Mental Ray - Shaders

[Skyraider3D]

Hmm nobody an idea wrt to the double highlights?


After the double highlights and "cloud" shaders I am running against a third wall: fire effects. And I don't mean the gizmo thingamabob. Basically I need to create a rocket flame and have a stretched sphere shaped object. Applied to it are a cutout falloff map to make the edges soft and a white-yellow-red gradient for the colour. Now I want to make the thing glow and illuminate the scene and to get something approaching illumination it completely burns out cutout map somehow and becomes solid again. Been messing with this for a good few hours now and getting nowhere. Anybody has any ideas?

I find I am turning to standard materials and scanline rendering more and more to get the effects I want. Surely that can't be the right approach to Mental Ray rendering? :hmm:





Using standard materials but with boosted output and some photometric pointlights I got this in the end. Not ideal and rendertimes are pretty poor, but it'll have to do...

http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=137104&stc=1

[Skyraider3D]

Hmmm it seems this post is slowly dying (or did I kill it? :cry: ).

Anyway, I've done more experimenting with glass materials and it seems as soon as the glass becomes glossy (glossy reflection spinner < 1.0) then this annoying second highlight appears. Glossy reflections are the only way to break up a highlight with scratches as far as I know, so I am really stuck with this.

[loran]

your render is very beautiful Skyraider.
Do you try to use the glow channel as a mask for the self illumin?
If you use the glow with noting in the channel the all surface will glow. try to put the same falloff you use in the cutout channel.

[Skyraider3D]

Thanks!

Hmm... I tried that but the result is strange. When you make things glow the cutoff map behaves as 1-bit (on/off). I'm using 2.2 gamma and that seems to do weird things with cutout maps.

Whatever the case, the Standard material with opacity and self illuminaiton (with output of 25) seemd to do the trick.

Thanks for the suggestion tho! I might be doing something wrong...

[loran]

Here my shader solution:
color is white, the color is produced at Self illumnation filter color channel.
I use transparency with a falloff+gradiant (horizontal decay)
I use a cutout with gradiant to reinforce the fading

enjoy ;)

max2009 scene (http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/divers/mr/rocket.max)


http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/divers/mr/rocket.jpg

[pokoy]

nice effect!

[Skyraider3D]

That looks pretty good, thanks for taking the time to put this together and share it here!

[loran]

Skyraider I am interested in your fuselage material above. the reflection is very nice. Can you show us how it s done?

[everlite]

Hey guys,

http://www.capturefx.co.uk/web/hdr.jpg

I have a HDR in a skylight/background; daylight setup with the MR sun turned off, final gather on set to low with 2 bounces ... i think AO's turned on in a few of the materials too.

Any ideas how i can get rid of the red samples that are pinning from the HDR hotspots in the reflections? Also that freaky stripe effect to the right.

Thanks,
Dave.

[JeffPatton]

Hey Dave,

Is that one of the default .hdr's? Also, what is your image sampling rate?

I'm not 100% certain about the light setup. See if I have this correct: I think you have a mrSun/MrSky (daylight system) in the scene, but the mrSun is disabled. Then you also have a skylight in the scene that's using the HDR that is placed in the scene environment? Is that correct?

If that's the .hdr that I think it is (Room_lrg.hdr) then it's a tough one to clear due to the small light sources in it.

[MasterZap]

Hey guys,

http://www.capturefx.co.uk/web/hdr.jpg

Any ideas how i can get rid of the red samples that are pinning from the HDR hotspots in the reflections?

Take more reflection samples.


Also that freaky stripe effect to the right.


Uhm, what material are you using? It looks like you are using something derived from brushed metal. These are bumps to make the "scratches" in the material, so quite clearly a "desired effect" of that material. If you don't want that, well.... remove the bump map.

/Z

[gashe]

hi there...
I know this have been asked a lot of times but all I find was threads form 2005-2007.
So my questions is is it possible to use Vray materials downloaded from net like mentalray materials. Cause Vray have very good materials that i would like to use... but i dont know Vray still.

Thanks

[gashe]

Yes but can i use them with mental ray render ?

Thanks

[TheAllusionist]

hi there...
I know this have been asked a lot of times but all I find was threads form 2005-2007.
So my questions is is it possible to use Vray materials downloaded from net like mentalray materials. Cause Vray have very good materials that i would like to use... but i dont know Vray still.

Thanks

The Vray community has an awesome material resource at: http://www.vray-materials.de/

You cannot use them in mental ray directly, but you can review the settings and recreate them in mental ray. Additionally there are converters out there that are some what successful in converting them. Some are listed in this post:

http://www.3dallusions.com/forums/mr-max-general-discussions/3006-converting-vray-mental-ray.html

[TheAllusionist]

Something strange going on in post orders, I responded to your post and your response is before mine, I added a link to my original response.

[thorsten hartmann]

hey

wait a little bit. :rolleyes: At Vray 1.5 SP3 can you use the A&D materials for mental ray in Vray. At this thime use the A&D Material mental ray and Final Render. I think in the future is the A&D Material the new Standard Material in 3dsmax and you can take the materials from mentalraymaterials.com. Second is the A&D Material Shader much better as the Vray Material (not the renderer). ;)

mfg
hot chip

[TheAllusionist]

I think they wanted the ability to use all the great materials that the Vray community has created, but render using mental ray. The Vray community is similar to the Maxwell render community in that they share lots of great materials, something the mental ray community lacks even though a couple efforts have been made to eliminate this short coming.

Hence, the convertors mentioned are a partial solution IMHO.

Thanks for the information on future Vray compatibilty ;)

[InoDetelic]

You cannot use them in mental ray directly, but you can review the settings and recreate them in mental ray.

Yeah, but you need vray installed to see them right? the specs and values and stuff...

[TomMannington]

I was working my way through Darren Brooker's excellent book on CG lighting techniques when I came across a slight stubling block regarding using the MR Sun/sky and photographc exposure control with the production shaders.

In the book he creates a scene in the standard way with the production shaders then uses the MR sun/sky to light them with the date and time that the photo was taken. All very normal but I then realised that he hadn't set any exposure control so the model was massively over exposed (although it want apparent at first because the model was lit from the back). So I turned on mr photographic exposure control and got a black or very underlit model and nothing in terns of environment, none of the other exposure settings worked nor did any other types of exposure control.

Can the production shaders be used with photographic exposure control and MR sun sky? Is there a set of settings I've not taken into account as it strikes me as odd that such a concise book would leave something like this out.

[JeffPatton]

So I turned on mr photographic exposure control and got a black or very underlit model and nothing in terns of environment, none of the other exposure settings worked nor did any other types of exposure control.

Can the production shaders be used with photographic exposure control and MR sun sky? Is there a set of settings I've not taken into account as it strikes me as odd that such a concise book would leave something like this out.Yes, the production shaders work with exposure control. Sounds like you probably need to adjust the physical scale settings on your exposure control.

Here's why:
http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-does-mental-ray-render-my.html

[gashe]

Something strange going on in post orders, I responded to your post and your response is before mine, I added a link to my original response.

Yea i have noticed that, maybe its something with the time zones, who knows. Anyway thanks for the link and for the info

Ivan

[TheAllusionist]

Yeah, but you need vray installed to see them right? the specs and values and stuff...

I think that in the material editor that the slot will be a blank box, or have a black sphere but the values are still visible. Obviously I am not going to un-install Vray to check, but if memory is correct that is the case. Easy enough to check, download one of the many free ones and open it in your material editor to see. Most material repository sites have thumbnails of what the material looks like applied to widget in a default scene, you can use that as a reference of what it is suppose to look like.

[dave-3d]

And any backplates and HDRIs.

It is why I use the unitless settings and avoid the sun/physical units. I would never know naturally to use values of 8000 or more in the scaling factor in the HDRI env reflection map or camera map shaders.

Dave


Yes, the production shaders work with exposure control. Sounds like you probably need to adjust the physical scale settings on your exposure control.

Here's why:
http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-does-mental-ray-render-my.html

[TomMannington]

Bang on as usual Jeff. Thanks for the quick response.

[Ehren]

Is there a way to use the 3D displacement with an XYZ generator in the direction map slot in an A&D materials displacement? I cant seem to do this.

Trying to make displacement drips. Works well using the MR shader but takes forever to render and also seems to disregard the flex modifier.

Thanks.

[depleteD]

Yes I am also wondering about this, a project is coming up where i have to melt something and I was wondering if vector displacement is possible in mr.

I know modo has this in their sculpt tools. I really really hope this is possible.

-Andrew

[thorsten hartmann]

Hi Guys,

i am testing the Hair Shader from Pavel Puppet Version 3.3 ( maya & 3dsmax) and this Verison works great with FG, Portallights ... Here my testrendering, i hope you like it. Sky and lightmodel is Vue7.

http://www.infinity-vision.de/temp/teppich_3_all_small.JPG

mfg
hot chip

[InoDetelic]

looks very good, I like how you managed to make it look old or used.

What was rendering time?

In the last one, the shadow on the carpet is a lot darker than on the flood, looks kind of weird to me but I'm with a bit of a hangover so my perception is not the best right now :scream:

[cgCody]

In need of a suede material, I immediately thought a simple velvet/silk like material would do, but after studying my suede (fake suede/microsuede) couch, I realized that wasn't good enough for a truly realistic suede.

What I've found is that the shading depends not only on the surfaces direction related to the view, but also related to the direction of the light and the direction the fibers are brushed to the view and light. As they are brushed away from your view and a main light source, the surface is more reflective. This is, of course, because the sides of the fibers offer more reflective surface than the tips.

The problem with this material on a couch is that you tend to have fibers facing in a multitude of directions from people sitting on it. You notice things like hand prints or lines from people brushing against the surface in different directions. This creates an effect of various spots becoming more reflective at different angles.

What is really needed for such a material to work correctly without resorting to fur, is a falloff map based on a vector map for the falloff direction.

I was unable to come up with anything more than this test (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv-AA5mebSo), which is a cheat and completely unusable.
It's an A&D material with a mix in the reflection color. A checker map is used for the mix amount. Color #1 is a falloff creating a silk-like material. Color #2 is the same falloff with the colors switched. The falloff type is towards / away based on the direction of the camera y-axis.

EDIT: It's kind of hard to see in the video because it cuts off just as it's about to change. As you move to the other side of the fabric, the opposite stripes become more reflective and visa/versa.

thoughts?

[InoDetelic]

you can try putting a map in the anisotropy / brdf ? like for the places where people sit and stuff...

never tried it though.

[cgCody]

Wow. Could it be that I was trying too hard? I didn't even think about using a map for the anisotropic direction. Here is a simple test (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88J2aROPPzw). Though it's not yet a believable suede, it's creating an effect pretty close to what I'm looking for. Thanks for the idea. I'll run with this and report back when I get something a little more believable.

I based the anisotropic rotation on the attached image with an output amount of 0.5.

[cgCody]

Well after lot's of testing, I'm starting to think maybe this isn't the way to go (Or my shader skills are lacking, which is completely possible). With suede, if you see a reflection from one angle, it's reflection would be inverted when viewed from the back (180 degrees). See the first attached image for an example.

The second attachment is the failed fruits of my labor. I moved to a more stable environment for my creations thanks to Jeff Patton. You're the man, Mr. Patton! :thumbsup: Your name pops up around every corner when I'm looking for information about Mental Ray shaders. Thanks for all the helpful information.

Anyway, I'm running out of ideas. I'm open to any suggestions.

[cgCody]

Sorry for the multiple posts. It's for the benefit of those who might be subscribed to the thread. At least this one is more productive.

Anyway, I figured it out. I started thinking about the reasons suede acts the way it does, and the light went on. planes... The fibers are like little planes sitting at an angle. Some face / and some face \, reflecting light at different angles. So how do you make a flat surface reflect light as if it were an angled surface? With a normal map. So once I figured it out, I took a picture of a cushion from my couch and turned it into the normal map below. Here is an example video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6HMONx9lqA). The quality is terrible, I know, but the variation in the color of the cushion is all created by reflection alone.

Some time this weekend I'll clean the shader up a bit and share it for anyone who's interested, along with a few higher quality normal maps. I'll edit this post, so check back.



EDIT: Well so much for last weekend. busy busy. Anyway, I've uploaded the material and textures over at mrmaterials.com Check it out (http://mrmaterials.com/resource-central.html?func=fileinfo&id=951)

[NOTORIOUS-ro]

Hey, this is great. I've been following your progress with this. Nice one :D. Waitin' for the shader and samples.

[Glacierise]

Very interesting, great work!

[TheAllusionist]

EDIT: Well so much for last weekend. busy busy. Anyway, I've uploaded the material and textures over at mrmaterials.com Check it out (http://mrmaterials.com/resource-central.html?func=fileinfo&id=951)

Thank you for sharing it at MrM, we have been watching the material progress here and hoping you would share it at our site when you were done.

[Skyraider3D]

Skyraider I am interested in your fuselage material above. the reflection is very nice. Can you show us how it s done?Sorry for the late reply, loran! Not followed the thread for awhile. Busy with deadlines, then holiday, then more deadlines :)

Let's see... I didn't do anything too fancy with that material actually. Just a pretty standard A&D setup. BRDF curve is the default 0.2 to 1.0 with 5.0 shape. Reflection at 1.0 with a glossiness map, which is instanced into the reflection color map. This map constists mostly of medium greys with subtle variation. I aim for a glossiness value of 0.3 (flat) to 0.6 (medium glossy) so my grey values are corresponding to that. I use a 16-bit grayscale map to ensure that there's enough detail in a relatively low-contrast image and to make sure the greys don't change (8-bit grayscale images seem to behave differently with different gamma settings, while 16-bit always behave the same). I use LZW TIFs for this.

Color Map is as normal, no roughness, none of the reflection checkboxes ticked, IOR 1.5. Relative intensity of highlights boosted to 2.5. But all in all it's a very "defaulty" material setup. So the main thing is that I've instanced my glossiness map into the reflection color map and kept it low-contrast 16-bit for subtlety's sake. Be sure to set blur on bitmaps to 0.01 (lowest value) and use Summed Area filtering for crispness.

Lighting is daylight system with photographic exposure control. I use gamma correction 2.2 on everything (gamma, bitmap input & bitmap output + color selectors and material editor checked).

Attached a cropped section of the glossiness map (as 8-bit JPG for ease of display; 16-bit TIF looks much better).

Hope it helps!

[cgCody]

Thank you for sharing it at MrM, we have been watching the material progress here and hoping you would share it at our site when you were done.

No, thank you, sir, for the great resource. 3dallusions.com as well. I've been keeping an eye on both of your sites lately. :)

[TheAllusionist]

No, thank you, sir, for the great resource. 3dallusions.com as well. I've been keeping an eye on both of your sites lately. :)

Cool, thanks for the positive feedback on both sites. I have been neglecting them a bit of late as I just finished up a new project! LOL People contact me about work and about contacts for outsourcing or freelance work and so I just figured why not create a networking site sort of like FaceBook but with an ads section, directory, gallery, etc. so that hopefully there is a centralized location for people to go to, we will see how it goes, but it took a lot of my time to put together. Look for cool stuff to happen now at 3DA and MrM!

Thanks again for sharing your material, that is what it takes to help make a useful resource for the community ;)

P.S. Jeff Patton should get a lot of the credit for MrM as well.

[Daniel-B]

I have a question about the Arch & Design material. I was under the impression that it was energy conserving.

However, the values on diffuse and reflection can both be put to 1.0. I was under the impression that for it to be physically accurate, that diffuse and reflection had to "trade off"
with each other.

For example, if the reflection is at 0.2, shouldn't the diffuse automatically drop to 0.8 to be physically correct? Or am I mistaken?

[cgCody]

It is done automatically under the hood. The value fields just don't change to show you exactly what's going on.

As stated in the manual:

Transparency takes energy from diffuse; that is, at 100% transparency, there is no diffuse at all.

Reflectivity takes energy from both diffuse and transparency; that is, at 100% reflectivity there is neither diffuse nor transparency.

Translucency is a type of transparency, and the Translucency Weight parameter defines the percentage of transparency vs. translucency.

In other words, the levels of priority are as such:
Reflectivity
Transluceny Weight
Transparency
Defuse

So if both reflectivity and defuse have a value of 1.0, reflectivity is considered first, and defuse gets what is left over after transparency is considered.

[Daniel-B]

Ha, I'm an idiot. It was the fresnel effect that wasn't allowing me to see the change. It's working fine. Heh.

[MayaV]

Hi,

I am trying to render a lamp like the image attached (its from the tutorial from lume site) but i have not been able to achieve the same. Can anybody help me with this. I am also attaching the max file with textures (there are 3 textures facing texture, inside texture and translucency mask texture). Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks n Regards,

MayaV

[Mhyrdin]

Hello !

I have had a look into your scene and changed some parameters.
But first of all i never succeeded in finding the illumination and glare lume texture (I use Max2009)
However i used glare(lume) for the materials of the lampshade.
I also leaved out the light in the translucency (lume) material and used the MRay photographic exposure control too.
I got this picture. (I add a zip of your scene with the new parameters)

http://mhyrdin.free.fr/images/imagelamp.jpg

[JeffPatton]

For what it's worth, I like to use the fast SSS material for things like lampshades.

[MayaV]

Thanks a Ton Dominique :)

Thanks a ZILLION JEFF :). Its an honor that you are replying to my query. I have always been a fan of your Mental Ray work and respect you greatly for the way you have been supporting people and Mental Ray Community. Would love to interact with you more on Mental Ray :-)

Coming back to my problem, i still feel that we are away from the image which i posted, i am not being greedy but curious that if the same lume tools used can produce the results then why not in 3ds Max???

Thanks and Regards,

MayaV

[JeffPatton]

Coming back to my problem, i still feel that we are away from the image which i posted, i am not being greedy but curious that if the same lume tools used can produce the results then why not in 3ds Max???Are you just being nostalgic for 2003 by following that old lume tools tutorial? :eek:

To get similar results today you can create/apply a translucent A&D material to your lamp shade, put a light behind it, enable the glare camera shader and then adjust the brightness/intensity of the glare effect to taste.

Or to fake it you could just use a self-illuminated material with the glare camera shader.

[Mhyrdin]

Fine and perfect reponse Jeff (as usual :) )

Yesterday evening i was also trying something with volumetric light and also some white ceramic A&D material on the lamp but i had problems with the translucency and this effect.

Now i use the Jeff's parameters of the SSS material for lampshade and it goes rather well.

I get something like this with the skyportal (good idea Jeff) very low and walls (planes) to see the volumetric light effects.

The lampshade is not very bright but it's weekend, and at home i've not the 12 octoprocessor computers of my workplace to test most fine renderings that spend a lot of time :rolleyes:

[Chapt0r]

Hey guys,

I have been searching around for a realistic "starting point" for a MR shader for snow. I have found some old threads you guys had going on, but I think the ones I found were from 2004, and one had a dead link.

Either way I am working on an antarctic scene and am looking to nail down at MR shader similar to this baby here:

http://www.vray-materials.de/img/samplepics/Drifty%20Snow_by_Mark_Noland_xl_7369.jpg

I am starting to try and recreate it right now and am working to composite a noise and cellular to get me started. But any direction, or advice is appreciated. :)

Cheers,

W

[MikeBracken]

In the promaterials library (generic) there is a snow material. It needs a little tweeking, but can look pretty nice.


Regards,
Mike

[MikeBracken]

Jeff,

Do you have any problems with the sss flickering on your lamp shade in animation ? Just wondering.


Regards,
Mike

[InoDetelic]

Hey guys, I have been searching around for a realistic "starting point" for a MR shader for snow.


I never made one myself, but my modest experience tells me this:

I believe SSS is important in this case. The scatter radius would be large, like 15cm (6 inches).
If the snow is on the ground, you could have a top layer of freshly laid snow, and the layer under would be more ice-y. (sss does this fine)

And for the sharp reflections, one could do it in a A&D material with noise maps, and combine it with the SSS using BLEND or COMPOSITE mateials, Maybe this is too much, I don't know how you guys work, if you're after rendering speed or other goals.

[JeffPatton]

Jeff, Do you have any problems with the sss flickering on your lamp shade in animation?No, I haven't seen any.

[InoDetelic]

What shader do you use when you want to instance just a color across several materials?

I used RGB multiply and checker with the same color in both swatches... is there a better/faster/simpler way? (compatible with mr of course)

[Chapt0r]

Here is where I am at with this shader:

Still not too happy with it, but it is getting there. I am really missing the depth and "crystallization" specularity I think. I dropped an SSS Physical Shader in the diffuse, but for the life of me I could not get it to affect the surface.

Render is with a direct light and skylight, with FG on draft. 0 bounces.

Still no where close to this imo
http://www.vray-materials.de/img/samplepics/Drifty%20Snow_by_Mark_Noland_xl_7369.jpg

Thank you for the tips guys and will see how close I am able to get to realism.

[MikeBracken]

I used RGB multiply and checker with the same color in both swatches... is there a better/faster/simpler way? (compatible with mr of course)


I use the color correction map.

Regards,
Mike

[loran]

check the nice Jeff snow material
http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/archive/2007/2/

[thorsten hartmann]

hi,

here is solution to create ice. With can you modify and you have snow.

left ice= volume shader, simple raytrace shadow
right ice= Partivolume Shader, area shadows

http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?p=376#376

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_ice_update_1.jpg

[Skyraider3D]

I tried creating a salt flats material the other day, which is not unlike snow except for being dry. I found I needed to boost the diffuse beyond 1.0 to give it enough brightness not to look grey on a bright sunny day. But even that solution wasn't terribly satisfying. I find Mental Ray super easy and intuitive for some materials (it took me less than a minute to produce photo real copper - and not using the template setting), but something of a puzzle for others... :)

[MayaV]

Thanks Dominique :-)

Thank you Jeff, i just realized that i was chasing a 2003 result but it looks damm good. I am trying what you suggested. Will show you the results once i am done :-)

Thank You,

Best Regards,

MayaV

[tiagodmed]

Hello to all!
Today I had the idea of composing the shader of AO within the sss shader, seems a really simple idea, but the result is great. So I decided to share with everyone who has not thought about it.
In my opinion is most practical that make in photoshop using AO as mask for the levels and much better than the AO with multiply blend mode.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/tiagodmed/mental_ray/test-sss-AO-tiagodmed.jpg


This is the setup of the material:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/tiagodmed/mental_ray/test-sss-AO-setup.jpg

[JasperCG]

edit : nevermind... I found the files I was looking for.

[musashidan]

Hello to all!
Today I had the idea of composing the shader of AO within the sss shader, seems a really simple idea, but the result is great. So I decided to share with everyone who has not thought about it.
In my opinion is most practical that make in photoshop using AO as mask for the levels and much better than the AO with multiply blend mode.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/tiagodmed/mental_ray/test-sss-AO-tiagodmed.jpg


This is the setup of the material:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/tiagodmed/mental_ray/test-sss-AO-setup.jpg

Have you used the SSS Skin+ material that Zap has available on his blog? It has built in AO.

[saiko]

I found this video (http://vimeo.com/4018701) about Mental Ray and Vray anti aliasing comparison, according to it the basic settings of of mental ray tend to loose small details in the rendering .

But if the minimum sample is increased to 4 then it shows the details. But then it seems to 'render' the empty areas too! resulting much longer render time compared to Vray.

Is this normal? or is there any other way to fix the issue?

You could check out the video here (http://vimeo.com/4018701).

Screenshots from the comparison video:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/7229/mentalrayantialiasingis.jpg

** This might not be a directly shader related issue, but I couldn't think of any other place which has such experienced MR users like Jeff and others!

[gashe]

Yes I also saw this video yesterday... and the vray speed is quite fast, for that scene...

[Glacierise]

Just off the top of my head - you can use the ctrl.object shader (maxplugins.de) to do object-based antialiasing.

[tryhard]

Just off the top of my head - you can use the ctrl.object shader (maxplugins.de) to do object-based antialiasing.

... absolutely correct :thumbsup:

that cuts down the rendertime from 10 seconds - 4/64 for all
to
2 seconds for 1/16 for all but the object which is stil 4/64 on object based antialiasing

so same result but with a fifth of time

[gashe]

Just off the top of my head - you can use the ctrl.object shader (maxplugins.de) to do object-based antialiasing.

I searched maxplugins.de to find the shader but i couldn't... can you send some link that is official for the shader

Thanks

[maxplugins]

Did you search under mental ray shaders?

http://www.maxplugins.de/mentalray.php?search=ctrl&sort=Author

Dave

[gashe]

Did you search under mental ray shaders?

Yes i did search it but i dont know why i didnt see it :). Thanks for the link, i find it. Any other good shaders for MR ?

Thanks

[Glacierise]

The ctrl.color is very cool too :) Esp if you are on a max version before 2009, like me.

[tiagodmed]

Have you used the SSS Skin+ material that Zap has available on his blog? It has built in AO.

Hello musashidan!

I did some testing with skiplus, I had already used it sometimes, but the result is not the same that of the AO composition.
Doing more tests, I saw that the ideal result, is to use of AO only in the channels unscattered and overall.
Use in the epidermal makes a small difference, in the other channels do not make a difference.
With this already reduces of render time.

In this test i use the skinplus shader:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/tiagodmed/mental_ray/masha-sss-Splus-2x.jpg

For this profile of character is perfect. But if the character is visually more aggressive, such as an Orc, it is cool leave the lines well defined and marked, these occasions the composition of the sss with shader of AO works very well.
I do a test and show the result.

[MickyG]

Can someone explain to me how to use the ctrl_object in max 2009? I must be missing something...

I create the MR Geometry Shader, then add the ctrl_shader to the slot and drag an instance to the material editor. I add the objects, but then adjusting the min and max samples has no effect on the scene.

I'd love to get this to work!

[Spacelord]

Micky,
You need to set the AA settings in the Render panel higher than ctrl_object AA settings.
So render panel AA 1/16 and ctrl object would be -1/4.
Its not the smartest way but it works. I would have prefer to apply High AA settings to the select objects and the low AA Globably.


Can someone explain to me how to use the ctrl_object in max 2009? I must be missing something...

I create the MR Geometry Shader, then add the ctrl_shader to the slot and drag an instance to the material editor. I add the objects, but then adjusting the min and max samples has no effect on the scene.

I'd love to get this to work!

[MikeBracken]

I set the range to 1/16 in the render settings. Then I make 2 ctl_objects. One for the low settings, and one for the Higher settings. I have not use more than 2, but it should work.


Regards,
Mike

[Spacelord]

Is there any point to using 2 ? In essences wouldn't that make it a total of 3 AA settings ?

I set the range to 1/16 in the render settings. Then I make 2 ctl_objects. One for the low settings, and one for the Higher settings. I have not use more than 2, but it should work.


Regards,
Mike

[tryhard]

with the scene that was used for that test ... the block with the holes - it is the other way around

the overall aa is set to absolut minimum and the object is controlled by the geo shader !!!

the object has high AA to show the holes and the Background renders fast with minimum AA

that´s the trick

if you have much background and only a couple of objects that is where to use it and save a lot of time as i mentioned earlier :-)

[Spacelord]

Seriously that doesn't work, well I cannot get it to work.
If my render settings AA is lower than the Geoshader that kind or overrides geoshader settings.
As far as I remember the Geoshader AA settings have to be within the range of the Render settings AA.
I'd like to see your test scene ?
cheers
with the scene that was used for that test ... the block wich the holes - it is the other way around

the overall aa is set to absolut minimum and the object is controlled by the geo shader !!!

the object has high AA to show the holes and the Background renders fast with minimum AA

that´s the trick

if you have much background and only a couple of objects that is where to use it and save a lot of time as i mentioned earlier :-)

[KV99]

I didn't manage to get 2009 version shader working with 2010, so I'm wondering if there's a 2010 shader I can use for rendering? I am way past using simply final gather for renders and was disappointed not to see it as an option in 2010.

[tryhard]

... it works perfect :thumbsup:

here is the scene:

http://rapidshare.com/files/225261513/Ctrl_ObjecT_A01.max.html


cheers

Klaus

The new geoshader for 2010 is at maxplugins.de

[MikeBracken]

The way that I understood it, the aa settings in the render settings is the range for all objects that are not included in the shader. I use two because I did not want anything to render 1/16.
I wanted some objects to render at 1/4 and the rest to render at 4/16. If any objects were not added to a shader, they would render at 1/16. Isnt this correct ?


Regards,
Mike

[KV99]

... it works perfect :thumbsup:

here is the scene:

http://rapidshare.com/files/225261513/Ctrl_ObjecT_A01.max.html


cheers

Klaus

The new geoshader for 2010 is at maxplugins.de

But could you -please- give me a link? I am unable to find it, keywords ctrl and geoshader and such have no results when using the search, and the list itself is very long to browse through if the keywords themselves do not match.

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

I am guessing he is refering to these 32bit (http://www.maxplugins.de/r2010_files/maxplugins/mrGeomShaderObject_Max2010.zip) and 64bit (http://www.maxplugins.de/r2010_files/maxplugins/mrGeomShaderObject_Max2010.zip). I just searched for "geo" and these were the first items returned at maxplugins.de.

-Eric

[KV99]

I am guessing he is refering to these 32bit (http://www.maxplugins.de/r2010_files/maxplugins/mrGeomShaderObject_Max2010.zip) and 64bit (http://www.maxplugins.de/r2010_files/maxplugins/mrGeomShaderObject_Max2010.zip). I just searched for "geo" and these were the first items returned at maxplugins.de.

-Eric

Thanks, I'll try. I searched with 'geoshader' and it provided 0 results, as did 'ctrl_ghost settings' and 'ctrl' (providing only color).

[KV99]

... it works perfect :thumbsup:

here is the scene:

http://rapidshare.com/files/225261513/Ctrl_ObjecT_A01.max.html


cheers

Klaus

The new geoshader for 2010 is at maxplugins.de

Could you please provide the links? I tried the one posted few posts above, but they throw errors when opening your scene. Thank you.

[tryhard]

The way that I understood it, the aa settings in the render settings is the range for all objects that are not included in the shader. I use two because I did not want anything to render 1/16.
I wanted some objects to render at 1/4 and the rest to render at 4/16. If any objects were not added to a shader, they would render at 1/16. Isnt this correct ?


Regards,
Mike


... that´s it !

[tryhard]

Could you please provide the links? I tried the one posted few posts above, but they throw errors when opening your scene. Thank you.

http://rapidshare.com/files/225450417/mrGeomShaderObject_Max2010.zip.html

put it in your plugins folder
and

http://rapidshare.com/files/225452052/ctr_object.rar.html
put it in your mentalray autoload

that is the shader i talk about ! .... and that does the trick .... no ghost !

These shaders are originaly from maxplugins.de (http://maxplugins.de)! I am NOT the author, just trying to help out and hope that it´s OK for the author.

[KV99]

Hmm, I tried installing it but it is throwing errors, saying that 'mentalray\shaders_autoload\shaders\ctrl_object.dll is not a valid Windows image'. I'm trying the 32bit one on a 32bit Windows XP system, on a trial installation of 3ds max 2010. Perhaps plugins don't work anymore on trials?

I tried downloading and setting it up again, with no luck, so the files are definitely correct. Did yours work on 32bit?

EDIT: I believe you have uploaded corrupt files. It did not throw errors when using the one from maxplugins.de, but then it -did- throw different errors, about ctrlColor.dlt being missing. Using the one from maxplugins.de didn't get it working either.

Confused here, since my colleague did get it to function at work on a 64bit station. Won't be able to test it myself before Monday though.

Any other suggestions?

Not to mention, anyone knows why Autodesk did not include importons and irradiance particles in 3ds Max 2010 in the first place? Kinda silly, considering they are production-ready for at least image renders. More silly, considering they were already in 2009, a year ago, hidden. And one more notch, considering new XSI and Maya supposedly have them.

[tryhard]

I tried downloading and setting it up again, with no luck, so the files are definitely correct. Did yours work on 32bit?


... sorry, i work on 64 BIT and it works fine here ... installed on two different machines ... can´t tell you about 32 BIT ... sorry that i could not help you ...

My Specs:
WIN XP 64
3DS Max Design 2010
8GB RAM

[KV99]

Yeah, thank you. At home I'm on 32bit Trial version, so I'm guessing that's the problem. Anyone's gotten it to work on that?

Maybe it's the 3ds Max 2010 and Design difference as well?

[tryhard]

... try to download the ctrl-object shader for max 2009 that should work. There is a 32 and 64BIT version. i also use the ctrl-object shader for max 2009 !!! - 64 BIT

Use this with the mrgeomshaderobject.dlo i uploaded for max 2010 !!!

that should work.

[KV99]

Still without success on 32bit trial, I also tried reinstalling.

Could someone with 32bit system that has gotten it to work (as in, not just downloaded the files but also tested that it runs without errors) please upload their files? I can't think of anything else anymore.

Thanks for the help so far :)

[MikeBracken]

Are you just getting error messeges, or is it really not working ? Some of the error messeges in the MR log are normal, and can be disregarded.

Regards,
Mike

[maxplugins]

It works fine here on 32bit 2010. The error message about ctrl_colors can be ignored, it's just a missing plugin message.

Dave

[KV99]

Are you just getting error messeges, or is it really not working ? Some of the error messeges in the MR log are normal, and can be disregarded.

Regards,
Mike

Interesting, I did not test further than the test scene shared above (which didn't function), because of the error messages. I never had any error messages thrown when using 2009 and it's really uncommon.

But it is not just the colors error, it is a critical error saying that ctrl_object.dll is not a valid Windows image.

Then after it has loaded and started up, it throws:

LINK 0.0 error 191007: cannot load ./ctrl_object.dll, unknown error code 193, check Win32 manual
API 0.0 warn 302004: ctrl_object.mi, line 23: while defining declaration "ctrl_object": declaring nonexisting function ctrl_object

I am using the files posted by tryhard (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=109158) on rapidshare.

I must be doing something wrong, but I've not had any problems with 2009 or any other plugins.

I tried again from the start by doing:
* clean install of 3ds max 2010 (non-registered, runs in trial-mode) 32bit using default settings (I originally installed to custom folder, but now tried basic)
* added tryhard files (32 bit ones) to 3ds max 2010 installation folder

It throws errors when starting up, I tried with and without the Hotfix.

[maxplugins]

Okay, let's start again from the beginning...

1. Download the mrGeomShader plugin:
http://www.maxplugins.de/r2010_files/maxplugins/mrGeomShaderObject_Max2010.zip

2. Put the 32-bit version of the plugin in your Max 'Plugins' folder

3. Download the ctrl_object shader:
http://www.maxplugins.de/mr_files/ctrl_studio/ctrl_object.zip

4. Put the file 'ctrl_object.mi' in your Max/mentalray/shaders_autoload/include' folder

5. Put the file 'ctrl_object.dll' in your Max/mentalray/shaders_autoload/shaders' folder

6. Start Max... there shouldn't be any error messages during startup. I certainly don't get any using the exact same plugins / shaders listed above.

If that works, we can start trying to find out why the scene file doesn't work for you...

Dave

[KV99]

Ah, thanks, no errors now :) It seems theres a 63Kb size difference between the ctrl_object.dll 32bit file on the one you gave me and the one from tryhard uploaded archive. This seems to have fixed the error, thank you :)

But now the test scene, what am I supposed to see there exactly? It's definitely not your average global illumination style scene to check whether importons and irradiance particles are working or not, it just has two green cubes and another gray one, all looking quite non-shaded. What is the test scene intended to show?

And during rendering it throws:

PHEN 0.3 error: ctrl_object->object:: Box01|GeomObject(Mesh00)

Which is confusing as well. Is there a test scene which makes it more apparent if it works or not? My old Max 2009 scenes don't function because the plugin is different (looking for Ctrl.Ghost.Settings).

[maxplugins]

ctrl_ghost is neede to get importons working in Max, the ctrl_object shader lets have different sampling on a per object basis. Say you've got a scene that renders fine with 1:16 except for one object that only renders smooth with 4:64. Now you don't need to render the whole scene with 4:64 (long rendertimes), you can assign the higher sampling per object.

You can also do other interesting stuff like labels finally working in Max, meaning you can unlock all the hidden features of the Glare shader and apply different glares according the object labels.

Dave

[KV99]

So how do I actually use irradiance particles and importons? Even with the ctrl_object I am unable to find the options I had on 2009. Where are they hidden?

[JeffPatton]

So how do I actually use irradiance particles and importons? Even with the ctrl_object I am unable to find the options I had on 2009. Where are they hidden?In addition to the mrGeomShaderObj plugin you'd need to use the ctrl_ghost shader the same way you did in 2009. That being said, I'm not sure if a ctrl_ghost shader for 3dsmax 2010 has been publicly released yet.

[KV99]

Thank you, that's exactly what I thought. And that was exactly my initial question, I wanted to get to use irradiance maps and importons in the first place.

[tryhard]

... use ctrl_ghost for max 2009 (mentalray) and the geo_shader for max 2010 ...

works fine over here but that´s just the situation we had in max 2009 ... nothing more

i used the cornell box scene from here

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=87&t=621727&highlight=importons

[JeffPatton]

If needed, ctrl_ghost for 2010 can be found here:http://www.max3ds.com/mental_ray/

[mister3d]

Anyone knows how to enable physical lens dof shader? It must be available as it's listed in help files, but I can't find it.

[cgCody]

It's hidden for whatever reason. It's probably not fully tested. You can unhide it by going to your Max/Maya install location.../mentalray/shaders_standard/include/ In this folder, open a file called physics_max.mi and place a # in front of the "hidden" value for the physical lens DOF shader.

[thorsten hartmann]

Hi Guys,

i have found some new Shaders in 3dsmax :thumbsup:

DirectXShader.mi
- "DirectX_Shader_Default" -> got to Material Editor and set Hardwareshading + Maps on. Than convert 3dsmax all A&D Material in the scene to a DirectX_mia_material and you have better performance for your Viewport Hardware Shading and Preview Rendering. The High-End Rendeirng is the same as bevor.

production.mi
- mip_fg_shooter (FG Rays along a Camera Path, good for Animation)
- mip_rayswitch_stage (Hey Masterzap, What is that? I need Info´s :eek: )

mfg
hot chip

[BAKMS]

I have a question:

I am not sure want is a geometry shader for mental ray is used for?
Could someone help understand and how or why they are good?

[mister3d]

It's hidden for whatever reason. It's probably not fully tested. You can unhide it by going to your Max/Maya install location.../mentalray/shaders_standard/include/ In this folder, open a file called physics_max.mi and place a # in front of the "hidden" value for the physical lens DOF shader.

Well I can't find physics_max.mi, there's only physics.ml and physics_phen.ml. Also in physics.ml I'm not sure how to mak ewhat you explained:

"uiName" "Physical Lens DOF (physics)",
"category" "Lens",
"hidden"


"uiName" "Physical Lens DOF (physics)",
"category" "Lens",
1"hidden"
?

[cgCody]

I'm not sure about other Max versions but the file is there in 2008 and 2009. For every file in that folder, there should be one with a "_max" suffix: physics.mi, physics_max.mi.

I'm not sure that you can unhide it in the physics.mi file. At least mine doesn't have the same code that you've posted. I don't know too much about these files or their scripting language. I just know that you can unhide the shaders that are hidden by default.

As for how you unhide them, find the line that reads "hidden" and place a pound (#) in front of it. You're just commenting out that line of code. If you can find another file that references the Physical Lens DOF shader, and it has a "hidden" value, try commenting it out and see what happens.

[3DMadness]

Anyone knows how to enable physical lens dof shader? It must be available as it's listed in help files, but I can't find it.
As cgcody said, it's in the physics.mi file. But I've tried it and see no reason to use it, the Arch: DOF/Bokeh seens much better with greater control.

[Arie leo]

Hei guys, i have a question.
i found (http://www.google.co.id/search?hl=id&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=k6D&ei=694WStTVM5zo7AOKm8y9Cg&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=discussion&spell=1)mib_ray_marcher on MR shader, what was that for? or how to use it.
Thanks...

[thorsten hartmann]

look here: http://www.germanmentalray.de/viewtopic.php?p=376#p376

This Shader is for Volume Effects, You can adjust the scattering from the light in volume.

http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/userpix/5_ice_vr_1.jpg

[cani]

Hi everyone!
I think I've read everything I could about Daniel Rind's diffraction shader in this thread but I can't figure how to fix my problem!

I am using 3ds max.
I've installed it with the .mi include file.
I can see it in my material browser.
I've tried to map it in any material's refraction slot, a mental ray's surface slot or a standard material's mental ray connection surface's slot but I can't get it to work.
I downloaded the scene sample provided by Ozlime in this thread too and I still have the same problem: my objects are completly black in the rendered image...

I am using a mr spot light.

Why is that?

Is it because it was not installed right?
Thx for this great thread!

EDIT: It seems like I have the same problem with the l_glass shader

[JeffPatton]

I still have the same problem: my objects are completly black in the rendered image...Without seeing the render or knowing any of your settings it's just a guessing game. Perhaps your exposure settings are bad? Maybe it's a geometry issue? Maybe it's something simple like you haven't specified an environment and the objects only have a black color to reflect/refract...Not sure and as you can tell, it could be any number of things.

I would recommend getting the scene in a working state with the materials that ship with 3dsmax before trying to apply the 3rd party shaders. That way you'll have narrowed it down to being related to a specific shader/material.

[cani]

Thank you Jeff,
I am working on it right now.
I'll be back in a few minutes with screens and a sample scene.

I had not GI turned on is it because of that?
Is the color fringing effect based on photon?

The caustic shown on a ground surface sure are but what about the diffraction that occurs inside the object?

[cani]

Ok so here is my scene.

EDIT: I mapped a colorful procedural in the global scene's environnement slot.

The first render is a teapot with a standard material with a blinn illumination shader

The second is the teapot with a standard material with the refractive slot mapped with a default Daniel's rind diffraction shader

The third is the teapot with a mental ray material with the surface slot mapped wit Daniel's Rind shader and a photon shader. I turned Gi on for this one. It is also a material that I picked from Ozlime's sample scene (file that I have uploaded too).

I would really appreciate someone to take a look at this problem :thumbsup:

[cani]

Anyone knows why?

The few that have opened my scene, did you have a black teapot too or did it work just fine?

I'd really like to know why it does that.

light color fringing is a great effect control!

[JeffPatton]

Haven't looked at your file but I'm attaching a simple working example so you can troubleshoot what went wrong in your file. FWIW, from the description in your post it sounds like you may simply be assigning the diffraction shader incorrectly.

[tryhard]

... a 64 BIT version of the diffraction shader ?

[maxplugins]

64-bit version:
http://www.maxplugins.de/mentalray.php?search=diffraction&sort=Author

Dave

[tryhard]

...thank you Dave :thumbsup:

[cani]

Fantastic!
Thank You Jeff and Dave!
I really appreciate you to take some of your precious time for helping others.

After a repair install , excessive dlz and mi files download and numerous hours wondering what was wrong I finaly found my mistake....

Shame on me!

I realized that the dll was not in the good directory......... :rolleyes:

Yeah well.. I now know how to install 3rd party shader corectly hehehe

Here is a simple render that I got after an hour of messing around with the shader. I used the ctrl obj shader discussed in the previous pages to control the sampling on a per object basis.

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/1733/diffractiontest.th.jpg (http://img36.imageshack.us/my.php?image=diffractiontest.jpg)

Is it possible to have some kind of highlights on that? It is hard to have accurate results when all the object's appearance seems controlled by the environnement map.

Or am I wrong?

My lights (Large photometric area lights ) do not seem to affect the look of the render by any means. Even when they are set to very high intensity.

Thank you for all and I'll sure be around this thread to try what's new with MR

[Eugene]

Can somebody upload Master Zap's SSS skin plus shader? The blog link is not working :(

[maxplugins]

I just tried it, the blog link works fine:
http://z4p.com/ad/skinplus.mi

Dave

[Eugene]

Thanx, maxplugins! I think it's problems with proxy on my work. I tried outer CGI proxy and it downloaded.

[mec6288]

I am trying to created the effect of the attached photos. The plexiglass is lit by an LED, and the light passes through illuminating the edges and etched surfaces. Has anyone been able to achieve this? I have seen one render where it was done, but I am not sure of the A&D material settings that were used.

[JeffPatton]

You can easily fake that with some self-illumination, like I did here:
http://www.mrmaterials.com/components/com_remository_files/file_image_777/img_777_01.jpg

Link to material:
http://mrmaterials.com/resource-central.html?func=fileinfo&id=777

[TheAllusionist]

Is this Jeff guy good or what! ;)

[MikeBracken]

I have noticed that when using the A&D mat that the anisotropic parameters do stretch the highlight but do not stretch the reflections. Is there a workaround for this ? Am I missing something here ?


Regards,
Mike

[Spacelord]

Hi Mike,
I just did a quick test with a HDRI background and the reflections look blurred to me.
Default Chrome and Brushed metal templates.
Do you have an example ?

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/2324/ansiotropy.jpg (http://img29.imageshack.us/i/ansiotropy.jpg/)

I have noticed that when using the A&D mat that the anisotropic parameters do stretch the highlight but do not stretch the reflections. Is there a workaround for this ? Am I missing something here ?


Regards,
Mike

[MikeBracken]

Thanks for the response.
Ill have to post an example tomarrow from work. I do get blurred refections. But the reflections from other objects are not stretched. I am working on an interior of an elevator, that is completely made of stainless steel. The specular highlights are nice and stretched, but the elevator door, light fixtures, etc., are blurry but not stretched. I have had to resort to texture maps for the time being.

BTW, I was using the brushed metal preset of the A&D as well.


Regards,
Mike

[blenderman0815]

Haggi programmed a Volume Shader for Voxel Import. You can import RawVox oder 3dCoat Voxel models.


More information can be found in the German Mental Ray Forum. http://tinyurl.com/lkecdd


(http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2310403)First result from RawVox import:
http://tinyurl.com/kvu9r8

First result from 3dCoat import (just the Voxel Base Grid)
http://tinyurl.com/lgykkf:

Voxel Link collection
http://tinyurl.com/m5kzee

[haggi]

A very fist version of the 3DCoatVolume shader mentioned above is available here:

http://www.wiki.render3d.de/doku.php?id=renderwiki:shaderlib:mr:hkvolumeshader:bdownloads

Its 32 bit only at the moment.

[musashidan]

@ Jeff. I'm trying to setup a silver car paint material and came across this great resource http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_06e5.htm I couldn't see an authors name anywhere so i assumed it was you.:D If so,are there plans to release the last part featuring the all important silver paint setup. If not..........any tips?

i'm finding it quite difficult to get silver car paint looking accurate as it's obviously not just a case of adjusting the colour range to whites and greys.

Edit: just saw a MasterZap bloglink on that site so it appears i assumed wrong.

[JeffPatton]

Not me, that's David McKie's website. He's fairly active over at cg-cars.com (http://cg-cars.com/) so you may want to ask him there if he doesn't see this first.

[musashidan]

Not me, that's David McKie's website. He's fairly active over at cg-cars.com (http://cg-cars.com/) so you may want to ask him there if he doesn't see this first.

Cheers Jeff. Sorry for the mix up.I wasn't sure who's work it was as there was no apparent indication. I'll check that site.:thumbsup:

[3DMadness]

Hey Danny, this site is from David Mckie, you can find him here sometimes:
http://dave-3d.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Maybe you can send him an e-mail asking about this tutorial. I agree with you, silver painting is really hard to achieve, I like to blend two metal materials, one with high glossiness and the other with low glossiness, better when using vrayblendmtl but you can try it with mray and blend material.

edit: sorry, I didn't read Jeff post. ;)

[musashidan]

Hey Danny, this site is from David Mckie, you can find him here sometimes:
http://dave-3d.cgsociety.org/gallery/

Maybe you can send him an e-mail asking about this tutorial. I agree with you, silver painting is really hard to achieve, I like to blend two metal materials, one with high glossiness and the other with low glossiness, better when using vrayblendmtl but you can try it with mray and blend material.

edit: sorry, I didn't read Jeff post. ;)

Cheers Flavio,i might just send him an inquiry as i'm having terrible results trying to achieve the elusive Silver car paint.

[musashidan]

This is my first real attempt at serious MR shading and lighting.(with a great legup from JP's vid tut)I have a few problems that i wondered if anyone had any advice.
On the image below: the brake discs and tire sidewall have bump mapping applied but no matter what i seem to tweak i can't seem to get a crisp result. I thought it might be an issue with reflection settings but i've tried so many different settings that i'm sure i'm wrong.
The maps are pretty highres and test render fine if i apply them to the diffuse component.
The render below has pretty high settings all round.

Also,on a sidenote, does anybody know what that weird banding is that runs across the BG image? I can't seem to get rid of it.Even if i just render it as a regular BG environment map with nothing else going on in the scene it shows up.

any input would be greatly recieved,cheers.

http://i644.photobucket.com/albums/uu167/musashidan/bumpprob-1.jpg

[MikeBracken]

The banding is the arial perspective turned on in the physical sky. Just turn it off.

Fot the bump mapping, try turning the blur settings to like .1 or .01 in the map rollout.

Nice render !

Regards,
Mike

[ToddD]

Mike is right set the blurring somewhere below .6(you may need to go as far down as it will go-.01 in some cases), and for bump maps I usually use summed area filtering.


Todd

[musashidan]

Cheers Mike/Todd.Great to see the banding gone but unfortunately, turning the Blur amount down just made it even sharper.Is this a common issue with bump maps in MR?

i also tried summed area filtering.No joy.

Thanks.

[musashidan]

Here's another example of strange artifacing with bump maps.As you can see in the viewport the UV's are pretty good.Note the weird black patches on the collar area. This dosn't show up in the render if i disable the bump map component in the material. Has anyone else experienced similar issues pertaining to bump maps in MR?

EDIT: in the case of the shirt it was a Normal map causing the issue.

Cheers.

http://i644.photobucket.com/albums/uu167/musashidan/shirtprob.jpg

[musashidan]

Jeff,i was just wondering what method you used to setup the LDRI light probe that you've used in your vid tut? did you just map a sphere with the background image, render it and crop in PS? If so,is there any particular material/light settings to be aware of?

Cheers.

http://i644.photobucket.com/albums/uu167/musashidan/TestRender.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Jeff,i was just wondering what method you used to setup the LDRI light probe that you've used in your vid tut? did you just map a sphere with the background image, render it and crop in PS?Afraid I don't fully understand the question. Are you asking about the creation of the light probe itself or how it's implemented in the scenes?

If it's about the actual probe creation process: I used a "christmas ornament on a stick" for that particular setup:http://jeffpatton.net/Blog-images/probe.jpg

I tried to zoom in as close as possible to the reflective ornament. I then cropped the image to get a full frame image of the probe.

FWIW all that was prior to purchasing a fisheye lens for my camera that I now use to capture full 360 degree HDR panos:http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/WK_Pano_sml.jpg

If you're asking about the actual scene setup, the scenes make use of the mental ray production shaders (the scenes should have been included with the video). To be more specific, the probe was used in the mirrorball shader.

If I've misunderstood your question, I apologize. Please feel free to PM me and I'll dig out those files (I don't have them here on my current workstation) and try to provide a more specific answer.

[MikeBracken]

I am wondering if it is possible to increase/decrease the color bleed from the AO settings in the A&D material. I would like to be able to increase this. I tried outputing the AO render element with color bleeding enabled in the A&D mats, but it is still just black and white. Any suggestions ?


Regards,
Mike

[gulio]

I think that AO is limited to black and white. Colorbleeding with MR occurs through the FG process or with photons. Within both you can use a multiply to increase or decrease the effect. Ctrl_studio had developed a "direct occlusion" shader which is supposed to shade color but I haven´t any experience with that. Google for "ctrl.occlusion" shader.

[StratusFarm]

I am wondering if it is possible to increase/decrease the color bleed from the AO settings in the A&D material. I would like to be able to increase this. I tried outputing the AO render element with color bleeding enabled in the A&D mats, but it is still just black and white. Any suggestions ?


Regards,
Mike
The render element "mr Xtra Diffuse Indirect Illumination with AO" will give you an AO pass that has the color information from the AO color bleed built into the A&D material.

To try and further control it, I was just playing around with putting an Ouput shader in the Shadow Color slot. The results are interesting. Not sure how useful, but interesting. Setting the Output amount or the RGB Level to a negative value certainly increases the intensity of the colored AO, but also brightens it up to a neon glow.
Not sure how useful, but interesting.
No more time to experiment tonight.

[dave-3d]

Hi musashidan,

In that example I used a Shellac blend between two Arch & Design materials. The lower layer was a blurred A&D, while the upper was a clear coat style reflective laquer. Just testing. Don't actually use it for anything. Doing a lot of calculations to render.

But I have found that the simple Car Paint material, when tweaked, offers good results for silver paint (see below : Car and wheels both use different setups of mr Car Paint). Much quicker at rendering too. You just need to give yourself a bigger, softer specular flare/bloom, and adjust flake sizes.

You can also set the reflections to blurry, or the flake reflections too with the Car Paint shader if you want a more soft, diffuse reflection.

As Jeff has shown. It ALL depends on the environment you are reflecting and the lighting. I love my 180 fisheye lens (and PTgui) for catching and creating HDRI environments, though mine are not all sunny US scenes ;)

Dave


@ Jeff. I'm trying to setup a silver car paint material and came across this great resource http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_06e5.htm I couldn't see an authors name anywhere so i assumed it was you.:D If so,are there plans to release the last part featuring the all important silver paint setup. If not..........any tips?

i'm finding it quite difficult to get silver car paint looking accurate as it's obviously not just a case of adjusting the colour range to whites and greys.

Edit: just saw a MasterZap bloglink on that site so it appears i assumed wrong.

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/e92/E92_Beach_010s.jpg

[rox44]

I posted this in the area, but thought this forum may be more appropriate - anyone having similar issues with car paint material in 2010?:

When using a car paint material in MAX 2010 (SP1), I’ve found that the specular reflection parameters for specular 2 don’t seem to work anymore. In MAX 2009, I can tune a nice sharp white highlight with specular 1 parameters to simulate a clear coat, then using specular 2 parameters tune in an underlying soft-edged colored highlight to accent the less glossy paint layer beneath the clear coat. In MAX 2010, I can still get the white highlight with spec1, but then when I adjust spec2 parameters, the best I can do is produce a thin colored halo around the spec1 highlight, not an independent specular reflection like in MAX 2009. I understand there are other ways to create similar effects, but none as efficient as this handy material. Any ideas? Thanks.

[JeffPatton]

I can confirm the different behavior.

While it's not an answer as to why, I can also confirm that you can replace the paint.dll file in 2010 with the one from 2009 and get the same results between 2009 & 2010.

Just make sure you keep a backup of the paint.dll from 2010 just in case you need it later.

[rox44]

Thank you - then I'm not mental.

I was wondering if there was some dlo/dlu/mi swap I could try - I blindly tried a couple things with paint.mi and paint_max.mi between 2010 and 2009 that didn't work, so thanks for the dll tip - works like 2009 now.

I also saw the blend with A&D idea a couple posts back, similar to what I used to do with raytrace materials... I might try that - sounds interesting.

[Spacelord]

Hi,
I have an exterior scene, its a night time scene with a lot of trees using cutout maps for the leaves. I'm lighting these trees with Area lights as they cast shadow onto the building and I need soft shadows. This combination is making render times are astronomical.
I've turn the blur down 0.01 on the cutout, lower the samples of the area shadows to 16,
Is there anything else that would speed this up ?
The Final gather speed isn't to slow it's the the AA thats killing render times.
I did see Jeff's tip on freezing final gather map without the cutout and diffuse.

cheers

[Glacierise]

Probably you don't need a leaf-by-leaf shadowcasting, since the shadows are soft and they will blend. So one possible thing would be to have a shadow shader with a much simpler map.

[Spacelord]

So a shadow map, not raytrace shadows ? like a gobo map ? Faux shadow ?

[Glacierise]

Nor really. Take a look at the mental ray material. You have a slot for surface and a slot for shadow, so you can put different shaders there. So you can make a cruder approximation of your diffuse/alpha map to plug into the shadow slot, that is still gonna give you the same results, because of the shadow softness.

[Spacelord]

Thanks Glacierise,
I plug a shadow shader into the shadow slot in the ARch&design shader.
Put the mask map in the transparency and blurred it a little, it worked a treat.
Faster rendering times just lots of prep to do each material.

cheers

[mister3d]

Hi guys, I downloaded Daniel Rind's diffraction shader, and it works great, except I can't get it to reflect the environment. I apply the shader into mental ray material surface slot, but how to add reflectivity?

[3DMadness]

Hi guys, I downloaded Daniel Rind's diffraction shader, and it works great, except I can't get it to reflect the environment. I apply the shader into mental ray material surface slot, but how to add reflectivity?
Use a blend material with diffraction on the base and an A&D with reflection in top, blend it with a falloff map.

[mister3d]

Use a blend material with diffraction on the base and an A&D with reflection in top, blend it with a falloff map.
Thank you, I will try that.

[models3d2]

Hello everyone, How do I use normal maps with mental ray? I use normal bump and put my map into normal slot, but it renders as simple bump, like if you just desaturate your normal map and make it black and white. And when I use vray or scanline everything is fine.

[Skyraider3D]

Hello everyone, How do I use normal maps with mental ray? I use normal bump and put my map into normal slot, but it renders as simple bump, like if you just desaturate your normal map and make it black and white. And when I use vray or scanline everything is fine.I ran into this problem too only a few days ago and couldn't find any answer online apart from "Mental Ray can't...". If it can, please tell us! :)

[JeffPatton]

With a quick test I see no problems with the normal maps in mental ray. I get the same result from both VRay and mental ray:
http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/Normal_mray.jpg

http://jeffpatton.net/Temp/Normal_VRay.jpg

Using this map I found on a google search for normal map:
http://www.psionic3d.co.uk/gallery/displayimage.php?album=3&pos=4

That being said, if your gamma isn't setup correctly and you load the normal map with the wrong gamma setting I'm sure you'll run into some problems like this:
http://www.3dallusions.com/forums/44117-post15.html

[Skyraider3D]

Hmmm I definitely can't seem to get it to work, but I'm still on Max 2008 - perhaps support was added in later versions?

[models3d2]

I made a test with teapot and everything works, strange that it didn't work before, looks like it was something wrong with gamma.

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/1878/teapotnormal.jpg

left - real teapot, right - normal map

[cboath]

Transparent water.....i've got to be missing something simple here, but i have no idea what.


I have a box, about 12' x 2' x 4". Objects may have been touching it's sides perfectly (coplanar faces), but i've since deleted everything but an xref'd site (30' below it) and stuck a teapot a couple inches under the bottom face. Nothing I do allows me to see throw the water. My best guess is that the reflection is too strong, but lowering it makes the box darker. I've upped the samples in the refaction section to like 200. I've adjusted the 0 and 90 deg reflection values, used IOR, etc, and i've set it to thin wall and solid in the advanced section, and the material comes out solid no matter what.

This happens whether i use a standard AD and adjust the parameters myself, use the water preset (which says it has no transparency I know) and adjust it. Surely seeing through the water just a bit can't be that hard of thing to achieve.

What is it that i'm missing?

FWIW, the xref scene has a daylight system in it set to MR Sun and MR Sky and the current scene is using MR Physical Sky as the env map...

[JeffPatton]

You could check some of the A&D water sample scenes that are on the second DVD to help track down the problem with your scene/settings.

[cboath]

Thanks Jeff...turns out, that's what you get for rendering an image the size of your screen. I hadn't messed with water or anything transparent in months, so no need for refraction. Turns out the refraction depth was set to 0. I got tired of waiting and set the reslution lower for a faster render, and voila, the big '0' sticking out like a sore thumb on the bottom of that tab under the render window. Real homer simpson 'Doh!' moment there. :)

I knew as soon as posted the answer would be something easy i missed. Just had to go public with it to look to get to that facepalm moment I guess :)

[MikeNash]

Hey guys,
Anyone able to help me out create some nice Procedural rock texture ?
Posted here, scene file also.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=832126

[Comar93]

For skin i wanted to add SSS fast skin + displacement, because of the displacement, but for some reason It doesn't work. I tried both Extrude map, and direction map and tried to pump up the strength but I get no effect no matter what. Please help me with a tutorial or an explanation. Do I have to modify some settings in rendering? or do I need to do something else? :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[Comar93]

Also can anyone tell me how do I get the right "Scale Conversion Factor" for my sss skin? :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

It would be nice if someone would upload their skin material :) But I guess I wouldn't take it cause it wouldn't feel like my work to use it...

[MikeNash]

Comar93 - Check out my thread here about displacement (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=821923)

Also wouldnt worry about scale conversion factor, focus on tweaking your other settings first.

[Comar93]

Comar93 - Check out my thread here about displacement (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=821923)

Also wouldnt worry about scale conversion factor, focus on tweaking your other settings first.


Thanks. :thumbsup:

[THarland]

I have a bunch of materials created in gamma 1.0 and now i'm working in 2.2.
Is there an easy way to convert the values?
Maybe scripting, a plugin, mathematical formula, magical potion... anything?
All my colors and reflections are inaccurate and it's looking to be such a pain to fix everything.

[TnB]

Hello guys, i have a question here :

Is it possible to use the raytrace "exclude/include" reflection option (like using it on lights) on the A&D material ? i know it might be some advanced shader stuff involved ..but i hope someone knows the answer
-to better understand for what i'm trying to use this - i have a lightplane that i want to be reflected only by one object in my scene .
- using a light doesn't even get close to looking as good as the lightplane option;
- changing my materials to raytrace isnt one of my options -because of its disadvantages vs A&d mat(except for local reflection control , LOL ) ;

The materials i use don't have the include/exclude reflection option(like the raytrace) -they are A&D shaders;so i thought there might me a way to implement that into MR arch viz shader

[InoDetelic]

Is it possible to use the raytrace "exclude/include" reflection option (like using it on lights) on the A&D material ?

I think mr Raytype Switcher does what you want.

It's hidden and you can enable it. Jeff Patton explains how to do it here: http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/archive/2008/1/
(but his post is about color bleed)

Put black 0,0,0 in reflection and you're set, if I understood what you really wanted.

[TnB]

i've tried it ,thanks for point ,but doesn't seem do help :( -can't control the reflection assigning the switcher to diffuse slot- just its color ;or maybe it can help in a way,but i cant see how;
-to be more clear:
basically i want to exclude all objects from scene but one, from receiving reflections from one bouncecard (a self-illuminating plane)-wich i have more in the scene.-just like having a light instead of the lightplane and use the include option , select one object in the scene -so it will be the only one receiving light&shadow from that light -just that here im concerned about reflections -i could do that if i was using the raytrace shader,but thats doesn't work for me -as i said in my previous post .can't be more clear than that -if you still don't get what i mean ill post an image too.
if anyone has any idea ,ill be very happy to listen it :P
cheers and thanks again for the suggestion

[InoDetelic]

ah sorry I didn't read your first post well.

[JeffPatton]

You could download a custom shader to help with that problem. For example at maxplugins.de (http://maxplugins.de/) you can download a shader named "BA_illum_visbool v24.0" that gives you control over which objects are visible to other objects.

See attachment.

[TnB]

thanks jeff;that does the trick ;)

[TunnelLight]

Hi All,

I've modelled an ebook reader and I am trying to sort out the materials. I'm having an issue with the textured plastic on the end and bottom of the reader. I know in real life, as you can also in the attached pictures, the plastic has a bumpiness to it. I've created an A&D material and put a speckle in the bump map slot and I've been playing with the reflectivness setting to get the right look.

When I get the texture right the object is too shiny as you can see in my render but I can't seem to get it right.

I'm wondering if someone could help me solve this and also it there it any tip on how best to recreate materials as I can never seem to be able to properly.

My render:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/playford/Material_Problems.jpg
Reference Shot 1
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/playford/nook_review_805.jpg
Reference Shot 2
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/playford/nook_review_836.jpg

Thanks
Mark

[Glacierise]

That's what the roughness param is for ;) Also, your surface is too flat - curve it up a bit and you'll get some reflection.

[loran]

hey all,
I have to create a Hot Metal material. I don't find anything about this on http://mrmaterials.com.
Any idea or links?
thank you guys

http://simonesystemsgroup.com/Applications/hot_metal.jpg

[Glacierise]

This piece exactly - I'd go with the refraction depth color, and then a few glows in post. Treat it like tinted solid piece of glass basically.

[JeffPatton]

http://www.mrmaterials.com/components/com_remository_files/file_image_1014/img_1014_01.jpg

FWIW You could also paint a map to blend between the heated/non-heated areas. Vertex paint works well for this as does the render surface map features in 3ds Max 2010. I realize the example I just posted is rather basic, but IMHO with a more detailed blend map it may also work.

Link:http://www.mrmaterials.com/resource-central.html?func=fileinfo&id=1014

[loran]

Thank you guys,
I tried BA_Color_raylenght to create effect like vraydirt (reverse AO normals)
I ll post my renders soon.

[TheAllusionist]

http://www.mrmaterials.com/components/com_remository_files/file_image_1014/img_1014_01.jpg

FWIW You could also paint a map to blend between the heated/non-heated areas. Vertex paint works well for this as does the render surface map features in 3ds Max 2010. I realize the example I just posted is rather basic, but IMHO with a more detailed blend map it may also work.

Link:http://www.mrmaterials.com/resource-central.html?func=fileinfo&id=1014

Jeff, this has turned into a "Request a Material" thread with you doing a lot of material authoring, mind if I put toghether a list of things I want? ;)

[loran]

vertex paint with a blend works very fine. thank you Jeff.

http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/divers/mr/heatedmetal.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Jeff, this has turned into a "Request a Material" thread with you doing a lot of material authoringI certainly hope it isn't actually viewed like that. :hmm:

mind if I put toghether a list of things I want? ;)Sure! Just fill out form JP-3044-a in triplicate for each material and fax it over on a day that starts with the letter Q :p

vertex paint with a blend works very fine. thank you Jeff.Cool, glad it worked out. :thumbsup:

[tiagodmed]

You can use the Warp Texture for 3Ds Max He used to mark the edges.

http://www.maxplugins.de/max2009_64.php?search=&sort=Author

In this link has a tutorial showing how to use it

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/vertex_map_wear/vertex_map_wear.htm

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

Problem is there is no mental ray plugin that will warp textures. Both WarpTexture and Bercon Maps Distortion variation only work with standard plugin renderers (brazil, fr, scanline, or vray).

-Eric

[dave-3d]

I have had this on my hard drive for some time - my foray into Caustics in MAx2008-2010.

I have no idea if this is the "correct" way to do caustics but it was the settings I found that worked for me. I documented what I did to create this, and put the scene for download on my website : http://www.dmmultimedia.com/3dtips_13.htm - includes animation.

I also played with a simple A&D water texture using refraction colour depth to simulate depth (similar effect like the old Lume depth shader) and an Ocean displacement map. The texture is included in the scene.

Hope it is of some use, and if anybody has any comments on how to improve the Caustic settings please let me know.

Dave

http://www.dmmultimedia.com/tutorial_8/depth_caustics.jpg

[Keyzzani]

Hey all!

I was reading some tutorials earlier and I came across this:
http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2008/03/v-ray-grass.html

With Vray you can have really good results with VrayDiscplacementMod. But how can we achieve similar effects with Mental ray?

The reason I ask is because I want to create decent looking rug, or a patch of grass - without having to resort to solid geometry / hair&fur.

[TunnelLight]

Have a look over on mrmaterials.com, i think Jeff Patton had something in his blog about the grass.

Yep, I did see something over there.

http://www.mrmaterials.com/jeffs-blog/101-mrproxy-grass.html

[TunnelLight]

Hi All,

Just thought I would share this.

I'm trying to develop some basic metal materials for an upcoming project. This one is aluminum with some scuffs, like you would get in a workshop.

I was also trying to create the look of metal that has been welded like the one shown below. Has anyone got any ideas how this could be achieved.

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/thin/mini-blow-through.jpg

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/thin/stitch-underside.jpg

Thanks
Mark

[MasterZap]

Hi All,

Just thought I would share this.

I'm trying to develop some basic metal materials for an upcoming project. This one is aluminum with some scuffs, like you would get in a workshop.

I was also trying to create the look of metal that has been welded like the one shown below. Has anyone got any ideas how this could be achieved.

http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/thin/mini-blow-through.jpg

Thanks
Mark

This image plus a dirty mind is a dangerous combination.

/Z

[TunnelLight]

I've added another image to try and get your mind back on track MasterZap

Mark

[ctrl.studio]

I've added another image to try and get your mind back on track MasterZap nahh.. thats impossible to get zap mind back on track.

[loran]

I just find this link about creating clouds with vray fog:
http://vray.info/tutorials/vrayenvfogclouds/


I wander if something similar is possible with Mental Ray?
someone ever tried this??

[thorsten hartmann]

The best is Vue for mental ray User. Without external Stuff, can you use the Partivolumen Shader or the Atmosphere Gizmo.

mfg
hot chip

[tiagodmed]

The Binary Alchemy has a great volume shader to make clouds. But as thorsten hartmann
said, the VUE is much better.

http://www.binaryalchemy.de/

http://www.binaryalchemy.de/develop/shd_vol/img/Cloud_Occlusion.jpg

http://www.binaryalchemy.de/develop/shd_vol/img/Cloud_Nebula.jpg

http://www.binaryalchemy.de/develop/shd_vol/img/Image3D_volume.jpg

http://www.binaryalchemy.de/develop/shd_vol/img/maya_Cloud_Sky.jpg

[jigu]

Is this shader available for max too?

[tiagodmed]

Yes, it works in XSI, Maya and 3Ds Max, in SO Windows and
Linux.
http://www.binaryalchemy.de/develop/shd_ess/download.htm

But... they say that officially the shader version 3.7.1 does not support the max, but I installed and ran.

http://www.binaryalchemy.de/develop/shd_vol/download.htm

[ctrl.studio]

those ba vols look terribles to me. Not too much introduced into vols for 3dsmax, but wouldn't fumefx be the best solution here ?

max

[jigu]

Thanks Tiago! I was in under such impression that these shaders are for XSI only. I will check out later.

[loran]

same for me! and it s free???

[Jimbo65]

I have been trying to turn a simple box or shape into a light source to create photographic specular highlights - a little more advanced than an area light.

I found and have the geomshader dll from max plugins - but I cannot find a current mi for Max 2010? Does anyone know of a way to get an updated mi? or is there a way to do this in Max 2010 that I am not aware of?

I am lighting my scene with HDR skylight and environment matching - I want to use some geometry to generate large soft speculars?

Thanks

[JeffPatton]

I found and have the geomshader dll from max pluginsDon't waste your time. The geo shader setup doesn't work well with 3ds Max. It's very unstable/unreliable inside 3ds Max (but works well in Maya).

Geometry lights wouldn't generate specular highlights anyway. It would be actual reflections from the geometry. If you want fake specular highlights, stick with the 3ds Max lights. If you want actual reflections, use 3ds max lights without specular & self-illuminated geometry.

[Blitzo]

I really like the results I get from refraction using the diffraction shader from Daniel Rind over the lglass v.2 shader, however the diffraction shader for 3D Studio Max doesn't include reflection. Is there any way to produce reflection on the diamonds using the diffraction shader in combination with another shader?

This is what I get with the lglass shader:

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/6241/lglass.jpg

This is what I get with the diffraction shader:

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/5577/diffraction.jpg

I prefer the results of the diffraction shader, again however the refelction is missing.

Hey Jeff, do you have recommendation on how to improve the look of these renders? I'm not sure if I have the best settings for final gather, etc. for this render setup. I could send you the file if you want to do some testing yourself on how to get the best and optimal speed results. I'm currently using v-ray to do my jewelry renders, but would prefer using mental ray as I can use lens effects to create on-the-fly post process sparkles and glares using the glare shader.

[JeffPatton]

I'm a bit strapped for time right now but quickly: You may want to try this http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2009/11/fire-and-ice-rendering-diamonds-and.html so you could use the A&D material instead.

[Blitzo]

I tried using this method for diffraction but its a bit slow, and you have to save the image manually once the render is complete.

[JeffPatton]

Can someone with 3ds Max 2009 (64-bit) please post the subsurface.dll file. Seems that it's still borked (2010 & 2011) and I really don't feel like installing 3ds Max 2009 just for one .dll file, especially just to test something. :argh:

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it - http://www.3dallusions.com/forums/mental-ray/3898-sss-physical-material-mi-problems-max-2010-a.html

(thanks Paulo)

[TheAllusionist]

Can someone with 3ds Max 2009 (64-bit) please post the subsurface.dll file. Seems that it's still borked (2010 & 2011) and I really don't feel like installing 3ds Max 2009 just for one .dll file, especially just to test something. :argh:

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it - http://www.3dallusions.com/forums/mental-ray/3898-sss-physical-material-mi-problems-max-2010-a.html

(thanks Paulo)

Hey that site is pretty awesome! LOL Kidding aside, I find a bit of irony in you finding what you needed there ;)

[3DMadness]

Hey Jeff, can you tell us what is wrong with the subsurface.dll?

[JeffPatton]

I don't know what's technically wrong with it. What I do know is the physical SSS material doesn't work (only produces NaN errors) in the 64bit versions of 3ds Max 2010 & 2011 and it did work in 3ds Max 2009 (and prior). If you swap out the 64bit subsurface.dll file in 2010/2011 with the one from 2009, the physical SSS material magically works again.

With that being said:
1. Yes, I've 'officially' logged the problem a few times.
2. I'm sure the physical SSS material isn't too widely used (myself included) so the problem is probably not a big concern for many users especially if they can just swap out dll files as needed.

[3DMadness]

Thanks for the explanation Jeff, maybe Zap could tell something about it, but he's being too quiet lately, even with max 2011 release... that's not a good sign... :hmm:
And I guess you're right, SSS physical is not widely used... myself included. :D

[CHRiTTeR]

maybe Zap could tell something about it, but he's being too quiet lately, even with max 2011 release... that's not a good sign... :hmm:

except if hes working on something cool in his secret lab off course... ;)

[EricTT]

how to use mr ocean shader,I assign it to a plane and render it , I got nothing ,only a dark plane!

[JeffPatton]

how to use mr ocean shader,I assign it to a plane and render it , I got nothing ,only a dark plane!Will need a lot more information than that to resolve the problem.

It could be any number of things like:
1. You haven't assigned an environment therefore the reflective water has only the default black environment to reflect which produces a black render.
2. You've assigned the ocean(lume) shader to the displacement map but left the bump option enabled on the ocean(lume) settings so it won't work as a displacement map.
3. You're using the ocean(lume) shader as a bump map but have no lights in the scene therefore this (or any) bump effect would be difficult to see
4. You're using photographic exposure control and it's configured incorrectly thus causing a black render.

ETC. As you can tell, lot's of things could be wrong with the scene so it's a guessing game until you provide more detailed info on your scene & settings.

If you think it's because of your material configuration you could try the A&D water preset or some of the ProMaterial water presets as they have the ocean(lume) options already configured and/or built-in.

[EricTT]

Will need a lot more information than that to resolve the problem.

It could be any number of things like:
1. You haven't assigned an environment therefore the reflective water has only the default black environment to reflect which produces a black render.
2. You've assigned the ocean(lume) shader to the displacement map but left the bump option enabled on the ocean(lume) settings so it won't work as a displacement map.
3. You're using the ocean(lume) shader as a bump map but have no lights in the scene therefore this (or any) bump effect would be difficult to see
4. You're using photographic exposure control and it's configured incorrectly thus causing a black render.

ETC. As you can tell, lot's of things could be wrong with the scene so it's a guessing game until you provide more detailed info on your scene & settings.

If you think it's because of your material configuration you could try the A&D water preset or some of the ProMaterial water presets as they have the ocean(lume) options already configured and/or built-in.
with your help I have resolved the problem,thanks

[loran]

I am looking for a easy fabric material setting. I found some very complex ones on mrmaterials.

[JeffPatton]

I am looking for a easy fabric material setting. I found some very complex ones on mrmaterials.You may need to narrow that down a bit as there's many different types of fabrics like satin, denim, flannel, etc., and they all can be configured differently.

[loran]

I want to set a basic fabric material for the seat on this scene. The original Vray scene (http://www.3dmodelfree.com/models//26378-0.htm) render it so nicelly with a smooth falloff light .

Mine is done with a Arch&Design with a very low reflection glossiness value and a high diffuse roughness. But the light falloff is not strong enough to me.

http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/TEMP/mr/MentalRay-5min.jpg

[cani]

Hi,

I was wondering how do you guys deal with texture maps that needs to have a higher or lower value than the standard 16 bits zero to one range while still using 16 bits images. In some materials you need to use values that exceed from far this range. By example I want to map the back scatter depth shader of an sss fast material where I want my highest value to be 120 cm. Therefore my highest value on the texture map will need to be 120 too.

How do you deal with that? I can play with the output tab (i'm using 3ds max) to boost the whites to this value but doesn't that messes the darker values? I'm kind of confused with this issue.

I'd be interested to know hoe to do that in Softimage too!

[galagast]

Hi, been using mental ray for about 3 weeks now, this new rendering ideology is just starting to sink in. So far so good.
I just have a problem with a matte/shadow workflow. My scene has an object using an Arch+Design material with displacement. How do I turn this material into a matte/shadow material whilst retaining the displacement? The Matte/Shadow/Reflection (mi) material doesn't seem to have an option to add displacement maps into it. (In vray, I would just go the the object properties and set it to matte.)

Thanks,
Jeff

[jigu]

You can use "material to shader" in "mentalray" material surface map slot.

I havn't checked it myself though if matte/shadow works in "material to shader" map.

[galagast]

Thanks Jigu! that worked perfectly!
"Matte/Shadow/Reflection (mi)" inside a "Material to Shader" for the "Surface" of the mentalray material + a displacement map on the "Displacement" slot of the mr material (I also adjusted the Output Amount to match the strength from the Arch+Design displacement strength).
Now I wish that there was a more straight forward way of doing this, without creating multiple materials just to get a "Matte/Shadow" version. :D

[Mr-BlueSummers]

Heya,

Just wanted to post the SSS article I finished recently: mental ray sss subsurface scattering tutorial (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3510/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide/). We explore all of the parameters in the 3d Studio Max implementation of mental ray using gradient ramps and rainbow maps. It's kinda neat. :)
http://mrbluesummers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/mental-ray-parti-volume-original-300x180.jpg (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3510/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide/)

http://mrbluesummers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/sss-fast-material-front-surface-scatter-color-300x180.jpg (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3510/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide/)

Here's a quick outline...
part 1 (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3510/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide/) covers:




What is Sub-Surface Scattering (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3510/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide/2/),
The Fast SSS Material Type (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3510/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide/3/), and
The Fast SSS Skin Material (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3510/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide/4/).
part 2 (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3636/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide-part-2/) covers:


The SSS Physical Material & Shader (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3636/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide-part-2/2/), and
The The Parti-Volume Shader (http://www.mrbluesummers.com/3636/3d-tutorials/3dsmax-mental-ray-sub-surface-scattering-guide-part-2/3/).
Enjoy! Let me know if you have any suggestions or notice typos.

[tiagodmed]

Mr-BlueSummers, you is the men! This is the best guide that I already see about the Sub Surface Scatering.
:applause: :applause: :applause:

[cani]

Hi Mr-BlueSummers,
I really like your sss guide. I've read the mental ray guide and I must say that your's is very well explained. It resumes perfectly the book but yours have a lot more renders and useful tips!

Thx

[jdrouse]

I'm searching for a way to use a mr Physical Sky, or any HDRI as an environmental reflection in the A&D shader and not in Max's env map slot. What I really need is to render the background as black for compositing reasons.

Obviously when I turn off the Env Map slot and render black, I can't use the sky reflection in my car paint shaders and things like that.

In the A&D shaders I'm trying to tweak fade to end color with the sky map. Is there a better way to do it?

Thanks for any help I can get.

-John

[JeffPatton]

Environment/background switcher?

[jdrouse]

Thanks Jeff! Why didn't I think of that!? Results:
http://www.a-chasm.com/forumimages/PimpShip_03.jpg

[ahau]

hi guys, is it possible to use ambiant occlusion with the sub surface scatter shader of MR? i know vray can, A&D can, but SSS?

[tiagodmed]

hi guys, is it possible to use ambiant occlusion with the sub surface scatter shader of MR? i know vray can, A&D can, but SSS?

If I understand the question, yes you can use, just put the AO shader in the channel of "diffuse color" and "epidermal scatter color". "Subdermal" and "back surface" does not show significant changes in the outcome.
But it will leave the render slower. It is best to separate "renders" and compose in post production.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/tiagodmed/mental_ray/test-sss-AO-tiagodmed.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/tiagodmed/mental_ray/test-sss-AO-setup.jpg

In this video tutorial you can see what is the best way to compose the AO shader with SSS shader in post production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyPUVjaM6Qo

:thumbsup:

[JeffPatton]

FWIW Zap's skin + material has ambient occlusion controls built-in.

[MikeNash]

Talk about over kill with AO.
Just use it in your overall diffuse color, its suffice for my renders :)
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/9464/barkaside.jpg

[Glacierise]

Man that's some really good model/render! :eek:

[ahau]

thank you guys,

i'm using mr zap skin + shader, it's pretty cool.

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/2918/sss2x.jpg
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/4992/sss4l.jpg

[InoDetelic]

ahau I think you're overdoing it but that's just my opinion.

[ahau]

overdoing what?

[NOTORIOUS-ro]

I think he meant it's scattering to much light.

Awesome stuff guys I bet this thread has a lot of followers that aren't exactly active (I'm one of them). I really appreciate all of the stuff that goes around here. Cheers.

[ahau]

oh i guess he was right :) anyway it was just test renders, i'm actually redoing the all texturing before tweaking the SSS again.

[HerbertC]

Hey guys...

Any advice on how to create metallic shaders like these ones??


http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/9104/metaly.jpg


I'm working with Maya and MentalRay, and a model very similar to the camera in the image. My scene has one HDRI as environment, one arealight as key light, and two spots as fill lights. I also have color management enabled.

I've tried a few different configurations with mia_material and some color/reflex/bump maps, but it's not working as I expected.

[ahau]

looks like a real simple high reflective low glossiness MIA shader. the key is the reflections and lighting.

[InoDetelic]

As ahau said, the key is the reflections and lighting. Try the autodesk metal shaders if you have max 2010-2011.

Also learn from master zap: http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/10/making-better-metal-with-miamaterial.html

[rox44]

Hi all. I'm trying to render a pretty complex scene (poly heavy foliage) with motion blur. I've tried using the velocity channel of render elements, but haven't been very impressed. I tried the Motion Vector Export shader in the camera output slot and it works nicely with my scene.

Now my question: how does one go about saving this "pass" along with the beauty pass in the same render job? Reading over the Production Shader Library help file gives some hints on "pseudo .mi syntax" for creating separate frame buffers, but it's over my head. I understand max scripting, and sort of understand this pseudo syntax after checking the mental ray help file, but don't even know where to start with this shader modification.

I have made some not so graceful hacks to production_max.mi resulting in lots of errors, but no separate frame buffer with vectors. Am I making this more difficult than necessary, or is it time to brush up on shader writing? Thanks

[CHERNABOG]

Hey guys!, I have been asking on the rendering forum of maya, but I´m curious if anyone over here has the Puppet p_shaders v3.3 for Maya 2011 win64, it seems that the download page on Puppet´s site is down, any help would be much appreciated! :thumbsup:

[gulio]

It seems that there is no version for Maya 2011. You can have a lock for yourself via the webachiv.


http://web.archive.org/web/20070626161650/www.puppet.cgtalk.ru/download/shaders_p_e.shtml