the shader look pretty unrealistic.

Is there any way to optimize it without using a skylight,and achieve a similar result?

Ive been using final gather on medium(250 rays per fg point)

[jokenadrian]

ctrl.studio = what is tonemapping?

[Spacelord]

I've tried a couple of times to add the SSS into the adsk_Mtl_Ceramic.mi and haven't got it to work.

Here's my attempt, if someone could check it out and let me know what I've done wrong
I would be greatfull.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dnwwbfmey3i

[tryhard]

... all i can say is that i tried it too and like you without success ...

[tryhard]

ctrl.studio = what is tonemapping?

Wikipedia will explain to you

[fossadouglasi]

I found a post about multi colored streaks with the mr glare.
Does anyone know is that possible? Plugin? Script?
It would make helluva nice 80's spectral glow effects if it was possible.

I was experimenting with this kind of thingie, as i found out that it takes all maps just as b/w.

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc257/FossaDouglasi/3d%20stuff/streak.jpg

[TomMannington]

Afternoon gentlemen. I was playing around with the mental ray carpaint material and quite enjoying myself when I realised that the glossy samples tool built into the material seems to be similar to that of the one used in the older Lume maps (ie rather slow to render).

I wondered if there was a way to use the metallic flakes indside an A+D mat so the glossy reflection samples tool can be used without slowing the rendering time down to a crawl.

Although having just writen this I've thought about using a shellac, with the piant as the base material (with all its reflective settigs as low as possible) and the A+D as the shellac material picking up surface reflections. What does anyone think?

[TomMannington]

Had a play around durung my lunch break. Please excuse the massive specular highlight, the models I normally deal with are constucted from box section so the highlight isn't quite so obvious and I didnt have time to tweak it.

My Regular Car Paint:
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/6017/001qh0.th.jpg (http://img361.imageshack.us/my.php?image=001qh0.jpg)

With A+D glossy samples:
http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/8605/002on9.th.jpg (http://img361.imageshack.us/my.php?image=002on9.jpg)

Might re-scale it later so that the fakes are more easily visible.

[Bao2]

Afternoon gentlemen. I was playing around with the mental ray carpaint material and quite enjoying myself when I realised that the glossy samples tool built into the material seems to be similar to that of the one used in the older Lume maps (ie rather slow to render).

I wondered if there was a way to use the metallic flakes indside an A+D mat so the glossy reflection samples tool can be used without slowing the rendering time down to a crawl.

Although having just writen this I've thought about using a shellac, with the piant as the base material (with all its reflective settigs as low as possible) and the A+D as the shellac material picking up surface reflections. What does anyone think?

Well you just ruined my weekend. :wip: