CGTalk - Mental Ray

thorsten hartmann

05-23-2008, 10:13 PM

Hi

the default metallic_paint pro have not features for Flakes. I have wrote a extendet Version.

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_metallic_paint_shot_1.jpg
http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_metallic_paint_1.jpg

can you download here: http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?t=1437

@max: i have try you tip with Porcelain + SSS but don´t work. I remove "#" from Lightmap, multipl is "on"...

my way is this:

#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Switch Mia/SSS base material
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
shader "mia_sss_switcher__instance" "adsk_Utility_Switch8Shader"
(
"switcher" = "spider_instance.mia_sss_switcher",
"type" 0,
"shader_1" "adsk_Shd_Ceramic__instance",
"shader_2" "misss_fast__instance"
)

#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Render Elements support ##############################################
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
shader "max_mia_mat_renderelem__instance" "max_mia_material_renderelements"
(
"mia_material" "mia_sss_switcher__instance",
"GBufferID" = interface "x.gbuffer_id"
)

#------------------------------------------------------------------------
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Material Connections
#------------------------------------------------------------------------
material "mat" opaque
= "max_mia_mat_renderelem__instance"
photon = "adsk_Shd_Ceramic__instance"
lightmap = "lm_write__instance"

end material
root material "mat"

TomMannington

05-24-2008, 10:21 AM

Thanks again ctrl.studio, took me a while to work out what you meant. I really should learn about shader writing unfortunately I bearly have the time inbetween work to use Max in my spare time anymore so a bodge solution using current (or even out of date) materials is generally how I get round things.

Came up with pretty good solution then went and left the jpegs at work, typical. So will render some off here at home later.

Thorsten hartmann: if that was a reply to my question thaks very much, I'll be sure to download it once I upgrade. The time you and others like Jeff put into Mental Ray is invalueble to us numpties.

hugoguerra

05-25-2008, 07:13 PM

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

So, how do you not do tone mapping in Max?
Since you are saying it should be done in Nuke, how can we render the Mental Ray elements without the tone mapping? Maybe I am say something very stupid here, but I am not an expert in Max so bear with me please.

thorsten hartmann

05-26-2008, 08:35 AM

Hi FuriousD,

my promaterial ceramic phenomenon can you donwload here: http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?p=10972#10972

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_porcelan_1.jpg

mfg
hot chip

zulmar

05-27-2008, 04:22 AM

my contribution to the group:

to control the photons of GI with the use of promaterials I use mental ray conection (slot photons) of the "material blend" and put the promaterials in the first slot of the blend.

Spacelord

05-28-2008, 06:33 AM

Thanks Thorsten, It works a treat :)

thorsten hartmann

05-29-2008, 09:05 AM

Hi Guys,

and the next Bug... The Cutouts Maps from the pro material metal don´t work. I have fixed and can you donwload on the GMRF.

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_pro_material_metal_1.jpg

download Promaterial Metal (GMRF): http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?p=10997#10997

mfg
hot chip

thorsten hartmann

05-30-2008, 11:39 PM

Hi Guys,

i have update the pro material ceramic with more sss parameter. Now it´s work in the "unit" mode and you have more controll.

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_porcelain_parameter_1.jpg

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_porcelain_dragon_1.jpg

donwload update: http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?t=1514

mfg
hot chip

Nikolab

05-31-2008, 02:21 AM

That is fantastic :) Thanks Hot Chip...

fotonyka

05-31-2008, 02:25 AM

exist more adjustment to do for take better rendering times.
maybe BSP2 instead BSP,,
maybe you are using the option MITCHEl from sampling quality,, or using high values for minimun and maximum samples per file(with high values you win quality but increase time)
or maybe you dont use a photon map,,to reuse all the analisys...
final gather can help GI, you can decrease the number of photons when you use FG.
high levels of photons dont mean that your scene will have high level of illumination...
but in your case you are using caustic,,,maybe you can increase the value of the multiplier and reduce the number of photons,,, and the radius too.
well,, i try to do an example and test my rendering time..
see you.
good luck.

Spacelord

05-31-2008, 04:19 AM

Nice job Thorsten, Here's a quick test.

http://www1.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/11d2709035f018f05014b9fc88c9180d5g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=2sjdgms1gwy&thumb=4)

jokenadrian

05-31-2008, 06:22 AM

I clicked on the link to download the shader but i cant find it on the German site, could someone put a direct download link please??

Thanks

thorsten hartmann

05-31-2008, 07:16 AM

Hi jokenadrian,

for downloading files from the GMRF must you registered.

mfg
hot chip

jokenadrian

05-31-2008, 05:02 PM

thorsten hartmann - i registered but i cant find to link or button to download it on that germany forum?

thorsten hartmann

05-31-2008, 06:00 PM

hi jokenadrian,

it is in the attachment, please look again and i have see, you are registered. :beer:

jokenadrian

05-31-2008, 08:38 PM

i got it to work. thanks for the help!

lichorosario

05-31-2008, 09:13 PM

...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.)/Z

I was trying to replicate what Jeff did, and like Zap says, it gives me nothing.. (no sss). So, how could we wire up the "lightmapping shader" to the A&D aditional color material?

Thanks in advance! (i'm learning a LOT from all of you)

SyaPed

06-04-2008, 03:14 AM

Hey guys, just wondering if all the info from this thread has been archived somewhere?

thorsten hartmann

06-05-2008, 01:11 PM

Hi Guys,

In 3dsmax can you adjust the in/exclude Lightsfunction on the Lightobject but when you work with mental ray, it is don´t work. In mental ray can we use the Shaderfunction. I have update all Pro Materials for in/exclude Lights.

small example metallic Paint:

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_Untitled1_3.jpg

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_Untitled1_4.jpg

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_t2_1.jpg

download all ProMaterials Update: http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?t=1543

have fun

mfg
hot chip

InoDetelic

06-05-2008, 11:24 PM

This took 4 hours in 2003, and everyone complained it was too much, just look at the beginning of this thread...

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/sss-glass.jpg

I it still looks cool 5 years and many versions of max after.

You could render something like this in 15 minutes or less today. (right?)

The more processing power we have, the more demanding our tools will be and more will we abuse of them... I had renders for which took hours in 3ds r4, and my graphic card now renders a lot of those renders per second with higher resolutions...

Just a thought... continue on with the thread :cool:

Skyraider3D

06-06-2008, 02:12 AM

InoDetelic, you're absolutely right in your observation. I switched to Mental Ray to get better images in the same or less rendertime. But since I do final renders at high resolution overnight, it doesn't really matter if it's 2 hours or 7; I'll be sleeping anyway. If it renders in 2 hours I would probably just crank up the Final Gather settings to get an ever-so-slightly better image in 7 hours! ;)

flatulentFuzz

06-07-2008, 04:28 PM

InoDetelic...ive always wondered how you did that material and never found out...

Would you mind telling me?

InoDetelic

06-08-2008, 01:22 AM

InoDetelic...ive always wondered how you did that material and never found out...

Would you mind telling me?

It wasn´t me, that's Jeff Patton's material (right?).

Read the first posts.

thorsten hartmann

06-08-2008, 08:43 AM

Hi Guys,

i give a new update of promaterials, because it was a bug in promaterials ceramic/porcelain with SSS. I can´t use a ceramic Shader and a porcelain with sss in one rendering. I have wrote a new Promaterials: Porcelain SSS and delete the SSS Function in promaterials: ceramic/porcelain, that´s work now.

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_Untitled1_6.jpg

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_Untitled0_2.jpg

donwload: http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?t=1543

youngy

06-09-2008, 11:49 AM

Hello, I have attached an image from a scene I am working on utilising some cutaway effects. I have used Double Sided materials for creating the effect of a cutaway, with my Facing Material acting as the outer 'painted or metalic' finish, and the 'Back Material' providing the cutaway interior.
I am trying to show the cutaway material as a solid yellow colour, which in the past using Scanline, has always worked via a self-illuminated material (i.e. no shadows or other effects, just a nice pure yellow throughout.)
Now I am rendering with Mental Ray, and the material does not seem to produce a fully illuminated single yellow colour. In the attached image I have added, I have shown zoomed areas that highlight the problem, - there seems to be variations in the yellow like shading due to the light source, I don't want that, I just would like a solid yellow colour.
Can anyone suggest a material that will generate a solid colour regardless of light setup, rendering with Mental Ray?

Any help much appreciated...

3DKonglen

06-09-2008, 02:50 PM

Hi !

This question is way old I know that , but for some reason it is not as easy as it should be ! to add a simple background picture when using the daylight system.

method 1: The most comon way is to simply use the mr Physical sky map from the environment slot, drag it over to a free material slot, and place the bitmap under haze and bost up the RGB level under output to about 6 or 7.

I dont like that method at all because what you then render doesnt look much like the original bitmap you used. It is way desaturated and dull looking.

method 2: This method is much better and makes the rendered background look just like the original bitmap. http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/archive/2007/11/

However that method doesnt work if you are using the photgraphical exposure control, only the logarithmic exposure control. Does anyone know how to make it work with the photographical exposure control ? or at least a method that works with it ?

in short .. why is it so difficault to be able to render a background in mental ray when using the daylight system ? I dont want to add it during composition. (dont want to add a reflection map to all my objects in the scene, and I want the reflection from the sky)

JeffPatton

06-09-2008, 03:09 PM

It wasn´t me, that's Jeff Patton's material (right?).That's correct.

I just would like a solid yellow colour. Can anyone suggest a material that will generate a solid colour regardless of light setup, rendering with Mental Ray?One quick way would be to use a mental ray material for the yellow color. Assign a checker map to the surface slot of the mental ray material. Assign a yellow color (or whatever color you want) to BOTH color swatches of the checker map. That's it.

Does anyone know how to make it work with the photographical exposure control ? or at least a method that works with it?Did you try this:http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5146579&postcount=99

youngy

06-09-2008, 04:30 PM

One quick way would be to use a mental ray material for the yellow color. Assign a checker map to the surface slot of the mental ray material. Assign a yellow color (or whatever color you want) to BOTH color swatches of the checker map. That's it.

Thanks for this Jeff, that's worked.

Cheers

lichorosario

06-10-2008, 01:23 AM

in short .. why is it so difficault to be able to render a background in mental ray when using the daylight system ? I dont want to add it during composition. (dont want to add a reflection map to all my objects in the scene, and I want the reflection from the sky)

What I use to do is this:
I put a spherical HDR/LDR as a background image, and turn off the sky on the skylight system (if I need the sun)
Or I use a regular sky (not a MR one) and use the environment map to get the HDR illumination.
If the background is not spherical, I use the MR production shaders (a background switcher, with a camera map on the background slot, and the picture on it's "map" slot.

In order to get the background image almost the same as the original picture, I use to do what I posted here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5190616&postcount=107

Greetings!

3DKonglen

06-10-2008, 08:26 AM

thanks alot jeff and lichorosario for your replies !

I guess it would be nice if one could adjust the background exposure seperately from the rest of the scene, maybe that will be added later..

prisoner881

06-10-2008, 08:55 PM

I'm trying to create a red carpet gala set (think of the Oscars) and I'm having difficulty creating a nice looking red carpet. I've been using the MadVelvet MI shader from highend3d.com with mixed results. It looks good from medium and long distances, but doesn't look good up close. It looks like a solid slab of red. I've added a bit of noise to simulate the look of it being walked on, but it just doesn't look right. I tweaked the shader to look right on drapes, curtains, and stuff with lots of folds in it, but carpet has none of that. I'm out of ideas for this particular shader.

I'm considering using something like really a fine grass shader (colored red with a bit of sheen) but I've never even attempted that before. Any advice from the regulars here on the best way to create convincing thick, deep-pile red carpet? The red carpet has a gold trim on the edges with a bit of tassle.

Also, note this is going to be used in an animation, not a still shot. I have a moderate renderfarm (eight dual-core, dual-CPU nodes and two quad-core, single CPU workstations) but I don't want a solution that's going to take a month to render.

Thanks!

Skyraider3D

06-12-2008, 09:52 PM

Can anyone suggest a material that will generate a solid colour regardless of light setup, rendering with Mental Ray?
One quick way would be to use a mental ray material for the yellow color. Assign a checker map to the surface slot of the mental ray material. Assign a yellow color (or whatever color you want) to BOTH color swatches of the checker map. That's it.
Thanks for this Jeff, that's worked.
Hmm maybe I'm not getting it, but that renders black - i.e. it doesn't seem to be ignoring the light setup at all.

If this actually does work somehow, it also solves the whole background image issues.

JeffPatton

06-12-2008, 10:58 PM

Hmm maybe I'm not getting it, but that renders black - i.e. it doesn't seem to be ignoring the light setup at all.

If this actually does work somehow, it also solves the whole background image issues.That was a working solution for his particular scenario because when you apply a color or bitmap to the surface slot of the mental ray material it doesn't define a 'normal' shading surface, only a color. Therefore it wouldn't have any shadow influence, which is what he was after. Naturally there are other ways to achieve the same effect, but IMHO, that was a quick/painless way.

The exposure control still affects this technique just like everything else, so it's nota solution for wanting the environment map to be unaffected by the mr photographic exposure control.

Skyraider3D

06-12-2008, 11:25 PM

That was a working solution for his particular scenario because when you apply a color or bitmap to the surface slot of the mental ray material it doesn't define a 'normal' shading surface, only a color.Yup, I get that.

The exposure control still affects this technique just like everything else, so it's nota solution for wanting the environment map to be unaffected by the mr photographic exposure control.Pity! :)
Thanks Jeff!

Ehren

06-17-2008, 08:40 PM

Where are all the volume shaders for Max? What I'm really looking for is a cloud ray marcher. Binary Alchemy has such a shader but not for Max. What's the deal with this? I'm SICK of waiting for Afterworks and don't want to buy anything from Cebas and listen to them pitch finalRender. There ain't nothing listed in maxplugins.de for volumes iether. Is there a reason for this scarsity?

Michael McCarthy

06-17-2008, 09:43 PM

Where are all the volume shaders for Max? What I'm really looking for is a cloud ray marcher.
Have a look at Pyrocluster if you like. It's has full support for MR. The product page is here: Pyrocluster Product Page (http://www.cebas.com/products/products.php?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=47)

You can also take a look at this video demo that shows Pyrocluster working with MR as well as its speed and feature set here:

Click on the image below to play the video:
http://www.cebasusa.com/m_o_v_e_e/pyro35B/Pyro35Demo.jpg (http://www.cebasusa.com/m_o_v_e_e/pyro35B/pyro35B.html)

PS: you don't need finalRender at all. Pyrocuster works very well with scanline, MR, and fR.

Thanks a bunch
Michael McCarthy
cebas USA

Skyraider3D

06-18-2008, 12:36 PM

However, due to the advanced and more developed features of finalRender Stage-1, Global Illumination for volumetric effects based on is only possible when finalRender is used.
Will there be better MR support in the future?

Michael McCarthy

06-18-2008, 01:15 PM

Will there be better MR support in the future?
[/size][/font]
MR is fully supported with our Pyrocluster shader and engine.

There is Extra features fR offers only because we make both the renderer and Pyro. In this case we are able to do some extra things with our renderer for special GI on volumetrics, speed increases etc. Mental Images would have to do some work to support these types of advanced features with their renderer. So its not something we can do more on our side alone.

That being said we are always very happy working with all developers to make sure the plugin community has the best comparability. You can see this with our heavy support of Afterburn as fR supports GI with that and many other advanced integration features with TP too. Even thought we make a "competing" product we want to be sure that compatibility is there for all production environments possible.

Thanks a bunch
Michael McCarthy
cebas USA

thorsten hartmann

06-18-2008, 02:32 PM

Michael McCarthy

06-18-2008, 03:50 PM

Hi
i have test Pyrocluster for mental ray and it is nod bad, but for commercial productions not useable. Better is XSI + Binary Alchemy Volumen Shader.
I have test the Demoscene from CEBAS: Moonstone Scene and the Tree Scene and the renderings makes trouble.

Pyrocluster is actually used heavily with MR in large film, broadcast, and game cinematic productions. I cant speak about XSI and Binary Alchemy but I'm sure its also a very nice product!

Im not sure when you may have tested but in Pyro 3.5 we really hammered on all things MR. All shaders were re written and we made sure it was heavily tested in beta. Here are examples of the scenes you had sited and a few more to that show full compatibility rendered on my laptop. (please note that these are demo scenes and tuned for speed/quality so users can get up and running ASAP. Any of these can be tuned for more quality in a production scenario.)

24 second tree scene (showing interesting volumetric abilities)
http://www.cebasusa.com/MRPyro/Tree24Secs.jpg

10 Second mars scene (showing Hyper Solids with MR)
http://www.cebasusa.com/MRPyro/Mars10Secs.jpg

13 second cloud rendering
http://www.cebasusa.com/MRPyro/Clowds13Secs.jpg

10 Second plasma ball (showing mapping abilities with MR)
http://www.cebasusa.com/MRPyro/PlasmaBall10Secs.jpg

4 second Near Far demo (showing Effects channels with MR)
http://www.cebasusa.com/MRPyro/NearFar4secs.jpg

4 second Fast Slow demo (showing Effect Channels with MR)
http://www.cebasusa.com/MRPyro/FastSlow4secs.jpg

10 Second Mixer demo (showing Mixer usage with MR)
http://www.cebasusa.com/MRPyro/Mixer10Secs.jpg

Hope this helps and gives you some more info. There is now all these images, the Video demo, and product page for anyone to look at which is a lot. As I'm not looking to hijack this thread I would ask that for more inquiries you pop over to the cebas forum if you like. There is a lot of helpful guys there that can answer any questions.

Thanks a bunch
Michael McCarthy
cebas USA

loran

06-18-2008, 04:03 PM

thorsten hartmann, do you know if there is any "Binary Alchemy Volumen Shader" version for max?
It looks very amazing.

thorsten hartmann

06-18-2008, 04:48 PM

Hi Michael McCarthy,

can you make a animation of the mars scene without errors and send this file to me.:) That´s are nice stils but not animations. Use Pyrocluster the "auto Volume" mode from mental ray?

@loran: i have talk about with the developer from binary alchemy. At this thime we have no chance, because 3dsmax have a other particle system as xsi. that is the problem for the delevoper from binary alchemy.

Pyrocluster is the best solution at this time for 3dsmax and the only one.;)

mfg
hot chip

Ehren

06-18-2008, 06:13 PM

I think volume shaders are pretty cool. I just find it interesting that there are a lack of specific shaders for max and mr. Seems like the power of mr is kinda spotty across the different apps it's integrated with. Some shaders exist for some apps and not others. I don't know why this is the case, but it's frustrating when it's the same renderer.

thorsten hartmann

06-19-2008, 09:47 AM

hi ehren

what you think is a problem is for other a good solution. mental images sales only a framework and autodesk or avid implemended mental ray in xsi, maya or what ever. This is the reason for different feauture in mental ray/xsi or mentalray/3dmsax... The advantage is, that other companys can wrote mental ray shader and the most shaders work in xsi, maya, 3dsmax, houdini ...

mfg
hot chip

everlite

06-21-2008, 11:00 AM

anyone have any info/links to a peach fuzz shader to work with sss?

Best,
Dave.

Geser

06-22-2008, 03:11 PM

Hey all!

Could you help me with some questions.

Is it possible to map color of Light Persistence in dielectric material?

Also dielectric material does reflections, can you give tips how to change it's strength?

Is it possible to blur reflections and refractions with dielectric material?

Please help!

jcrogel

06-23-2008, 07:20 AM

http://www.mymentalray.com/mymr25.jpg

All,

We just upgraded our website and added a fully rewritten from ground up Material, Shader, Tool and Video database for sharing all of the mental ray info we, as a community need. Drop by the page and check out our:

1. 100% fully dynamic homepage (easy way to see the site activity from all its sections).
2. Faster and optimized site for faster viewing (about 50% faster).
3. All new Material section.
4. All new Shader section.
5. Tool section.
6. Video section.
7. Updated gallery (from MYMR users).
8. Easy browsing and search.
9. Forum Thumbnail viewing.
10. Dynamic surprise features.

To see what MYMR v2.5 is all about. We suggest you take the video tour, it can be found in the home page. I hope you appreciate the work behind it :)

Thank you from the whole team behind
www.mymentalray.com (http://www.mymentalray.com/)

Bao2

06-29-2008, 10:16 AM

loran

07-07-2008, 11:03 AM

video linkedhttp://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/ec8039f236.jpg (http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/2.42/sb_stress_mask-h264.mov)

Is there an existing Stress or Tension shader for 3ds max like the one shown bellow for blender. I remember seeing this for XSI times ago...
thx people

Skyraider3D

07-10-2008, 12:21 PM

Is there any way that I can boost the effect of Ambient Occlusion in the A&D material? I find it's usually next to invisible.

Is there an existing Stress or Tension shader for 3ds max like the one shown bellow for blender.I think there used to be a commercial plugin for that some years ago. Can't remember the name though.

JHN

07-10-2008, 01:46 PM

rpmvideo linkedhttp://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/ec8039f236.jpg (http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/2.42/sb_stress_mask-h264.mov)

Is there an existing Stress or Tension shader for 3ds max like the one shown bellow for blender. I remember seeing this for XSI times ago...
thx people

Have a look at this tension modifier (http://www.rpmanager.com/plugins/TensionMod.htm) from Grant Adam.

-Johan

JHN

07-10-2008, 01:51 PM

Is there any way that I can boost the effect of Ambient Occlusion in the A&D material? I find it's usually next to invisible.

You could always pipe in the amb/occ shader in the diffuse... that would certainly boost it.

loran

07-10-2008, 02:16 PM

thx JHN ! great modifier!

Skyraider3D, to boost your AO you can use an OUTPUT material in the custom light channel and boost the output over until you see something. That is basically what my script GLOBAL AO SETTINGS do.
This way you can see AO effect even with a tonemapping applied.

http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/loran-maxscript.html

InoDetelic

07-10-2008, 02:48 PM

Is there any way that I can boost the effect of Ambient Occlusion in the A&D material? I find it's usually next to invisible.

For me, "max distance" usually does the trick. It does not affect heavy light zones, like where the sun's hitting on the surfaces, but in the shadows you see a lot of difference.

you might consider an AO pass and mix it in post production.

Ian00

07-16-2008, 09:29 AM

Originally Posted by loran
video linkedhttp://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/ec8039f236.jpg (http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/2.42/sb_stress_mask-h264.mov)

Is there an existing Stress or Tension shader for 3ds max like the one shown bellow for blender. I remember seeing this for XSI times ago...
thx people

Here's a similar shader for doing this is called tc_curvature-
http://www.tomcowland.com/mentalray/tc_curvature/index.html
Works well for me in max.

eclipse2k

07-16-2008, 10:07 AM

Here's a similar shader for doing this is called tc_curvature-
http://www.tomcowland.com/mentalray/tc_curvature/index.html
Works well for me in max.

Could you please share some settings that makes this shader work in max please. I just can't get it work, surface either totally black or white.

Ian00

07-16-2008, 11:12 AM

Well, they do have a list of parameters on their site,
http://www.tomcowland.com/mentalray/tc_curvature/index.html and I'm pretty sure that the conversions for max are-
cvSource = Calculate from
0 = Surface Derivaives (NURBS)
1 = Tesselation
2 = Normal Sampling
cvMethod = Method
0 = Average
1 = Gaussian
2 = Barycentric Interpolation (Tesselation derived curvatures only)
outRange = Range
0 = Full (only usefull for NURBS surfaces)
1 = Convex only (+ve)
2 = Concave only (-ve)
maxClip = Convex Max
minClip = Concave Max
lowTrim = Threshold
bias = Smooth Gamma
smoothResult = Smooth Result
samples = Samples
focus = Sample Spread
These settings are very specific and do take some time to tweak to have any kind of good results. Let me know if you want a sample scene.

eclipse2k

07-16-2008, 01:18 PM

Ian00, thank you for your answer. Tried one more time and yes, it's working. Strange that it didn't earlier, problems with myself i guess. Just one strange thing - it works best when outRange is set to 1 (convex), but in this case it colors convex AND concave in white, and if outRange is set to 2 (concave) it doesn't do anything - everything is black. Didn't try with nurbs yet, probably it really working only with such kind of geometry.
Sorry for terrible english

gulio

07-16-2008, 02:33 PM

Ian00

07-16-2008, 02:42 PM

Here's a quick test I did with some cloth. Its a combination of 2 curvature shaders, one in red the other in green.

Red shader's parameterss are-
cvsource-1
cvmethod-2
outrange-1
maxclip-0.42
minclip- -1.0
lowtrim-0
bias-2.2
smoothresult-checked
sample-32.0
sample spread-50.0

Green shader's parameterss are-
cvsource-2
cvmethod-1
outrange-2
maxclip-1.0
minclip- -0.2
lowtrim-0.1
bias-2.2
smoothresult-checked
sample-256.0
sample spread-20.0

eclipse2k

07-16-2008, 03:20 PM

This curvature shader seems to me only be similar to the one loran was looking for. The stress shader colours the geometry based on a modification of a initial state, whereas the curvature shader colours the geometry based on the roundness properties.

Yes, they are different. I haven't seen any tension shaders for mr. Finalrender have such thing and there is a plugin for 3dsmax that do this on vertex colors, so it's possible to use it with mr although the quality depends on mesh resolution
http://rpmanager.com/plugins/TensionMod.htm

Ian00

07-16-2008, 03:59 PM

Yes it is different than the tension plugin, but curvature may be the closest mr shader to it, since the plug-in stores information about the meshes animation, I'm not sure if its possible for a mr shader to store any information about an animating mesh...But if you just want to use the shader for visual appeal, curvature could have some useful qualities.

gulio

07-17-2008, 09:02 AM

@ eclipse2k - thanks for the link. I didn´t saw before that he has so many cool plugins and scripts. :)

JeffPatton

07-21-2008, 12:57 PM

Today we've officially opened the doors to a new mental ray material exchange site:
http://mrmaterials.com/

You can upload/download materials/texture maps for mental ray in 3ds Max, Maya, and XSI...and it's free. :beer:

simmsimaging

07-21-2008, 02:31 PM

Congratulations on the new site!

b

Bao2

07-22-2008, 04:51 PM

Bao2

07-22-2008, 06:16 PM

Edit: Solved in post 4326

Jeff, I can't login.
I received an email, then I go to the link provided in the email and a webpage opens saying:

User details
Welcome to the registered user area of our site.

So I click"home" and enter login and password and:

Login denied! Your account has either been blocked or you have not activated it yet. Did you not get an activation e-mail and follow the validation link?

:banghead:

It seems some administrator must unlock new accounts before they can be used.

ChewyPixels

07-22-2008, 06:37 PM

Bao2

07-22-2008, 06:57 PM

Are you people able to login in mrmaterials?

ChewyPixels

07-22-2008, 07:05 PM

I'm able to log in, Bao. You did receive the confirmation e-mail, correct?

Bao2

07-22-2008, 08:01 PM

I'm able to log in, Bao. You did receive the confirmation e-mail, correct?

Well, now I know they don't want me there LOL

Yes I received the email and clicked the link and I was in a webpage that said:

User details
Welcome to the registered user area of our site.

In that page I clicked "home" and then entered the login and password that comes in the e-mail and:

Login denied! Your account has either been blocked or you have not activated it yet. Did you not get an activation e-mail and follow the validation link?

Probably it is a Autodesk site... LOL

ChewyPixels

07-22-2008, 08:07 PM

Did the e-mail read like this:

"Thank you for registering at Mr Materials - mental ray materials repository. Your account is created and must be activated before you can use it.
To activate the account click on the following link or copy-paste it in your browser:
http://mrmaterials.com/index.php?option=com_user&task=activate&activation=f528d287c5c183ce9acfe34050f5d36a

After activation you may login to http://mrmaterials.com/ using the following username and password:

Username: xxxxxxxxxxx
Password: xxxxxxxxxxx"

Maybe you still need to activate it by clicking the first link in the e-mail or "copy-paste it in your browser."

Bao2

07-22-2008, 08:08 PM

Welcome to MRMaterials!

Solved!

What happened was: I was at work and I was entering my e-mail via the web page of my provider. So I now in home opened the e-mail with thunderbird mail client and now when I clicked the link I was said I was registered. So you need an e-mail client, God knows why!..., for be able to register.

Bao2

07-22-2008, 08:24 PM

JeffPatton

07-22-2008, 09:19 PM

One thing I don't like in these material sites is the division (max | maya | xsi).
I am thinking, if I create an Arch&Design material and I apply it to a sphere and export the sphere in fbx format from max, can be this sphere imported in maya and the arch&design material is the same? But probably it will not work if you are using procedural maps native in each app. I can't test because I don't have maya but I would like to know if this is posible or it is buggy and no practical and it is better to create again the materials in each app.Translating the A&D material from 3ds Max to the mia_material in Maya & XSI should be feasible. However, as you described you can imagine the seven levels of hell one would run into when trying to convert application specific maps, like procedural maps in 3ds Max over to a similar procedural map in Maya or XSI.

Bottom line, we are looking into various options for doing basic translations whenever possible. But instead of making everyone wait months/years for that to happen it was decided that we should simply give each application a home now. From here we can add benefits like a scripted translator behind the scenes and not make people wait while we do so.

ienrdna

07-23-2008, 01:29 AM

Hey, have enyone who uses Skin+ shader got geflections to work properly.
I can't get enything close to fernel like fallof.
Here is small illustration.

ienrdna

07-23-2008, 01:33 AM

Bottom line, we are looking into various options for doing basic translations whenever possible.

Can't you make users just apply screenshot from settings?

JeffPatton

07-23-2008, 03:03 AM

Can't you make users just apply screenshot from settings?I wouldn't want to 'make' users do that. We (should read mostly Russell... :p ) uploaded over 300 materials over the weekend, can you imagine how much extra work it would have been to take a screen shot of all those various settings? On top of that if you have multiple nested maps, they need screen captures as well. Then if you're using a procedural that's specific to 3ds Max, there's no guarantee that the other applications will have the same exact procedural so end users will have to spend time figuring out a match anyway.

Bottom line, IMHO if we force too many 'users must do this, must do that' rules, I think people will avoid the site due to the added hassle.

Bao2

07-23-2008, 02:47 PM

Well I was viewing the matlib scene.

Houston, we have a problem.

I open the scene and render and my render is very dark. So I think you used the gamma B configuration (2.2 1.0 2.2) and I try that and it works.
I don't like gamma B because I use the view file of max and it is blowed up. I use gamma A (2.2 2.2 2.2) to be able to work in max without problems. So there will be people working in A, people working in B, people working in God knows what, and people even not working at all LOL

It is going to be a gamma nightmare.
It would be solved if all of you switch to gamma A !!!. LOL :p

I am doing changes to the matlab (yes I can't be still) and will post here but before I must test some things.
I am comparing my renders with the ones that come with the scenes and they don't match, I would like to discuss why when I post again.

JeffPatton

07-23-2008, 02:57 PM

If you're using a different gamma option (like 2.2 across the board) then you simply need to change the gamma setting on the three gamma/gain shaders (floor grid, white sphere, environment map) to 1.0 or just remove them completely.

Nothing else should be modified in the scene.

NOTE: For those using DBR, I would strongly suggest you consider using Gamma option B described in the gamma document I created for the scenes.

Bao2

07-23-2008, 10:07 PM

I agree Jeff. For using this scene we all must use gamma B (2.2 1.0 2.2).

I opened the glass scene and without touching nothing on it I did a render and I find the reflections are much stronger than the Default_Render_GS_Max2008-9.jpg that comes with the scene (Max 2008-9 file).

Also I note in my render there is a bluish tone when compared with the above said jpg. Is it because you did those renders with a setup and then changed your mind or is this scene with some thing forgot (perhaps the skylight is now much higher than when the default jpg was rendered?. I like more the default jpg render provided. We can't touch that?

I am curious what motivated to include a mr area light instead of a photometric light. You did the decission to avoid the artifacts of photometric lights when low samples or because renders speed or because area lights are more photometric than photometric LOL ? I am curious.

JeffPatton

07-23-2008, 10:49 PM

I opened the glass scene and without touching nothing on it I did a render and I find the reflections are much stronger than the Default_Render_GS_Max2008-9.jpg that comes with the scene (Max 2008-9 file).I think the test render is from an older version of the file. I had to adjust the .hdr file at the last minute because it has a baked in gamma curve, so that would explain the difference in the strength of the reflectivity. Since the .hdr isn't contributing to the lighting solution I certainly don't mind if you (or others) adjust the .hdr to taste if you feel the reflectivity is too contrasty/strong/etc. :thumbsup:

Also I note in my render there is a bluish tone when compared with the above said jpg. Is it because you did those renders with a setup and then changed your mind or is this scene with some thing forgot (perhaps the skylight is now much higher than when the default jpg was rendered?. I like more the default jpg render provided. We can't touch that?Is it a subtle blue/green tint? If so, you must be using 2009? I have no idea why but the exposure control created a slight pink when rendered in 2008, but when rendered in 2009 it produces a slight green/blue tint...without changing any of the settings.

I gave up on figuring that one out since the effect is rather subtle. BUT, if you still have Max9 and render that version I think you'll find it feels a bit more accurate color wise than the 2008-2009 versions (due to the different exposure control used in Max9).

I know that given enough time I could have tuned the pink out for the 2008 users, and tuned out the green/blue of 2009. But that would create too many versions for us all to keep up with, one for each build of 3ds Max since version 9. Soooo, I left the slight color variations in place for the sake of simplicity (and time).

I am curious what motivated to include a mr area light instead of a photometric light. You did the decission to avoid the artifacts of photometric lights when low samples or because renders speed or because area lights are more photometric than photometric LOL ? I am curious.Good question. I originally set the scenes up with photometric lights for the excellent accuracy. However, in 2009 the photometric lights underwent an update and the photometric lights that I configured in 3ds Max 2008 didn't render identical in 2009 due to these updates. So, like the issue with the color tint above I chose to switch out to the mr lights so I could have one version of the files for both 2008 & 2009.

Bao2

07-25-2008, 10:59 AM

I was viewing some materials from mrmaterials.

So the first material I tried is HandTowel in Cloth section of max materials. The author says he realized the camera was zoomed and he will correct it later. But he didn't realized he needs use the gamma B configuration too and correct the loading of the images with the gamma utility. I am curious if he is not on max 2009 and he have not gamma utility what the instructions for these folks are because I didn't find instructions in the readme files for that case. So perhaps it is needed to change MatLab to gamma A (what I use for my "work" in 3D (3D is my hobby not my work)).

Second material I tried it was the Ice-Rough in Liquid section of max materials. What the author uploaded renders like a very different material to the image he also uploaded. I think it would be a rule upload renders with the scene untouched and then add secondary renders in the zip file and always with a text file explaining all the things changed to achieve the secondary renders included.

I hope today or tomorrow I will upload a scene to discuss more things to try avoid the chaos and speed things.

JeffPatton

07-25-2008, 01:33 PM

perhaps it is needed to change MatLab to gamma AThe gamma setup is/was a damned if I do, damned if I don't scenario, no matter what method I chose. If I change it to all gamma 2.2, then some will feel that's not optimal for them. Therefore I had to make the decision to provide what I felt was the one option that had the most benefits. Since "option B" helps prevent DBR gamma issues, I went with that. Right now, I don't see a pressing need to change it on the downloadable files. If end users want/need to change the gamma setup to fit their work flow, that's perfectly fine with us.

I think now it's just a matter of getting people to recognize when they have a gamma conflict with the scene and how to fix it. FWIW, the gamma/gain shader is included in 3ds Max 2008, but I believe it has to be unhidden.

At some point I may add a blog entry on this topic & revise the gamma document with a FAQ including this type of info/instructions. However, so far I haven't heard anyone asking about the gamma of the scene other than our discussion here, so for now I'm assuming most users aren't having any gamma issues.

I think it would be a rule upload renders with the scene untouched and then add secondary renders in the zip fileIndeed, I also think the posted image shouldn't be post-processed. Perhaps a recommendation that the posted image be unedited would be appropriate.

JeffPatton

07-25-2008, 02:28 PM

Hey, have enyone who uses Skin+ shader got geflections to work properly.Seems to work fine here. Sure you haven't turned reflectivity off or something on it?

Bao2

07-25-2008, 04:53 PM

At some point I may add a blog entry on this topic & revise the gamma document with a FAQ including this type of info/instructions

I think a "read this first.txt" must be included where explain:
A) The settings to put in the gamma dialog (just now you can read in a text file we must look a jpg file that is not included, and the pdf I think don't explains clearly gamma B must be used with matlab scene).
B) How every image must be wrapped with gamma utility. I am sure people that never used gamma is very confused what to do.

However, so far I haven't heard anyone asking about the gamma of the scene other than our discussion here, so for now I'm assuming most users aren't having any gamma issues.

Load and render the two materials: HandTowel, Ice-Rough. The two have gamma problems and I don't see the authors understand and correct.

Indeed, I also think the posted image shouldn't be post-processed. Perhaps a recommendation that the posted image be unedited would be appropriate.

It was not post-processed, he provided a image rendered in a different scene than provided (or perhaps a gamma issue again). I think the rendered image must be with the scene provided. Then in the zip file they can provide more renders and say in a text file how they changed scene or maps so people can replicate.

ienrdna

07-25-2008, 05:45 PM

Seems to work fine here. Sure you haven't turned reflectivity off or something on it?

Reflections work, if you look closely you can see little reflection in dark side of a model, but I can't get same look I get with Arch Material and ior 1,5.

Bao2

07-25-2008, 06:18 PM

Before continue: Jeff is this the right place to talk about MatLab scene or there is a "oficial mrmaterials forum" where we can talk. I used this forum because I know you check it daily.

I was believing matlab lights would be no calibrated but I can see you calibrated the scene using a colorcard (or else you have one of the better eyes I know if colorcard was not used LOL). I turned off the mr area light and created a photometric light and calibrated it. The skylight remains the same. Watch:

The Ice-Rough material with the glass matlab scene spends 1hour 50minutes in my computer.
With the photometric light it spends 1hour 28minutes.

The mr area light has a "sampling" of U:8 and V:8 and the photometric one is by default in 32. So I changed the photometric one to 64 and rendertime was 1h 34minutes. Both lights have a area surface of 30cm x 30cm.

So I think is a very good idea to use photometric lights in my opinion.

The scene can be speeded much more, you have some settings that slow. The most obvious one is sampling 1-16. Changing it to 1/4-16 gives the same result with much more quick renders.

Other things you use I am testing now so I will post here the scene modified when I end the tests. I am testing with the Ice-Rough because I think is the most complex material to test speed available in mrmaterials.

Can someone help me?: I only have Max 2009 installed now. I would like someone with max 2008 and someone with former max (max 8 and max 9) to open the hard surfaces scene and render and post the render here (use imageshack.us). I want to see what the color tone is in each max version and decide if I use filter color or not in the photometric light.

JeffPatton

07-25-2008, 07:16 PM

Before continue: Jeff is this the right place to talk about MatLab scene or there is a "oficial mrmaterials forum" where we can talk. I used this forum because I know you check it daily.Yes there's a forum tab at mrmaterials.com (labeled 3da forum) that takes you to the mental ray forum at 3dallusions.com and that would be the best place to discuss anything related to mrmaterials.com.

So I think is a very good idea to use photometric lights in my opinion.Again, I don't disagree with you on the point that photometric lights are better than the mr lights or standard lights. BUT (also again), due to the changes in the photometric lights between 2008 & 2009 I would be forced to create 3ds Max 2008 specific scenes and 2009 specific scenes. I don't see a pressing need in doing that since the current scenes are properly balanced, and work well in both 2008 & 2009.

I feel the only issue that people may encounter when working with the scenes is related to gamma. For that, I think I'll go ahead and add some extra information to my gamma documentation that's already included with the files just so I can be proactive instead of reactive on this.

The scene can be speeded much more, you have some settings that slow. The most obvious one is sampling 1-16. Changing it to 1/4-16 gives the same result with much more quick renders.Indeed. I'm aware that lowering the sampling rates would speed up the render with minimal quality loss (depending on the material used). Just like disabling area shadows would, using only a skylight, etc...however, I configured these scenes using what I feel are typical settings so people would have an idea of how the materials would work in their real-world scenes.

I spent months on this project testing many different configurations, test shapes, and scenes before finalizing on these particular scenes which in my eyes represent a good balance between speed and accuracy.

TheAllusionist

07-25-2008, 08:44 PM

I think a "read this first.txt" must be included where explain:
A) The settings to put in the gamma dialog (just now you can read in a text file we must look a jpg file that is not included, and the pdf I think don't explains clearly gamma B must be used with matlab scene).

The portion of the material setup readme file is a Note for Max 9 users and the max 9 MatLabs do have the image included. If you are not using Max 9 you would have no need for the image and the general PDF by Jeff covers the topics needed to use the scene.

That said, you should probably post comments about MrM in the mental ray forums at 3DA and we will try to address items that haven't already been covered or that we feel are valid items.

I want to personally thank Jeff for his great efforts on the MatLabs and for taking so much time in this discussion to explain things.

Bao2

07-25-2008, 09:22 PM

The portion of the material setup readme file is a Note for Max 9 users and the max 9 MatLabs do have the image included. If you are not using Max 9 you would have no need for the image and the general PDF by Jeff covers the topics needed to use the scene.

Yes, Max 2009 here. I suppose the jpg is a capture of the gamma dialog with the "gamma B" configuration. So it is included only in Max 9 file? I think people don't know it is necessary to configure that dialog for the matlab working as intended.

I want to personally thank Jeff for his great efforts on the MatLabs and for taking so much time in this discussion to explain things.

Many thanks to you too. All the effort put in the creation of a web I was desiring to see someday. And now it is how I was desiring to see it: with a gamma and calibrated light scene. Absolutely thanks to Jeff and you!!!

I will continue in 3dallusions forum then.

Bao2

07-26-2008, 12:33 AM

LOL !!!

I was viewing the 3Dallusions forum and the mrmaterials thread had 112 views and 9 replies. Really you think Jeff is a good idea post there?

Well, I will place a link to the file here too.
I don't want any problem for me posting a scene in a zip file that contains textures or meshes from the original scenes so I will post the steps necessary to merge the test objects. I think it is absurd but I can see the vibrations are not in optimum level yet. :)

Bao2

07-26-2008, 02:51 PM

Well, I was in 3DAllusions but no way to be able to enter. It says my e-mail is already on use so I can't register. Then I ask for it to send to my e-mail the password and two hours passed now and nothing comes (I am using a mail client because that was the problem with mrmaterials as said in last page of this thread).

It seems someone don't likes me there! (Hey just joking :thumbsup: )

So I hope Jeff you don't mind I post here. :p

First thing we are going to do is speed the scenes. :arteest:

Open the glass scene and load the Ice-Rough material (Liquid max section in mrmaterials).
Render. In my dual core it is 1hour 52minutes. Save the image to disk and load it in channel A in the RAM Player.

Now change in the Render Setup dialog:

Final Gather/Basic:
-Rays per FG Point: from 75 to 150
-Interpolate over num fg points: from 35 to 30
Final Gather/Advanced:
-Max Depth: from 6 to 4
-Max Reflections: from 6 to 2
-Max Refractions: from 6 to 2
Sampling Quality/Samples per pixel:
-Minimum: leave it in 1 as is
-Maximum: from 16 to 4
Sampling Quality/Spatial contrast: set the four values in 0.055

Render. Load in channel B in the RAM Player and compare with former render. This one has even more quality (higher FG samples per pixel) and four times less rendertime.

But with photometric lights rendertime is even better and in my opinion the material object receives a much realistic light in the surface, this one lacks of some reflection in my opinion.

I want upload the photometric scene (that contains some other ideas I use) but It would be a nightmare do it without including the Jeff test object so I ask for permission Jeff (yes, after agreeing to the terms and conditions near two hundred times when downloading the mrmaterials it affected my mind and now I even ask permission before uploading things LOL)

I also detected a bug with mr area light but I only will discuss it if my Hey Autodesk can you fix this please is unlocked. No unlock? then no bug!. Yes, plan B in action. :shrug:

Bao2

07-27-2008, 12:06 PM

Well the post above speeded the MatLab scene (but full speed in the one I want to post the above one is near double slower).

Now we are going to correct the green tone in the default MatLab scene:

First thing you need is a colorcard (the scene I want upload has one).
You place the color card at half the height of the Jeff test object and render. To see tone deviations you only take care of the grey bar that goes from black to white.

Talking of white I think Jeff scene has the white ball with a map where white is 255 255 255. I don't like that because it is not real and if you uses a texture not real you obtain no real renders of course. I would fix that Jeff. Perhaps 245?

Well, when the render is eyedropped in the slots of the gray column of the colorcard you can see some of the RGB components are in deviation, to correct that open the Light Lister and click on the color slot of the are light and make low the rgb component you see is wrong. A example, imagine your render shows rgb real floating points values of:
R:0.0313431, G:0.0462434, B:0.0384321 when you eyedrop one of the slots in the grey gradient of the colorcard. You can see grey must be all the three values the same so in that example the G and B components are greater than normal. Then in the light lister you click on the color slot (it is the filter color of the light) and low for example five utits the G component and 2 the B component. Render again and check again and correct again.

I have chosen (Max 2009 this filter color: R:255 G:227 B:251 that creates a grey gradient in the colorcard render very accurate.

And that was for the tone correction of the image. Now a little reflexion and let me use red (I explained in other thread why):

When photometric lights were created (it was not God, it was Autodesk !!!) they say they was good. They say that was physical, they say that was accurate. I was waving my ears in awe and joy.
Years later I tried (and posted here) to replicate what Maxwell forums were doing: bringing order in 3D. So I created (they say I copied but of course is not truth, mine had some more vertices LOL) a similar scene for Max than the one used in Maxwell. I observed the intensity of the light used in Maxwell, I learned how to convert watts to candelas (manda carallo !!!) and I could see something was wrong with the physical accurate lights of Max. What the values I calculated if used would burn absolutely the render and even the fire extend to my own house perhaps...

So I remembered I was on mentalray and I forgot any wattage and any candelage and just used a colorcard to calibrate the lights instead to create exact maxwell replica of the lights used.

Then when Max 2009 version was launched I rendered with the scene I use (it have a test object like maxwell one but with some more vertices LOL...) and I could see now the photometric lights were changed. Now the renders were more burn even than ever. So in Max 2009 I needed to low the light intensity near half of what I was using. Also now the lights I was using have tone and create pink images that the same renders in 2008.
I have to try analyze again what they do, I just now don't know if the lights are now more physical than before (double of physical LOL) of if they just can be quiet and need to change the things that work. Well, I am a bit cruel, I think now the lights are physical and I think now they act with the correct intensity. But who knows... I have no time and I want not compare Maxwell to mental ray just now but I will do it probably in three months. I will post here. I am going to test real life situations and to see how each render behaviour is replicating it.

Bao2

07-27-2008, 01:43 PM

JeffPatton

07-27-2008, 03:35 PM

1. Please do not publicly post our matlab scene(s) whether whole or in part.
2. We will look into why you weren't able to log into the 3DA forum to discuss things at mrmaterials.com. Initial thought is that perhaps you have signed up there before using the same email address.
3. If you wanted to convert a Maxwell material over to mental ray I would imagine the first step would be to contact the original creator of the Maxwell material, explain what you want to do and ask for their approval to use any of the texture maps they have supplied with their Maxwell material.

Bao2

07-27-2008, 03:45 PM

1. Please do not publicly post our matlab scene(s) whether whole or in part.

Thansk Jeff. Could you explain the steps to post privately for all to be able to view it then? LOL
I will use then plan B: post my scene and indicate the steps. But I would like better just post. Because people is going to be achieving a master in merging scenes in the contrary case you still don't permits me.

2. We will look into why you weren't able to log into the 3DA forum to discuss things at mrmaterials.com. Initial thought is that perhaps you have signed up there before using the same email address.

I like more post here but if you fix that then I will continue there. Thanks Jeff.

3. If you wanted to convert a Maxwell material over to mental ray I would imagine the first step would be to contact the original creator of the Maxwell material, explain what you want to do and ask for their approval to use any of the texture maps they have supplied with their Maxwell material.

I was thinking about submiting a render of the material and a .mat file but no textures inside the zip file. Then in a readme.txt file I will say I have the images but I can't share with them and I will indicate a link for they to register and download the images. This is possible or still legal problems. This seems legal. I have plan C in case it is not sufficiently legal yet.

InoDetelic

07-27-2008, 04:32 PM

I was thinking about submiting a render of the material and a .mat file but no textures inside the zip file. Then in a readme.txt file I will say I have the images but I can't share with them and I will indicate a link for they to register and download the images. This is possible or still legal problems. This seems legal. I have plan C in case it is not sufficiently legal yet.

Why don't you make your own texture if you want to submit it so badly?
I wouldn´t want to download a material that sends me somewhere else through a readme file to get the missing textures.

And this talk should be elsewhere. I want to discuss mr shaders here and not legal stuff of other sites or other peoples textures.
Use their forum, 3DA. If you're not allowed in, have pacience.

Bao2

07-27-2008, 04:56 PM

Why don't you make your own texture if you want to submit it so badly?
I wouldn´t want to download a material that sends me somewhere else through a readme file to get the missing textures.

And this talk should be elsewhere. I want to discuss mr shaders here and not legal stuff of other sites or other peoples textures.
Use their forum, 3DA. If you're not allowed in, have pacience.

Gracias, moito obrigado (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hoonage-at-13,000-feet/lawn-chair-balloonist-travels-193-miles-276688.php).

JeffPatton

07-27-2008, 06:22 PM

Reflections work, if you look closely you can see little reflection in dark side of a model, but I can't get same look I get with Arch Material and ior 1,5.They appear to act similarly here, of course you'll have to do some tuning from the default skinplus values. Have you double checked your reflectivity settings on your skinplus material to ensure the settings aren't causing the issue?

Bao2

07-27-2008, 06:25 PM

Like the link above was telling: I FLY FROM HERE (only of talking about MatLab of course LOL).

I will post the modifications to the scene (without using anything from Jeff) in my WIP thread here in CGTalk (look my signature just below the works of Bush). The only thing you will need to do is merge in it from Jeff scene the things I will say.

TheAllusionist

07-27-2008, 07:06 PM

Jeff a question and an affirmation:

1) Question: (Yes the one you was having nightmares hoping they don't ask never LOL)
Imagine I like a maxwell material and I want to port it to mrmaterials. What I must do to be correct and don't have locked my account?

(I want remember I have some locked things here in CGTalk and usually talk first with moderators avoid this ugly consequences LOL)

2) Affirmation: I have my finger hours now waiting to push the upload button to upload the scene. I am waiting your answer to upload or make changes to fit with your view. My finger is already shaking after all these hours of waiting!!! LOL

People that have trouble registering or logging on usually use the contact form and ask for help, if you can not register because your email account is already being used then you probably registered before and forgot about it. If your IP is banned then your IP was being used to SPAM the site with either porn or cell phones and the likes. The thing is I don't know what your problem is you never contacted us at 3DA and asked for any help or explanations, we shouldn't have to read about your problems at other sites and offer to help. So just use the 'Contact Us' at 3DA or if you are banned, PM me hear and send your email address and the user name you want so that I can look into things.

On the other items of uploading other peoples work (Jeff already covered the MatLabs) it is a No-No and something we strongly enforce at 3DA and all my endeavors, we try to respect others efforts. Just like Maxwells widget that people just took and used all over the place without permission or credit, we will not tollerate with materials if we know about it. Of course we can't know every shader/material around and can't police this stuff, but there is no justifiable reason to steal other peoples work. Just like there is no reason to post settings and a link saying here go get the materials here, if you have to do that then you are doing something wrong. Make the textures yourself, much more pride in that.

Now you haven't done any of these things and you were just asking about it, I just figured I would state my opinion on the matter and try to nip it in the butt. The truth is, you would be suprised on how many people if you contact them and give credit will gladly allow you to use their work on stuff, especially when it isn't a commercial endeavor. You might try contacting the Maxwell material author and ask for permission to use their textures on the agreement that you would include a read me file giving them credit and you could put it in the "Description" portion of the material on upload. Just easier to do the 'Right Thing' to start with IMHO

I will be looking for your email or PM in order to help get your account straightened up.

Bao2

07-27-2008, 08:00 PM

People that have trouble registering or logging on usually use the contact form and ask for help

It is not my case. In my case I tried it because Jeff said I would must to fly from here, so when I see it didn't worked I even was happy not sufficiently worried to start filling forms and so. LOL

, if you can not register because your email account is already being used then you probably registered before and forgot about it.

As I said I then asked your robot to send me a e-mail (he said my e-mail was already in use) and I am still waiting (like inoDetelic recommends :thumbsup: )

If your IP is banned then your IP was being used to SPAM the site with either porn or cell phones and the likes.

Oh my God! Porn?
Can you send me a link? LOL

The thing is I don't know what your problem is you never contacted us at 3DA and asked for any help or explanations, we shouldn't have to read about your problems at other sites and offer to help.

My problem is I want to speak with Jeff and Jeff says I must fly to 3DAllusions. Don't worry I flied already as I said above.

On the other items of uploading other peoples work (Jeff already covered the MatLabs) it is a No-No and something we strongly support at 3DA and all my endeavors, we try to respect others efforts.

I asked for permission to Jeff to upload HERE in HIS thread.
He said no and gave no permission to me for use ANYTHING from HIS scene MatLab. I said OK, I will use plan B (plan B has no uses of anyone material, only a scene with all from me and instructions to recreate a working scene.
That scene renders same quality in six times less time in the better case to three times in the worst case. It also fix some things I will explain.
Man, It seems I will need to pay for help people. What a world we live!!! You contact the creator and tells him how to enhance the creation and says you want to send the file in his thread and all this bumble bumble rumble talk for nothing!!!

Just like Maxwells widget that people just took and used all over the place without permission or credit, we will not tollerate with materials if we know about it.

Except the materials I upload to mrmaterials. I say in them you can do whatever you want with them. Even sell them. I will ask to you to not restrict the use of the materials I upload to mrmaterials if it is possible...

Now you haven't done any of these things and you were just asking about it

Yes. I was understanding the limits so I can use plan A, B or C. :)
I agree include image files from other sites is a crime.
I don't understand but accept I can't upload a .mat file and a text file to where register to download the images. I just don't understand this but I accept and will not do. It is not necessary: plan C then.

You might try contacting the Maxwell material author and ask for permission to use their textures on the agreement that you would include a read me file giving them credit and you could put it in the "Description" portion of the material on upload. Just easier to do the 'Right Thing' to start with IMHO

I will do the right thing. No worry. And vote for Obama from the left. LOL.

I will be looking for your email or PM in order to help get your account straightened up.

Yes, patience as inodetelic says...
I tried again and the robot said it send me an email. But I just don't care, I am already in plan D or F...
Too much bureaucracy... :)

ienrdna

07-27-2008, 08:11 PM

Jeff, my bad, I overlooked max reflection distance, ser to 1 by default.:banghead:

Bao2

07-27-2008, 08:23 PM

TheAllusionist

07-27-2008, 09:17 PM

Another question to Jeff or Russell (except inoDetelic LOL):
I downloaded one of the materials from mrmaterials and I find it is crap/bad done/have errors.
Question: I want to do a version 2 and submit so people can see an alternative one/a good done one/a non error one.

a) Fly from mrmaterials
b) Do it and call the same name and add "v2 by Bao" or something like that
c) Contact Jeff and Russell and ask
d) Create the new material but don't include the images just say the original that content the images, in a text file

In case d) can I do variations, perhaps I find PNG is a bad format and I decide JPG. Can I create a JPG file. Can I do modifications in the images?

OK my friend, I will not derail this conversation any more I was just trying to help you clear up your account issues if a PM or pasting your email adress and asking for help with your account is too much red tape, I apologize for suggesting it. As for your suggested modifications to the scene, I would use your settings and material in real world applications and actual scenes and see if you are happy with the results, if so then you may have something, but as stated already we (Jeff) weren't trying to optimize a little test scene we were trying to establish real world settings, that indicated an average/balance of what would be used in real projects.

As for the latest item, I personally don't understand this need to try and show to everyone that you can do it better than others and are ONLY willing to express this in the biggest forum possible. I personally would make an effort to contact the person 'In Private' and say if you set this setting, to this, then the material might be even better and if they respond or take your advice, great, if not leave it alone and just know you tried to help, but there is no need to degrade people and their generosity. Think of it this way, would you like it if people took your work and said that is terrible here is how you should do it and mark up all your stuff, maybe redo it and name it with their name v2.0?

We want the site to be a success and yes people help out one another and improve skills, but it can be done in a much more diplomatic and respectful manner and can be done in private, if people don't want your help move along, don't take it personal and don't grandstand the issue. After you offer to help and someone declines, your energies are put to better use creating something. I have no problem if you help someone or get their permission to modify a material, just do it privately.

So yes, you asked us how to do it (great that you asked permission and all that, thank you), if we didn't create the material what right do we have to tell you yes you can take their work and modify it and repost it, why don't you ask the artist and ask them privately and respect their efforts. Of course you can tweak if how you want for your own use, I just ask that all others don't have to bear witness to all this, this thread is NOT about MrM, Jeff just let people know about it.

Hope this doesn't seem harsh but there seems to be a pattern here, why not keep things private or in the appropriate forum (I aplogize that mine is not large enough for your taste, but it is all I got), and under the appropriate thread, since we just opened our doors this Monday we are not going to have a huge forum with topics on the site yet.

MODERATORS: Feel free to delete all my post in this thread to clean it up, I am just trying to move the discussion to where it belongs and encourage some discression. I have made my point and it can be deleted.

Bao2

07-27-2008, 10:09 PM

I was just trying to help you clear up your account issues if a PM or pasting your email adress and asking for help with your account is too much red tape, I apologize for suggesting it.

Oh Russell, thanks. I can see in you now a very different person than I was feeling in your first post to me here pages ago. I love make fun of "strict people" and searching their limits. But also with the goal of fixing the problem, not just for fun or it would be a bad behaviour. My principal goal here is speed the rendertimes. I want to see the hard surface rendering in 1 minute instead the 8 minutes. That is I want. Jeff reaction was funny and spanish people know how torear un toro. Don't loss from sight my intention is show optimizations because then always another comes with another one. Open source.
I would like you to look my data in mrmaterials and register me in 3dallusions with the same data and I will be happy to talk with you there. I don't care if the modifications are done or not, I want to show to the people so they don't need a renderfarm to test materials.

As for your suggested modifications to the scene, I would use your settings and material in real world applications and actual scenes and see if you are happy with the results

Please don't talk before seeing. It is useless and creates doubt over me and I don't like it. I am talking of speeding the rendertimes, correct deviation of colors and other things I will upload (following plan A with permission from Jeff or plan C with a scene without nothing from Jeff). And then I want to discuss and people understand gamma. And I myself learning some things like I did. It is not teaching, it is learning too when you teach because always you meet people that knows more than you. When I post about gamma issues and I post my way I LOVE others correcting me and talking their ways (like gamma B in Jeff pdf I didn't know, I use gamma A). What I don't like is people entering threads and telling what is being discussed is absurd or some like that (see inodetelic posts in the gamma thread I linked). But you know how is this Earth.

but as stated already we (Jeff) weren't trying to optimize a little test scene we were trying to establish real world settings, that indicated an average/balance of what would be used in real projects.

And I can point what I think is wrong. I already said there is a gamma chaos going on. There are many materials that render incorrectly. Try for example the Ice-Rough one I talked here look what you get and look what the author get. I don't thinks this is a good think to not take care of.

I personally don't understand this need to try and show to everyone that you can do it better than others and are ONLY willing to express this in the biggest forum possible.

Yes I also don't understand why masterzap and jeff create their blogs and try to teach to all people and give his time. Perhaps it is called altruism? Or perhaps as you like to call it? Who knows. I like to help people in Internet but I don't do it in real life, who knows why too. Don't judge!

I personally would make an effort to contact the person 'In Private' and say if you set this setting, to this, then the material might be even better and if they respond or take your advice, great, if not leave it alone and just know you tried to help, but there is no need to degrade people and their generosity.

The degradation you felt is the resistance of pride in my opinion. It creates a better person but it gives some pain to learn of course.

would you like it if people took your work and said that is terrible here is how you should do it and mark up all your stuff, maybe redo it and name it with their name v2.0?

Some of the options like in the tests in real life (students can tell you) are very funny ones and most fun if you answers me telling that one is the one you want.
It was included to make you and Jeff reflexion about how to tell people don't submit things that don't render like the picture included. Also I was interested in see what "free to all" that reads in the submitted materials means.

We want the site to be a success and yes people help out one another and improve skills, but it can be done in a much more diplomatic and respectful manner and can be done in private,

I would like a public forum. If something is private you will not find me there. I like community and sharing of ideas.

After you offer to help and someone declines, your energies are put to better use creating something. I have no problem if you help someone or get their permission to modify a material, just do it privately.

I was having some fun in pushing the borders and see how rock people reaction to the pushing. Some cruel perhaps yes, but could you point something I did wrong in all my posts here? I am very interested in psychology too.

great that you asked permission, thank you), if we didn't create the material what right do we have to tell you yes you can take their work and modify it and repost it,

Yes I was not understanding the limits of "free for you" and all that things that you can read in the posted material. I want to know if that includes I can modify and post like a "... _v2.0 by Bao" or then make clear it is not "free for all you want". Perhaps will need necesary explain to people that when they tell it is free whick limits are they permitting to other people.

why don't you ask the artist and ask them privately and respect their efforts.

There are near 300 materials already. Do I must e-mail each one?

this thread is NOT about MrM, Jeff just let people know about it.

Jeff is moderator, he can lock the thread. LOL I mean: ban me. LOL

why not keep things private or in the appropriate forum

Because I can't login in 3dAllusions? LOL!!!

I aplogize that mine is not large enough for your taste, but it is all I got), and under the appropriate thread, since we just opened our doors this Monday we are not going to have a huge forum with topics on the site yet.

I will give to you a gift to remedy that. I will PM you in some days. Peace Russell you are a great guy.

MODERATORS: Feel free to delete all my post in this thread to clean it up

Jeff! I see you!. Don't push that clean button. Not before I can post in 3DAllusions! LOL

InoDetelic

07-28-2008, 12:30 AM

I love make fun of "strict people" and searching their limits.

I LOVE others correcting me and talking their ways

What I don't like is people entering threads and telling what is being discussed is absurd or some like that (see inodetelic posts in the gamma thread I linked).

I like to help people in Internet but I don't do it in real life, who knows why too. Don't judge!

I would like a public forum.

I like community and sharing of ideas.

I was having some fun in pushing the borders and see how rock people reaction to the pushing.

I am very interested in psychology too.

:banghead:

Why don't you make your own mrBao2materials.com and do everything the way YOU LIKE and spare us from all this?

please moderators delete all the posts regarding this nonsense. It's just too much.

Bao2

07-28-2008, 01:59 AM

Gracias ino. Y perdona si a partir de ahora no te respondo.
Thanks ino. And sorry if I can't see your posts from now.
Try it with me too! :thumbsup: it is a useful thing in forums. First time I tried and I hope last one. Bye ino.

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/7498/goodbyeuy1.jpg

Bao2

07-28-2008, 09:05 PM

Thanks Russell, I am logged in 3Dallusions. So I will post the speedups to the scene and discuss more things there.

Thanks Jeff for your patience with these "off-topic" posts here while I was not logged. I go there because you say it is the right place. I like it, Russell have a good web, the "charrettes" look great.

Bao2

07-28-2008, 10:15 PM

Jeff, a question: I just downloaded the Material Template in MyMentalRay. I can see one of the maps is yours and I was thinking: this guy is going to have problems... remembering your posture with me. Then I saw the settings in the render dialog and then I knew that scene is yours also.

The first thing I then tried was the material from masterzap (the ironman one) and I saw my render like the scene was was not the render he uploaded. So he used gamma. I then tried gamma B but the image he uploaded is not that one (the ground is more bright). When I changed to gamma A I obtained the same render than masterzap.

I find fun he was using gamma A (like me) and I am in absolute curiosity what he is going to talk about in Siggraph (I hope after it he talks about in his blog). I am starting to be convinced because your pdf that gamma B is better (because that problem you say when rendering in renderfarm that I can't check because the only farm near me is with cows.

I surprised me absolutely masterzap rendered using gamma A. I want a explanation from him or I am going to call the police! LOL

Bao2

07-29-2008, 05:49 PM

:banghead:

Why don't you make your own mrBao2materials.com and do everything the way YOU LIKE and spare us from all this?

please moderators delete all the posts regarding this nonsense. It's just too much.

ino: I solved my problems with Jeff so I deleted you from the ignore list
Sorry to all and principally to Jeff.

Spacelord

08-01-2008, 03:54 AM

Hi Guys,
I'm having problems using MR displacement mapping for grass.
I end up with strange looking dark spots, I thought they could be polys or shadows from the mr_sun. I turn up the samples on the sun, didn't make a difference.
I'm tilling the map a 20 times in the material, my UVW map covers all the ground.
Displacement settings:
View dependent
Edge Length 0.3pixels
Max Displacement 100.
smoothing off
You can see in the image theres polygon dark spots.

http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/9053/displacementprob01dr7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
By Javadevil (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/Javadevil)

Spacelord

08-01-2008, 08:19 AM

Okay I figure it out, I didn't realised mental ray relied on the amount of polys in the mesh to create a nice displacement.

cheers

Tsukiyono

08-10-2008, 06:29 PM

Wow, I have just spent a bit of time following the first few pages of this thread, and alreayd learned more about mental ray then I had been able to previously find out. Looking forward to reading the other 200 some pages and learning even more, thanks as well for the download files also (especiall jeff patton for the first) looking at these and am planning on trying to reverse engineer them to see how they work in detail :D

Bao2

08-10-2008, 07:07 PM

The first pages are not how the things are done today to achieve effects mentalray was lacking then. SSS, blurred reflections, anisotropy were things like that; instead try to find those shaders just use what mentalray has now.

JeffPatton

08-10-2008, 07:14 PM

Totally agree with Bao2, I wouldn't advise spending much time deconstructing those files unless you're still using Max6-8. If you're using Max9 - 2009, then the A&D documentation & mental ray tutorials that ship with Max9-2009 are good starting points.

Tsukiyono

08-10-2008, 09:24 PM

Thanks for the warning :) Regardless I am finding some of it interesting anyway just seeing the different ways you could do things back when I learned on ver 6 in school. I shall take your advice though and look at the on board learning as well.

3d_vlk

08-13-2008, 01:32 AM

Bao2

08-13-2008, 02:11 AM

Look the "skydome" material. It has a Raytype switcher. Enter the raytype and look all is checker texture except finalgather. You need to copy to the eye rays slot the texture in the finalgather rays slot and then you can obtain the same with or without that cristal. Is that what you want?

3d_vlk

08-13-2008, 10:34 AM

Bao2

08-13-2008, 06:40 PM

LOL
I said to copy the texture from the finalgather slot, to the eye rays slot.

3d_vlk

08-14-2008, 02:39 AM

LOL
I said to copy the texture from the finalgather slot, to the eye rays slot.

we misunderstood, if you attach the content of finalgather slot to the eyerays slot,then you will see plain mr sky, but i need to have refraction/reflection on that glass object WITH the custom map on the eyesrays slot, eg thats the reason why i`m using skydome with raytype switcher

Bao2

08-14-2008, 09:38 AM

I understand this now with your last explication: You want to see the sky through the cristal but you want that the refraction through the cristal show you the checker?

Could you create in photoshop exactly the effect you desire and upload to imageshack.us to show me because the above that I think you are saying has no sense. I think I don't understand you.

I am starting to think where you really want the ray switcher is in the glass material but I need to see a photoshop of what you want first.

3d_vlk

08-14-2008, 03:07 PM

Could you create in photoshop exactly the effect you desire...

here it is :
http://rado.vitrum-sk.com/temp/checker.jpg

JeffPatton

08-14-2008, 05:08 PM

Hi Radomir,

If your goal is to use a skydome & still use the mrSun/mrSky for lighting then why not just use a self-illuminated A&D material on the dome? In 2009 there's the option (object properties) to make an object invisible to FG. Therefore you can just enable that and of course have your dome configured to not receive or cast shadows. Then the mrSun/mrSky will work as though it's not there.

I've attached a file showing how I'd set it up using what I described above.

EDIT: Looks like the dome is still blocking some of the skylight. But if you use a portal light like I configured in the scene then you should be fine. Or of course you could also have the dome emit light if you'd prefer that.

Bao2

08-14-2008, 05:15 PM

Wow, at last! ...

Man...

First: mentalray needs things correct. Do you know that room is 40 meters * 40 meters * 200 meters ?

Second: In max menu Customize / Units setup
click the button "system unit setup". Let it in the default 1 unit = 1 inches, that is the correct thing and Autodesk says you must not change this. (I agree this time with Autodesk LOL )
Enter again in Customize / Units setup and in "display unit scale" you choose what you want. I myself use metric and cm. This is the only thing you must change and it only translates what you see in all the number boxes in the program (well, all... except several bugs Hey autodesk could you fix that please? LOL).

Third: Select the dome and enter its object properties and active visible to reflection refraction or of course you are going to not have a refraction of the dome and it is what you miss, the refraction.

Four: The window was hiden so how you expect it to render??? Or perhaps was me I don't know and I am lazy to download again your file. If it was you then right click in the viewport and choose unhide by name and unhide the glass so we can render it.

Five: In the renderer dialog you have a camera shader applied to the lens. Turn it off.

Six: The promaterial cristal has some problem in it. Probably promaterials are optimized so it don't have in account rays that go more than fifty meters or so (I am too lazy now to see the .mi files with their code but I am sure the refraction distance is set there). Your dome (see point "first" above) is half kilometer away.
Make a Arch & Design material and make reflection and refraction to 1 to completely reflect and refract, and apply to the window this material that renders correctly.

And you will have as you want.
Ask if not but I was reproducing the steps and I render well now.

Bao2

08-14-2008, 05:27 PM

I forgot the render:

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/7774/tachanma6.jpg

3d_vlk

08-14-2008, 11:02 PM

This will be long post, please be patient ... :)

Do you know that room is 40 meters * 40 meters * 200 meters ?

Yes, perfectly aware of that, cause it has purpouse to be that size.

Second: In max menu Customize / Units setup
click the button "system unit setup". Let it in the default 1 unit = 1 inches, that is the correct thing and Autodesk says you must not change this. (I agree this time with Autodesk LOL )
Enter again in Customize / Units setup and in "display unit scale" you choose what you want. I myself use metric and cm. This is the only thing you must change and it only translates what you see in all the number boxes in the program (well, all... except several bugs Hey autodesk could you fix that please? LOL).

Please, don`t think that I`m newbie, it has purpouse to be in metric system units, cause many times i deal with scenes that are done also in metric system unit ( and therefore are problems when you merge objects from scene in metric sysunit into scene with imperial units, and even reset xform, or rescale world unit don`t work correctly )

I`m aware that there maybe issue regarding the `wrong` recalculation between metric2imperial units, but it is not my case. I know where the `wrong` recalculation apply in max, so i keep myself out that.

Third: Select the dome and enter its object properties and active visible to reflection refraction or of course you are going to not have a refraction of the dome and it is what you miss, the refraction.

You should practice english more, cause you didn`t understand what i wrote before ...

Four: The window was hiden so how you expect it to render??? Or perhaps was me I don't know and I am lazy to download again your file. If it was you then right click in the viewport and choose unhide by name and unhide the glass so we can render it.

ROFL ( multiply zilion times ), The point is that, that anybody competent, eg. someone with appropriate skills ( please don`t take it personally ), automatically understand that there is glass plane hidden, so he can see that there is checker skydome visible when rendering, but when the glass plane is unhidden, then the checker skydome is not visible in render ...

Five: In the renderer dialog you have a camera shader applied to the lens. Turn it off.

It has its purpouse to be there, did you ever notice that in the `mr Physical Sun` shader is written that the aerial perspective works only if the `mr Physical Sun` shader is connected to the lens shader ? ... but as far as I know, the lens shader isn`t causing the problem.

Six: The promaterial cristal has some problem in it. Probably promaterials are optimized so it don't have in account rays that go more than fifty meters or so (I am too lazy now to see the .mi files with their code but I am sure the refraction distance is set there). Your dome (see point "first" above) is half kilometer away.
Make a Arch & Design material and make reflection and refraction to 1 to completely reflect and refract, and apply to the window this material that renders correctly.

ROFL second time, in the scene i provided, are many types of glass material ( promaterial, raytrace, AD, standard ) and the method you suggested i tried at the very begining.

And you will have as you want.
Ask if not but I was reproducing the steps and I render well now.

Interesting, can you provide the scene ?

---

Hi Radomir,
EDIT: Looks like the dome is still blocking some of the skylight. But if you use a portal light like I configured in the scene then you should be fine. Or of course you could also have the dome emit light if you'd prefer that.

It is a partly solution, as you mentioned - the skydome is blocking some of the light, but i need the full lighting - it is used for `special` outdoor scenes - imagine a driver looking trough the windshield at the scenery outside, or pilot looking from cockpit ...

As far as my research goes, it seems that attaching raytype swither to volume shader material connection is the way to solve the problem ... but i don`t have fully working solution yet ... For now, my only solution is composite in post-production, but it would be nice to have it at rendertime ...

PS : I summon the great one - Master Zap, to be so kindfull to explain how this raytype switcher really works

Bao2

08-14-2008, 11:24 PM

The steps I said if followed with the scene you provided create the render you can see in the image I posted above your answer. And sorry for explaining each step with my point of view.

3d_vlk

08-14-2008, 11:32 PM

The steps I said if followed with the scene you provided create the render you can see in the image I posted above your answer. And sorry for explaining each step with my point of view.

Please, don`t take it personally, i`m glad that someone is trying to help ( really :) ), but the way you are writing isn`t quite clear and is a bit offensive imho. Anyhow, can you please provide the modified scene ?

Bao2

08-15-2008, 01:02 PM

Anyhow, can you please provide the modified scene ?

I don't understand why you don't just follow the steps I wrote. I did them again and it is the third time to check they were wrote correctly.
Well here is the scene, I only skip the camera shader step because you said you want it so this scene is the steps but the one turning off the camera shader is skipped. The file (http://dodownload.filefront.com/11505126//efc5b83eb1c87da69e3a98bcf51de95d13458d10b1a327095951305aaa0fcfc7ba071a1ab952344c).
It is a max 2009 sp1 file and this is the reason why I decided better write the step by step because I don't know if you have 2009 sp1. Just do the steps if not. And also pay attention to Jeff advice of course, when people take the time to upload a file like Jeff did a simple "thanks" is an obligation at less in my opinion. I downloaded Jeff file, you always can find other things when looking in how people do things. I found your scene something difficult to understand and I was spending I think about 20 minutes trying understand what was happening, that is the reason I started with those expressions "wow, at last" and "maaaaaan..." (the last one meaning: "hey really you put it difficult to me with this file !!!, not was my intention ridiculize you or something like you believed). And when I make a step by step I do it really step by step so even a newbie here can reproduce it. And when I comment is my opinion and of course I am not God, just my opinion and I explain why I do instead of simply say "do this". I really think Autodesk is right in the 1 unit = 1 inches but I don't remember now exactly the list of things why this is the correct thing.

3d_vlk

08-17-2008, 08:16 PM

Bao2 : i forgot to specially mention that i need to have fully working mrSun/Sky - and part of it is aerial perspective function, if you have reflectin/refraction like you provided in your render, then there is no aerial perspective effect at all, look at the composition I provided, anyhow, thanks for your effort, i really apperciate that

JasperCG

08-18-2008, 11:26 PM

JeffPatton

08-19-2008, 12:38 AM

I was wondering if anyone else had problems with the 3d displacement shader in the Arch and Design material? I can't select it directly, but can copy and paste it into the displacement slot. When I do so, however, I get a mess that looks nothing like the extrusion map.The displacement option on the A&D material is using the 3d displacement shader, just the basic options are visible though. So by pasting the displacement shader into it, you've basically added a displacement shader to a displacement shader.

If you want to use the height map displacement or manually use the 3d displacement shader you can still use the displacement map option in the mental ray rollout of the A&D material (the very last rollout at the bottom). Don't forget to uncheck the lock icon to the right of the displacement map in order to use it.

Lukavi

08-19-2008, 01:20 AM

What happened to the mrmaterials.com site?

Tsukiyono

08-19-2008, 01:55 AM

Would appear it has been hacked ;)

Spacelord

08-19-2008, 02:06 AM

What happened to the mrmaterials.com site?

Yep looks like some arse has hacked the site.
What a jerk

TheAllusionist

08-19-2008, 05:34 AM

No Good deed goes unpunished! ;)

Bao2

08-19-2008, 11:30 AM

I have a question: Why people (even Autodesk) uses PNG format instead JPG? I myself the first thing I do with the shaders I use is convert the PNG to JPG.

fgdf

08-19-2008, 11:34 AM

One reason I guess becouse it's lossless format and you don't have to spend your firepower to process extra data (compression).

Clanger

08-19-2008, 11:40 AM

One reason I guess becouse it's lossless format and you don't have to spend your firepower to process extra data (compression).

Plus it can be saved in a higher colour depth.

Bao2

08-19-2008, 12:01 PM

Plus it can be saved in a higher colour depth.

No, I was not talking about saving your renders in PNG but using them in your shaders. In the promaterials folders you can see Autodesk choose PNG format and I find it absurd. The first thing I do when I find a material with PNG is change them to JPG format. But you know, Autodesk if does it must be some reason why I suppose...

PNG has several problems and you just are free of them converting them to JPG.

JasperCG

08-19-2008, 02:03 PM

Thanks Jeff. thats got it.

ctrl.studio

08-19-2008, 06:53 PM

No, I was not talking about saving your renders in PNG but using them in your shaders. In the promaterials folders you can see Autodesk choose PNG format and I find it absurd. The first thing I do when I find a material with PNG is change them to JPG format. But you know, Autodesk if does it must be some reason why I suppose...

PNG has several problems and you just are free of them converting them to JPG.

I'd discard both, probably. But sure I'd never go to convert a png into a jpg.
as for 'higher color depth', you can still consider png better than jpg for input too, ie. a 16bit bw png used for bump is better than a compressed 8bit jpeg. :)

both are compressed that means that both will have to be un-compressed (lossless or not, ie. you can't get the raw pixel on-the-fly without running the algorithm that created them) on render time, which put both on a poor light for 3D use. On another side, they are lighter (than usual tga or tiff), they also have alpha transparency but do not support build-in mipmapping nor tiles.

to add something, the best texture support you can find, nowadays, is with openEXR.
tiled, pre-mipmapped, compressed (if storage it's a problem). that means you'll never have to load the whole texture in memory while you don't need to resort to memory mapped textures. each tile will be compressed on its own and as you have already a piramidal texture array saved in your exr, mentalray will not have to read the whole texture to generate itself the piramid. looking at this, the problem, rightnow in 3D, it's not to have lighter textures for storage, but ready textures to be accessed locally.

as this require some work from the user side to setup its env, having to deal with regular textures for on-the-fly setups, like those you wanna do when you deal with a pre-builded material/texture library, PNG remains a viable format. Forget JPG. ;)

max

Spacelord

08-20-2008, 03:02 AM

Hi,
How do you use round corners with the car paint shader ?
I thought I might be able to unhide it in the Architectural_max.mi files.
Once unhidded I was going to put the car paint into the Mental Shader and the round corners into the bump. But when I remove the "hidden" from the Architectural_max.mi mia_roundcorners doesn't show up. Am I unhidding it from the right mi file ?

cheers

edit: It did work, I was looking for mia_roundcorners instead of Arch_roundcorners.

But is there anyway to just add it to the car_paint shader ?

retro002

08-21-2008, 01:22 PM

I am having a problem here with a really simple glass rendering with MR in XSI - maybe someone could give me a hand with this.

I am using the MIA Shader and have set my scene up like described in the documentation. The problem is that the liquid seems outisde of the glass, it seems this is caused by the refraction of the black environment is on the inside of the glass. I have seen this effect in real life photography too, but there are far more pictures with glasses having a liquid inside, which dont have this issue.

http://flickr.com/photos/scoobay/1515241906/

Can someone help me out with this, I am going nuts over this.

http://home.arcor.de/scripples/help.jpg

gulio

08-21-2008, 03:27 PM

Have you point the normals in the right direction? The IORs seems wrong to me. With the dielectric shaders you don´t need to do any math, just use the IORs as they relate to vaccum. Glass = 1.5, Water = 1.3

retro002

08-21-2008, 03:50 PM

Normals are pointing in the right direction. I have set the scene up according to

http://xsi.wiki.avid.com/images/7/77/Architectural-library.pdf

MasterZap

08-22-2008, 10:20 AM

hi there, i have problem when rendering through glass material - i have simple scene where is camera placed before glass plate and behind them are simple object and skydome

the problem is that the skydome uses `mr raytype switcher` for sky - the method that Jeff Patton has on his blog ( Skydomes in 3dsmax with mental ray (and FG) ), and this skydome object is not rendered, i tried to put this raytype material into mr connection shaders - into volume, or envirnoment, but nothing changed

The reason the object is not rendered is because you have set the OBJECTS "visible to reflection/refraction" to OFF.

Also you have something strange w. your glass material. F9r a window, you should use the "Glass" material in your scene (the shader ball to the left of the shader ball w. checkers on it in the material editor).

What I wonder, though, what you are trying to acheive, in principle?

Firstly, to rayswitch between "what you see" and "what bouncing rays see", you should use the "Environmet/Background Switcher"

Secondly, I wonder what your end goal is, because I don't really see the reason for the skydome at all. If you want to *light* by something other than your environment map, well, then simply use a different environment map - the lighting comes from the "mr Sky" skylight.

The environment map (in Environment dialog) is used for reflections and to "see".

If you really want to split out "reflections" and "what you see", then use "Environment/Background Switcher", that's what it's for. Do NOT use the general rayswitcher or the "advanced" rayswitcher for this.

/Z

MasterZap

08-22-2008, 10:25 AM

I have seen this effect in real life photography too,

http://flickr.com/photos/scoobay/1515241906/

Exactly - it is the correct render!

The reason it looks like this is your white environment, which reflects on the edges of the glass which makes you not actually see the edge at all. This isn't the "water going outside the outer edge", it is the water appear to go outside the inner edge - which is something you will see in ALL photos of a glass with liquid.

It still doesn't go outside the outer edge.

The reason it looks odd is because you don't actually see the outside edge, in this particular lighting scenario (white on white....)

Can someone help me out with this, I am going nuts over this.

In principle, what is there to help, since it's the correct render?

If you want it to look "less odd", put something in that makes the glass' outer edge visible. Like a slight color tint to the glass (i.e. not make the glass transmittance not 100%).

If you see the image in the manual, the "water appearing to go to the outer edge of the glass surface" is the exact effect you want, because this is what happens in nature. The only reason you see the inner edge at all is due to the glass/air interface causing total internal reflection.

/Z

dave-3d

08-22-2008, 11:22 AM

Zap,

Is there anyway to disable (or directly alter) the specular kick you get in an Arch & Design material ?

I always find that if I use an A&D material for glass (physcial 2 sided) I get a great big white specular burn-out caused by my omnis/spotlights, even if Glossiness is at 1.0. And if I am unlucky enough to get the right angle to hit a flat plane (acting as a window), I get a complete white out. It is a very tell-tale attribute of this material, and "looks" odd.

Being able to switch this specular kick off, or adjust it would be great - I would still get any reflected hotspots from my environment map.

Thanks,

Dave

Bao2

08-22-2008, 12:41 PM

David: Relative Intensity of Highlights=0 ?

retro002

08-22-2008, 12:52 PM

Exactly - it is the correct render!

The reason it looks like this is your white environment, which reflects on the edges of the glass which makes you not actually see the edge at all. This isn't the "water going outside the outer edge", it is the water appear to go outside the inner edge - which is something you will see in ALL photos of a glass with liquid.

This is a photo of what I want to achieve.

http://flickr.com/photos/kylemay/2045520632/

or this

http://flickr.com/photos/europa70/2534243741/

I am using exactly the same setup, why do i get a different result?

If you want it to look "less odd", put something in that makes the glass' outer edge visible. Like a slight color tint to the glass (i.e. not make the glass transmittance not 100%).

But I want a clear glass, tinting is not an option.

If you see the image in the manual, the "water appearing to go to the outer edge of the glass surface" is the exact effect you want, because this is what happens in nature. The only reason you see the inner edge at all is due to the glass/air interface causing total internal reflection.
/Z

I understand that. You have to admit, that it looks quite odd though. Every single person (except you) considered this looking wrong.

I am sorry, if anything I wrote is plain stupid. I do not have a good grip on MR and the mia material (and reality).

dave-3d

08-22-2008, 01:49 PM

David: Relative Intensity of Highlights=0 ?

Thanks Bao2,

But the A&D material computes specular using the Reflectivity (including BDRF) and Glossiness values. I want reflections so reflectivity has to stay on at 1.0, but even with Glossiness at 1.0 I get a hot spot area. Using the old raytrace material I can dial out the specular (or make it a pin point) but it doesn't render as quickly as the A&D material - especially with nested glass and chrome objects behind the original glass material.

Where do you adjust relative intensity ? Is this a global setting, I would only prefer to use it locally to selected materials.

Dave

JeffPatton

08-22-2008, 02:49 PM

Is there anyway to disable (or directly alter) the specular kick you get in an Arch & Design material ?

I always find that if I use an A&D material for glass (physcial 2 sided) I get a great big white specular burn-out caused by my omnis/spotlights, even if Glossiness is at 1.0. You could turn off the specular attribute on the light source.

JeffPatton

08-22-2008, 02:59 PM

What I wonder, though, what you are trying to acheive, in principle?I could be wrong but I believe he has a 1/2 dome, 360deg sky map that he wants to use. like this: http://jeffpatton.net/Blog-images/Skydome_ex01.jpg

If you use those in the 3ds Max environment they get stretched since it's using spherical mapping. Therefore he's wanting to map it to a dome. Evidently for whatever reason he doesn't want it to contribute any lighting to the scene. Instead he wants to use the mrSky for the skylight instead of this dome, and of course the mrSun for the direct light.

Of course one quick way to do that is to just hide the dome, calculate & save his lighting from the mrSun/mrSky, freeze the calculation, then unhide the dome and render.

Another option is that he could take that skydome map into Photoshop and paint a ground plane so that when it's placed in the 3ds Max environment it would be compatible with spherical mapping. Then he could use the background switcher to accomplish his goal.

Again, I'm just guessing at the desired end result & maps that he's using.

dave-3d

08-22-2008, 03:31 PM

You could turn off the specular attribute on the light source.

True, Jeff. ;)

But that would effect all objects/materials. Some of my lights are actually set for the oppposite at present (specular only, no diffuse) - and some are excluded from certain parts of the scene's geometry (Illumination and/or shadow casting).

A way to tone down that specular bloom in the A&D material directly would be welcomed with open arms.

Dave

Bao2

08-22-2008, 03:46 PM

Where do you adjust relative intensity ? Is this a global setting, I would only prefer to use it locally to selected materials.

In the Arch&Design material in the Advanced Rendering Options and now in Advanced Reflectivity Options set the Relative Intensity of Highlights to 0 and render. I really think if I understood you, it is what you are looking for.

Bao2

08-22-2008, 03:48 PM

PNG remains a viable format. Forget JPG. ;)

No. Forget PNG or you have troubles. Instead PNG you can use TIF if you are needed of 16bits. I agree EXR is the best just now if you are to choose one and only one format. But my question was JPG versus PNG and I really don't understand why people like troubles, because PNG is troubles (perhaps because max filter import of PNG).

Bao2

08-22-2008, 04:08 PM

or this
http://flickr.com/photos/europa70/2534243741/

I took about 60 shots and I'm not really happy with any of them

Can you imagine the guy putting the wine in the glass taking the photo and then the wine to the bottle again and clean the glass and begin again and all of this 60 times??? Man, learn 3D maaaaan!!! LOL

But I want a clear glass, tinting is not an option.

Your "diseapearing" glass is disappearing because it has the same color like your background at the edges. To it be visible you need make these two colors not the same pure white. So one option would be tone down the white at the background. Or the other option would be make the reflection in the 90 angle not 100%, just use the ability in the A&D material to be able to specify the reflectivity in the 90 angle and put it in 0.8 or so. I think you said you are with XSI so instead A&D it is called mia_material.

dave-3d

08-22-2008, 04:38 PM

In the Arch&Design material in the Advanced Rendering Options and now in Advanced Reflectivity Options set the Relative Intensity of Highlights to 0 and render. I really think if I understood you, it is what you are looking for.

Which version of Max are we talking about ?

I only have Max9 to hand at the moment (Have some old files I must work on, but have access to 2009 design) and there is no "Relative Intensity of Highlights" option in the advanced roll-out in Max9 ? Pretty sure when I was working with Max2008 I didn't spot that option either ...

But it is exactly what I am looking for.

Dave

retro002

08-22-2008, 05:14 PM

Your "diseapearing" glass is disappearing because it has the same color like your background at the edges. To it be visible you need make these two colors not the same pure white. So one option would be tone down the white at the background. Or the other option would be make the reflection in the 90 angle not 100%, just use the ability in the A&D material to be able to specify the reflectivity in the 90 angle and put it in 0.8 or so. I think you said you are with XSI so instead A&D it is called mia_material.

Bao, I tried both of your suggestions - unfortunately they do not work.

- putting the 90 deg angle to 80% does not move the dark reflection to the outer rim
- toning down the background takes all the contrast out of the image, also the rim is only a slightly darker grey

please understand my scene is very simple, a cube with a constant in the background and a reflecting floor, the rest of the scene is just pure black (empty). by changing the size of the cube i can change the width of the dark reflection, but i can not move it to the edges of the glass.

Bao2

08-22-2008, 06:20 PM

Which version of Max are we talking about ?

I only have Max9 to hand at the moment (Have some old files I must work on, but have access to 2009 design) and there is no "Relative Intensity of Highlights" option in the advanced roll-out in Max9 ?

http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/3769/adpx2.gif

You are right, Max 9 has not that. It is not simply copy the .mi file I suppose from Max2009 to Max9 because that is probably using some enhances in mentalray core.

Bao2

08-22-2008, 06:22 PM

Bao, I tried both of your suggestions - unfortunately they do not work.

- putting the 90 deg angle to 80% does not move the dark reflection to the outer rim

80% probably still too much light. Try 0% and then up in next renders to find the one you want.

MasterZap

08-22-2008, 07:00 PM

Where do you adjust relative intensity ? Is this a global setting, I would only prefer to use it locally to selected materials.

Dave

It's in the "advanced" tab of the material. But it requires max 2008 or newer.

/Z

MasterZap

08-22-2008, 07:04 PM

This is a photo of what I want to achieve.

http://flickr.com/photos/kylemay/2045520632/

or this

http://flickr.com/photos/europa70/2534243741/

Then do what he did; use some black cards to the right/left to get the black reflection. It looks like you have a complete surrounding white environment? Don't. Use black cards to block of areas to give "interesting" reflections.

I was visiting a product photo studio, and they have this "photo box" which is a white sheet thing with lights behind, and then large black cylinders whos only purpouse is is to reflect in the pots/pans/mobil phones/toys/whatever is being photographed there.

This is a photo of what I want to achieve.
I understand that. You have to admit, that it looks quite odd though. Every single person (except you) considered this looking wrong.

It does look "odd", but it's still right. Heck, the classical every-day-observable case of the "inner" edge of a glass seeminly disappearing when you put liquid in is also really "odd looking".

/Z

MasterZap

08-22-2008, 07:06 PM

I could be wrong but I believe he has a 1/2 dome, 360deg sky map that he wants to use. like this: http://jeffpatton.net/Blog-images/Skydome_ex01.jpg

If you use those in the 3ds Max environment they get stretched since it's using spherical mapping.

So don't use an unaltered spherical mapping. I generally set it to mirror in V in that case. This gives you the expected sky, and then the sky "mirrored" for the lower half of the "sky" (but you'll block that with some geometry).

You can also do it by turning repeat in V off and modifying the V offset and scale (don't remember the value, could be 0.5 and 0.5 or maybe it ends up being 0.25 and 0.5, or something... try it... ;) )

/Z

JeffPatton

08-22-2008, 07:18 PM

So don't use an unaltered spherical mapping. I generally set it to mirror in V in that case. This gives you the expected sky, and then the sky "mirrored" for the lower half of the "sky" (but you'll block that with some geometry).

You can also do it by turning repeat in V off and modifying the V offset and scale (don't remember the value, could be 0.5 and 0.5 or maybe it ends up being 0.25 and 0.5, or something... try it... ;) )Good idea(s).

retro002

08-23-2008, 09:17 AM

Then do what he did; use some black cards to the right/left to get the black reflection. It looks like you have a complete surrounding white environment? Don't. Use black cards to block of areas to give "interesting" reflections.

I was visiting a product photo studio, and they have this "photo box" which is a white sheet thing with lights behind, and then large black cylinders whos only purpouse is is to reflect in the pots/pans/mobil phones/toys/whatever is being photographed there.

MasterZap, that is exactly the way I did it. If I had a completely white environment, there wouldnt be any dark reflections in the glass.

It does look "odd", but it's still right. Heck, the classical every-day-observable case of the "inner" edge of a glass seeminly disappearing when you put liquid in is also really "odd looking".
/Z

That is not what I mean. I understand that I need the TIR for realism and I "like" it. The problem is that i cant get the reflections into the right place (very outside of the glass, like in the examples I posted). Why is that? I use the same setup, why dont I get the same result??

dave-3d

08-23-2008, 12:25 PM

Thanks Bao2 and Zap,

Somehow that had slipped under my radar. But a VERY useful variable.

Dave

Bao2

08-23-2008, 07:23 PM

http://home.arcor.de/scripples/help.jpg

I forgot to say that to be exact, the glass material must have 1.5 and the water surface 1.33 as masterzap pdf explains (I suppose it is also shipped with XSI, the pdf about Arch&Design material)

retro002

08-23-2008, 07:35 PM

Bao: It doesn't make a difference, the problem still persists.

Dashkevicz

08-23-2008, 09:24 PM

Retro002: I would try the "place highlights tool" under the align drop-down.

Make sure you're in the camera view with a point object selected.

With the tool active click and drag on the glass object and release on the edge of the glass.

The position of the point will align on the axis of reflexion at the normal you released the mouse button.
You can use the point as a guide for placing your dark reflectors. Because the tool also rotates the object, you can now use the point as a picked pivot an easily move the object(s) along the axis you're interested in. Placement of reflectors is very difficult, but this helps (me).

retro002

08-23-2008, 09:33 PM

Dashkevicz: It is not an option, as I use XSI. I believe the tool you mentioned is only available in 3DS Max. Also I would like to understand what causes this issue, I can resolve this thing in 2 minutes in Photoshop.

Bao2

08-23-2008, 11:46 PM

My idea of using the BRDF Custom don't works.
Image A uses IOR and image B was what I was saying but it is even worst! :shrug:

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/8117/01ld9.jpg

So the only way is what masterzap said: use a blackcard. In image C look the blackcard in our left and in image D with the blackcard moved more to the left just to not appear in the render.

But the card affects to the look of the right side of the glass (D is exposing the trick) so you will need make two renders (A and D) and use photoshop to copy the right side of the glass from A to D

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/1765/02bi6.jpg

retro002

08-24-2008, 12:12 PM

Bao: First of all, thank you for your effort to help me with this.

As I said, it is easy to do in Photoshop, I do not even need to compose 2 renders for that, a simple free transform will do the trick. I still do not understand what is causing the black reflection to be on the edge or further inside. The effect seems to be stronger the smaller the width of the black card is. Compare your image C to D.

Skyraider3D

08-24-2008, 01:28 PM

Quick question, guys... What's the best way to boost highlights on A&D materials? Already for months I am struggling to get decent highlights on matt materials, using real reflections, without resorting to Blend materials (slow rendertime). In the end I've settled on a Shellac material but I am less than pleased with this configuration... :shrug:

Any suggestions would be very welcome!

Bao2

08-24-2008, 03:08 PM

Bao2

08-24-2008, 03:18 PM

I still do not understand what is causing the black reflection to be on the edge or further inside. The effect seems to be stronger the smaller the width of the black card is. Compare your image C to D.

I myself was thinking B was the solution until I did a test and was surprised with the result!

In C and D I am using the same width of the card, the only thing is in C is more near to the glass than in D.

Skyraider3D

08-24-2008, 03:28 PM

Look post 4417 of this thread and change from 1 to some value more high.Thanks a lot, I'd not seen that option before! :)

retro002

08-24-2008, 03:30 PM

In C and D I am using the same width of the card, the only thing is in C is more near to the glass than in D.

Nearer means "optically" larger to the camera and therefore wider. It does not really make a difference.

Bao2

08-24-2008, 04:31 PM

New renders. This time no black colorcards in the scene:

http://img58.imageshack.us/img58/3060/03tc4.jpg

Is any of these what you want?

retro002

08-24-2008, 05:24 PM

Bao: I would like the black reflections being 1/4 the width. Can you do that?

Bao2

08-24-2008, 06:27 PM

Bao: I would like the black reflections being 1/4 the width. Can you do that?

Only changing the geometry of the object to 1/4 less width in that area I suppose. I will try.

Bao2

08-24-2008, 06:47 PM

Changed the geometry (now the width of the glass is around 1/4 of original).
Left is original width, middle is changed and without reflections and right is changed with 50% reflection.

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/7374/04bq3.jpg

retro002

08-24-2008, 08:39 PM

Bao: So you would say, the whole thing is just a geometry issue?

Bao2

08-24-2008, 09:50 PM

Bao: So you would say, the whole thing is just a geometry issue?

What I did was a glass material that have 0% diffuse, 0% reflection (or 50% reflection but you probably like more the 0% one I think (the red rectangle in the pic below)) and now here comes the trick to make this black border you like: 100% refraction but maping the color using a falloff map. This falloff uses the perpendicular/parallel method with a curve that I set in a "step" shape. Look the pic:

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/2658/01br9.gif

So the refraction in that place is zero so blocking rays through it and then the refraction goes to 100% in the rest.

retro002

08-25-2008, 10:24 AM

Bao2

08-25-2008, 10:33 AM

Good idea - but this is rather a workaround than solving the problem, isnt it? Still it does not answer my question of why this is happening. I am sorry I am so anal about it, but I would really like to understand that effect.

I think I am lost.
There is no problem. I see glass material working like it must work. If it were not working believe me I would be the first one here saying something like "Hey autodesk (masterzap) could you fix the glass please? LOL"

Glass material works very well (not incredibly well like l-glass did (and now we have not l-glass anymore because he doesn't release the source code)) and you want it doing something that is not real so you must use some trick. There are three possibilities:
- Giving the glass other color not pure transparent
- Placing colorcards
- Modifying the refraction in parallel rays to black

These are not workarounds because there is no problem to solve. There are different methods to achieve an unrealistic result.

Understand what happens? Simply understand what I did to make it look like you want: block refraction rays parallel to camera. So the effect you don't like are the refraction rays (I initially was thinking they were only reflection rays so my surprise when I saw B as I said)

retro002

08-25-2008, 11:02 AM

Bao, I am sorry. I really appreciate all the effort you put into helping me.

Maybe this whole thing is not a shader issue, so I guess I am in the wrong place to ask. Have you seen the pictures I posted in the beginning? I want to understand, why in some photographs the black card reflection is inside and in some it is at the outer edge. I understand that this is a real life effect and the glass is working well, but how can I can control with my setup, where the reflection goes. Look at the flickr images I posted, those are photographs. The people who took those had no option of sticking some nodes into each other.

So if the glass shader is working ok (which I assume it does), why cant I then get the same result (edges outside)? How do I have to change my black/white card setup to fix this? I have been working on this for days but no luck - maybe I miss something?

Bao2

08-25-2008, 01:30 PM

Maybe this whole thing is not a shader issue, so I guess I am in the wrong place to ask.

I think this is the right place to ask about the behaviour of glass and discuss if it can be done to work with tricks or without them.

Have you seen the pictures I posted in the beginning?

Three photos one in post 4400 and two in 4407.

I want to understand, why in some photographs the black card reflection is inside and in some it is at the outer edge.

The one with the reflection inside is the black and white background one. It is reflecting the black zone in the background but being dimmed because the white zone we are seeing through.

The other two photos have a white background and it is obvious they have a dark room in the other sides or black cards. Look the "column" of the cup and you can see better.
If you decide not to use my "trick/workaround" of playing with the refraction then you need to use blackcards. And I think you need to find the width of the cup to play well in the render. I was using the width you showed in your blueprint but I changed then when you said it was too much width.

Look at the flickr images I posted, those are photographs. The people who took those had no option of sticking some nodes into each other.

All the flickr photographers use photoshop, don't doubt about that. You must only rely on your own photographs.

So if the glass shader is working ok (which I assume it does)

It is not bad but certainly I was liking much more l-glass. And don't forget DGS that probably works much better than mia_material too.

why cant I then get the same result (edges outside)? How do I have to change my black/white card setup to fix this? I have been working on this for days but no luck - maybe I miss something?

My D render (black colorcard) but using the new geometry (1/4 thinner) ?

retro002

08-25-2008, 01:50 PM

The other two photos have a white background and it is obvious they have a dark room in the other sides or black cards. Look the "column" of the cup and you can see better.
If you decide not to use my "trick/workaround" of playing with the refraction then you need to use blackcards.

I used black cards from the beginning, just because you dont see them in my render it doesnt mean they are not there.

And I think you need to find the width of the cup to play well in the render. I was using the width you showed in your blueprint but I changed then when you said it was too much width.

I have already tried changing the width of the glass and moving the black/white cards before I even started posting on this thread, but have had no luck. No matter where I move the cards, the reflection stays "inside". No matter how thin in make my glass, the reflection doenst move to the outside, it is just, that it is moving more toward that direction. Also look at the photgraphs on the web, with the reflection at the "outside", there are also some with rather thick glass. I do not believe this to be an issue of the width of the glass, it is just that the "odd" effect is less of an issue with thinner glass.

All the flickr photographers use photoshop, don't doubt about that. You must only rely on your own photographs.

I have seen lots of photographs, where the reflection is "outside". I do not believe they were all faked/photoshopped. It is IMHO highly unlikely the pictures in post 4407 are faked.

Bao2

08-25-2008, 03:43 PM

I have already tried changing the width of the glass and moving the black/white cards before I even started posting on this thread, but have had no luck.

In C and D the blackcard I used is parallel to the background and only some milimeters in front of the background not in 90 degrees like you must be doing.

It is IMHO highly unlikely the pictures in post 4407 are faked.

I think not also. But I am sure he corrected something the colors in photoshop. The one showing the bottle is a HDR if I remember well (I was looking to other photos of that guy following your link) and a HDR is a hell of a modified image, you can't call it not fake.

Edit: Yes, look the commentary of the second photo in post 4407: After processing in RAW I combined images as HDR to pull out the best highlights and shadows.

retro002

08-25-2008, 04:55 PM

In C and D the blackcard I used is parallel to the background and only some milimeters in front of the background not in 90 degrees like you must be doing.

I am working without black cards. I just use a white card with a constant on it. If the background is black it will act like a black card, but is easier to control. The angle of the black cards to the subject does not matter, just the relative width and the position. The angle in which to place black cards to show up as rim reflections in a round glass is very specific and surprisingly small.

I think not also. But I am sure he corrected something the colors in photoshop. The one showing the bottle is a HDR if I remember well (I was looking to other photos of that guy following your link) and a HDR is a hell of a modified image, you can't call it not fake.

Edit: Yes, look the commentary of the second photo in post 4407: After processing in RAW I combined images as HDR to pull out the best highlights and shadows.

I just meant that the reflections are not manipulated.

InoDetelic

09-14-2008, 02:55 PM

I'm looking for a way to get wet spots on many dry objects.

The thing is that the wet area must be applied over many different textures in my scene, which are already fairly complex and sometimes difficult to manage due to entering/exiting subtextures, mixes, noises, etc. I don't want to apply more complexity to them, as that involves even more uvw maps and for 5+ different textures, I don't want to go that way.

I'm looking for a much more elegant solution, like a geometry that represents the wetness and chenges the look of what's beneath. like layers in photoshop. (I don't want to comp the wetness either) The geometry would be a plane with no shadows and a cutout map or a spline surface.

Ive read Neil Blevins' theory on wet surfaces and I can get pretty good results with A&D, but in this case, I just want a shader that darkens and gives saturation to what's below the shaded geometry. (I can do the reflections in another geometry above that to get that wet-drying and really wet tonalities)

I'm using max 9 btw

gulio

09-14-2008, 06:01 PM

I think the Lume wet&dry shader does exactly what you want.

InoDetelic

09-15-2008, 09:36 AM

not quite.

I can work with the wet-dry tools but that wasn't what I wanted because I need to duplicate the textures and change them to look wet. I was looking for a more automatic and elegant way that would change everything not just the textures I turned dry/wet.

Skyraider3D

09-15-2008, 09:42 PM

Maybe try a shellac material? In the top slot you put a multi-sub with all your other materials, in the second something with bump and localised high-gloss stuff?

JeffPatton

09-15-2008, 11:26 PM

I was looking for a more automatic and elegant way that would change everything not just the textures I turned dry/wet.Couldn't you simply use the material override to apply a black/wet(reflective) material to all your meshes, then composite the black/reflective render over the original render in post, similar to this:
http://jeffpatton.net/Tests/Quick_wet.jpg

InoDetelic

09-16-2008, 12:18 AM

thanx jeff I ended up doing something similar, but instead of material override I just applied a reflection material with cutout map to the objects that needed and rendered because I needed the reflection of other materials in it, and the composite in photoshop, a lot of erasing.

the result is good. I'm tired now and going to sleep, I hope tomorrow I'll find the result at least satisfactory.

JeffPatton

09-16-2008, 12:25 AM

I ended up doing something similar, but instead of material override I just applied a reflection material with cutout map to the objects that needed and rendered because I needed the reflection of other materials in it, and the composite in photoshop, a lot of erasing.FWIW, in that scenario you could have saved some time by using the Subset Pixels/render selected option to render that out without the need for the cutout material.

Skyraider3D

09-16-2008, 10:13 AM

InoDetelic

09-16-2008, 11:31 AM

FWIW, in that scenario you could have saved some time by using the Subset Pixels/render selected option to render that out without the need for the cutout material.

True. But I'm using Max 9. thanx again.

JeffPatton

09-16-2008, 12:50 PM

Nice trick Jeff. The only thing it doesn't do is keep the colour in the reflections. You'd expect the reflection of the green teapot to be green for instance. But it's a good, quick hack if you're short on time and looks convincing enough.Yup, it's a hack for sure. Perhaps another solution would be to write a script that would modify all the reflection/BRDF curves to make all the materials reflective, then decrease the diffuse amount to make them slightly darker and then possibly save that as a "wet" scene state. Of course that's assuming the scene is using all A&D materials, or maybe the script could work with multiple types of mental ray compatible materials.

dave-3d

10-04-2008, 01:45 PM

I've dug up an old Max7 file where I was playing with caustics in water and updated it to use the newer A&D textures, and also to adjust the new Caustics and add Glare. I was originally using this scene to test the new HDR Motion Blur production shader but got sidelined slightly.

Perhaps the caustics are a little pronounced at the moment. Might tone them down slightly.

I'll post my settings when I am happy with the scene.

Dave

You can find an animation here (made using frames directly from Max - no post processing at all):

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_12.htm

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/tutorial_7/AO_Movie_001.jpg

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/tutorial_7/AO_Movie_002.jpg

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/tutorial_7/AO_Movie_003.jpg

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/tutorial_7/AO_Movie_004.jpg

Skyraider3D

10-05-2008, 10:58 AM

InoDetelic

10-05-2008, 03:02 PM

Speaking of pools and caustics, There are some strange things I noticed while messing around and reading masterzaps blog entry about pool caustics.

First, the ior seems messed up when using caustics:

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/2262/iorio0.jpg

You see how just turning on caustics changes ior? I think the one without caustics is correct, with the shadow line breaking when hitting water surface.

Now another thing: I tried another aproach using a caustics bitmap assigned to self illumination slot in the arch&design pool material.

A falloff map decides when the caustics are present, and the uvw mapping is aligned to the sun.
A gradient map makes the transition from shallow to deep so caustics are kind of coherent. the result is this:

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/245/selfillumcausticspl1.jpgit has some diffraction aswell. renders fast.

But with this setup you cannot use caustics because when I turn it on, my fake caustics disappear. The caustics disables the extra lighting coming from additonal Color / self illumination slot. It is strange.

So there are 2 things I don't understand:

- does using caustics in indirect illumination rendering panel break the ior rules?
- why do the same caustics disable the additional lighting coming from A&D material?

dave-3d

10-05-2008, 03:45 PM

That's looking very good Dave!

What were the rendertimes like? I am currently working on a scene of a torpedo bomber and I'm struggling with the render times to the point where I will probably revert to a photo backdrop instead of trying to get a realistic looking water surface in 3D...

I'll double check (I rendered that at another location) but it was relatively quick. I think each frame took about around 30 seconds (but I had that distributed between 2 Quadcore PCs). It took a few seconds to do the photon pass.

I added a little extra to the animation to show underwater. But as I use a refraction depth looking from above the water is ok, but the colour underwater is not really represented. I previously did this in Max7 by using the Submerge Lume here (http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_08.htm).

You're not dropping torpedoes in shallow water though ??? ;)

Dave

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/tutorial_7/round_underwater.jpg

MasterZap

10-05-2008, 09:24 PM

You see how just turning on caustics changes ior? I think the one without caustics is correct, with the shadow line breaking when hitting water surface.

NO!

You see, with caustics off, traditional shadow shaders are used. This means the shadow line will be *straight* (if you were magically able to see it without the refraction of the water) and then *appear* "broken" seen through the surface refraction.

With caustics on, the light rays actually bend, so the shadow line will really and truly *be* broken. Viewing this actually broken line again bent through the surface may make it appear straight (although I guess that would depend on the view angle).

But yes. Shadows change position with caustics, from being "faked" when caustics is off, to being "correct" with caustics on.

/Z

InoDetelic

10-06-2008, 12:47 PM

NO!

You see, with caustics off, traditional shadow shaders are used. This means the shadow line will be *straight* (if you were magically able to see it without the refraction of the water) and then *appear* "broken" seen through the surface refraction.
/Z

Now I got it. I think I'll be using real caustics from now on. I prefere the more accurate version now that I know.

Faking stuff usually takes more of my time so the computer can do faster renders.
Well, TOUGH LUCK. the computer is here to do the work so I can rest more:wip:

MikeBracken

10-09-2008, 05:44 AM

Is it possible to "bake" an sss lightmap, similar to RMFM ?

Regards,
Mike

Bezerker75

10-09-2008, 03:59 PM

Is it possible to somehow use transparency and translucency in the SSS fast skin material? I have searched through this whole thread and didn't find any definitive answer. I am trying to make a shader that resembles the image below. I know that in XSI I can make this shader by pumping the arch material in with the SSS skin shader, but problem is the particular scene I am working with we are using 3dsmax9 so I need to figure out a solution for MAX to do this. I saw that master Zap had made a rewrite of the SSS material that includes the reflection parameters from an Arch Design material, and was wondering, can the same thing be done to allow for transparency? Thanks for your help...if anyone has any advice on a different method to get a shader in MR that would react the same as the shader in the image below I would love to hear that too. Thanks!
http://www.3-dart.net/temp/sss.jpg

Spacelord

10-20-2008, 03:01 AM

Hi there,

I'm using the Matte/shadow/reflection shader for my ground to make an alpha channel with shadows.
Now this works great, I can bring the rendered image into photoshop, load up the selection, invert delete, drop in my grass photo and all looks great except objects that are reflecting the ground material which is the black of the Matte/Shadow/reflection shader. I need these objects to reflect grass. Is there anyway to do this with out using a camera map shader ?
Since I want to do the comping in photoshop.
I thought about mixing the raytype node with the Matte/shadow/reflection shader with no luck.

edit:

I figure it out, I put up and image if anyone is interested in how to do it.
Now I'm wondering how I can affect the Final Gather colour that comes from Enviroment/Background Camera map shader ?

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8903/matteshadowref01jy4.jpg

Abraham

11-20-2008, 10:26 AM

Hello :) I hope I'm not posting in the wrong thread.

I've been trying to use the ctrl_object shader in max 2009 without success so far (I get an error message from mr with the following text : ctrl_objects:: Sphere01|GeomObjects (Mesh00). I haven't found much infos about how to use the shader (none in fact) so I tried to improvise (for those who might wonder, this shader allow you to set per object sampling - maya / xsi like)

Here is how I tried to use it :
I created a mrShader object in my scene, connected a ctrl_object shader in the slot, then dragged it in the material editor, picked my sphere in the scene and increased the min and max sample for this object in the material editor.

If anyone managed to get it to work and would be kind enough to explain how, pretty please :)

J-L

loran

12-09-2008, 11:19 AM

does anyone know if it s possible to do ADDITIVE opacity with arch and design material?
thank you

Skyraider3D

12-15-2008, 12:17 PM

Hi guys,

I am getting double highlights with my glass materials. The geometry it's on has 3D thickness (i.e. two outwards facing polygon layers) and it would seem that MR requires backface culling to be disabled in order for the refractions to work properly. But this causes double highlights, which of course looks wrong.

What can I do about this?

Thanks,

Ronnie

http://skyraider3d.military-meshes.com/images/double_highlights.jpg

micco

12-15-2008, 01:03 PM

Hi. I'm having some problems with mental ray Arch & Design glass material. I have a plastic tube where is a lot of glass tubes inside. When I add say more than 10 tubes the refractions/reflections are black. Is there any way to change this color or have it more transparent. I can't really explain this problem properly but here is a attachment of the render.
http://mizako.com/temp/glasstubes.jpg
On left side there is about 10 glass tubes and right side a bit more. I need to fill the plastic container to the full, but after that it's totally black. In real life it's not as you can see here:
http://mizako.com/temp/container.jpg
Any help with thisone?

edit: Yep, and I have reflections and refractions both set to 50 but that didn't help.

Thanks,
Mikko

Skyraider3D

12-15-2008, 01:11 PM

Mikko, simply increase the Trace Depth of the Final Gather settings (F10 > Indirect Illumination).

Edit: I didn't see your "edit" :)

micco

12-15-2008, 01:40 PM

Mikko, simply increase the Trace Depth of the Final Gather settings (F10 > Indirect Illumination).

Edit: I didn't see your "edit" :)
Thanks for your answer. My edit was "Yep, and I have reflections and refractions both set to 50 but that didn't help." Now I increased the trace depht to 50 from Final Gather settings too, but it didn't help a lot, as you can see.. :/ Any other ideas? :)
http://mizako.com/temp/glasstubes2.jpg

loran

12-15-2008, 01:53 PM

micco & skyraidder, please post a sample of your scenes so we could try to solve your problem.

JeffPatton

12-15-2008, 01:53 PM

But this causes double highlights, which of course looks wrong. What can I do about this?
Give this a try to see if it helps: In the mental ray connection rollout at the bottom of the A&D material, enable the "Flag Material as Opaque" option.

http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/glass_01.jpg
----
http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/glass_02.jpg

If that creates problems then you could turn the "Relative Intensity of Highlights" option to 0.0 and just let the glass reflect like real glass instead of the reflection being combined with the fake specular highlight of your sunlight source which I'm assuming is the mrSun. But of course if you do this then you'll have to make your glass glossy if you're wanting to keep that broad reflection....and that will require more samples & longer render times.

Beyond that, perhaps give the dielectric material a try because you can set it up with specular highlights as well.

------------------------------
edit: Yep, and I have reflections and refractions both set to 50 but that didn't help.You didn't mention whether or not you also changed the "Max. Trace Depth" value in addition to the Max. Reflections & Max. Refractions values, so I have to ask if you also made sure to change that.

I have no idea how many "faces" are on that object that renders black, but are you sure it's not more than 50? If it has to raytrace more than 50 faces then obviously you'll need to use a higher trace depth.

TwiiK

12-15-2008, 02:14 PM

I have no idea how many "faces" are on that object that renders black, but are you sure it's not more than 50? If it has to raytrace more than 50 faces then obviously you'll need to use a higher trace depth.

I found this odd. Does that mean I have to put it at like 10000 if I have something like a glass sphere in my scene? Or am I misunderstanding this?

Why does it only happen when he increases the number of objects? Is the trace depth value the total number of transparent faces in the scene?

micco

12-15-2008, 02:16 PM

micco & skyraidder, please post a sample of your scenes so we could try to solve your problem.
Here is the scene, I didn't put the bitmaps in it, but they are not important in this case.
Odd.. I couldn't direct link the file to this forum, so here's the "link": http://www.mizako.com/temp/testscene.html

Thanks.

JeffPatton

12-15-2008, 02:36 PM

Is the trace depth value the total number of transparent faces in the scene?

About Trace Depth from the help file:
The Trace Depth controls the number of times each ray can be reflected, refracted, or both.

To set Trace Depth for reflections and refractions:
1. Count the number of times you want an object to be reflected or refracted in the scene.
2. On the mental ray: Rendering Algorithms rollout, turn on Enable Reflections and enable Refractions.
3. Set Max. Reflections to the number of reflections you want, and Max. refractions to the number of refractions you want.
4. Set Max. Trace Depth to the sum of the values for the Max Reflections and Max refractions.

The greater the number of reflections and refractions, the more slowly your scene will render. On the other had, too low of a value for Max. Reflections or Max. Refractions (or Max. Trace Depth, controlling both) can make your rendering look unrealistic.

Dashkevicz

12-15-2008, 06:00 PM

ienrdna

12-15-2008, 06:04 PM

3D thickness (i.e. two outwards facing polygon layers)

Why two outwards facing polygon layers?

TwiiK

12-15-2008, 06:26 PM

I couldn't open the scene either, but I made a quick test scene and like Dashkevicz said increasing the trace depth in the advanced rollout of the A&D glass material was what got rid of the black for me.

micco

12-15-2008, 06:34 PM

Thanks a lot Dashkevicz and TwiiK, I'll give it a try tomorrow evening when I'm back at office..

spiralof5

12-16-2008, 03:51 AM

Why two outwards facing polygon layers?

yeah this is exactly my thought.

You know you can make solid glass with mental ray and mia_material right? Since it has brdf built in and everything you shouldn't have to make two inward facing structures. Just select the second set of normals and point them the other way. Either that or just extrude. That will definitely take care of your problem.

There is even a "solid glass" preset that works fairly well. You should start with that and work your way forward or backward.

micco

12-17-2008, 07:33 AM

Hi micco,

I'm assuming that all of the settings that you have changed are in the render dialog ( i couldn't get your file and i'm on max 9 anyway :( )? The arch&design shader has it's own ray-depth limits. You should also raise those. Let us know if that's it.

Edit: they are in the "advanced options" rollout in the arch&design shader.
Okay, now I have something. I pushed the arch&design shaders ray-depth limits to 30 an every other (fg and rendering trace depths) are also 30. This took about 20 minutes to render with 10 processors and it's a bit grainy but I think that's because poor antialiasing.
http://www.mizako.com/temp/glasstubes3.jpg
It is not looking real yet but at least there is not black tubes. Now I'm testing this with the "real" scene.
I also tried ProMaterials: Glazing just for test, but my max crashes everytime.

TwiiK

12-17-2008, 10:17 AM

micco

12-17-2008, 02:35 PM

Hmm, the grainyness doesn't look like lack of AA, but rather too few samples. Are you using glossy reflections or refractions on those tubes? I.e you have increased the glossiness sample size to something other than 0? That will cause the rendertime to sky rocket and to get rid of the grainyness you will have to set the sample size even higher which will increase render time even more. You can enable interpolation to speed it up, but it won't lokk as good.
The glossiness of both reflection and refraction are 1,0 so I can't do anything with the glossy samples (greyed). For now this grainyness is not a problem because this is a part of larger set and those tubes are fairly small but if I need to render bigger pictures, for some brochures or posters, I need to find a solution for this.

Thanks.

TwiiK

12-17-2008, 02:38 PM

Then I'm guessing it is low shadow samples on your light source. :)

micco

12-17-2008, 03:05 PM

Then I'm guessing it is low shadow samples on your light source. :)
Heh. :) Yeah I need to check that out.

Dashkevicz

12-17-2008, 04:38 PM

Hi Micco,

It also looks like "ray rejection". Also in the advanced rollout of the arch&design shader, "cutoff threshold" make it smaller: like 0.0001 or even zero (disables ray rejection). Try that as well as the shadow sampling.

cboath

12-18-2008, 04:03 PM

Wouldn't that be the same issue as the guy who was trying to render out like 20 wine glasses (of clear glass) a couple months ago?

Jeff Patton (i think) has an article on his blog dealing with something similar - getting black edges of transparent objects. I'd have to go back and read, but I think the trick was to crank the samples in reflection and/or refraction. The guy with the glasses had to get up to like 80 I think in order to get the problem resolved.

JeffPatton

01-05-2009, 04:23 PM

Anyone knows where I could find a fake dispersion shader like Jeff Patton did showed on his site? Looks nice but I can't find it anywhere.Daniel Rind's diffraction shader works ok. You can find it at Maxplugins.de (http://maxplugins.de/)

EDIT: WHOA, I wonder why my response showed up before mister3d's post when I obviously posted it after the fact. Hmmm, maybe I need to check my time settings....or perhaps I've somehow traveled into the twilight zone. :surprised

mister3d

01-05-2009, 05:46 PM

Anyone knows where I could find a fake dispersion shader like Jeff Patton did showed on his site? Looks nice but I can't find it anywhere.

mister3d

01-05-2009, 06:02 PM

Daniel Rind's diffraction shader works ok. You can find it at Maxplugins.de (http://maxplugins.de/)

EDIT: WHOA, I wonder why my response showed up before mister3d's post when I obviously posted it after the fact. Hmmm, maybe I need to check my time settings....or perhaps I've somehow traveled into the twilight zone. :surprised

Thank you Jeff, I found it. It's mi. file, but I don't understand how to import it. Sorry for noobish question.
Travelling in time may be due to astrological reasons, or some bugs in the forum.

JeffPatton

01-05-2009, 06:58 PM

While .mi files can be shaders themselves (like the phenomenons), in this case it's basically acting as the GUI for the shader which is a .DLL file...so make sure you grab both the .dll file and the .mi file.

You will place the files into your 3dsmax/mental ray/shaders_autoload/...include and/or shaders folder(s). You'll put .mi files in your include sub-folder, and .dll files in your shader sub-folder.

mister3d

01-05-2009, 10:06 PM

Thank you for thie help.

TomMannington

01-06-2009, 01:04 PM

Has there been any info on the MR Physical camera posted on this thread? There is a .ms file that comes with the MAX Design 2009 Extra disk but I have no idea what to do with it.

Scratch my last: Found Zap's info on it.

Skyraider3D

01-11-2009, 01:32 AM

What's the best kind of shader setup to use when I want the object to receive shadows, cast shadows but not self-shadow?

Basically it's a "cloud" of intersecting alpha-mapped planes to make up a soft 3D shape (like a cloud).

Skyraider3D

01-11-2009, 07:08 PM

Give this a try to see if it helps: In the mental ray connection rollout at the bottom of the A&D material, enable the "Flag Material as Opaque" option.

http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/glass_01.jpg
----
http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/glass_02.jpg

If that creates problems then you could turn the "Relative Intensity of Highlights" option to 0.0 and just let the glass reflect like real glass instead of the reflection being combined with the fake specular highlight of your sunlight source which I'm assuming is the mrSun. But of course if you do this then you'll have to make your glass glossy if you're wanting to keep that broad reflection....and that will require more samples & longer render times.

Beyond that, perhaps give the dielectric material a try because you can set it up with specular highlights as well.Thanks for the reply Jeff (I totally overlooked it somehow, hence my late response - sorry for that!). I have tried your suggestion but for me it didn't make any difference. I am already using glossy reflections though, could this be the cause?

I can make the second highlight go away by enabling max refraction distance. But the results are so bad (shadow artefacts, stuff goes black (or any other colour I set), etc.) that it causes more problems than it solves. So all in all I'm a bit stuck on this one... :(