Mental Ray - Shaders

[JeffPatton]

Yeah, I know about the put to material dropper, I just didn't know if it would work when multiple materials are used.

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/landscape.jpg

I just tried it and it appears to keep all the data when put into a library. I would only need to include the rust photo(s) I used.

Edit: DOH, I posted at the same time as Matlock.

Edit2: Just incase anyone is wondering why I use external materials, it's because of the level of control. I can add a different type and level of bump to the rust than the metal itself has.

[BigRanS123]

Thats all that I can say, is that you need to place your image file in the zip. Try it, and I will see if it will work on my box.

[JeffPatton]

Here's the .mat file and rust maps. I didn't include the metal one, because it's the default material named Metal_Steel. So everyone should have that one already.

Let me know if it works.

Rust.mat file (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/rust-MAT.zip)

Stop playing with your avatar BigRanS....It will make your palms hairy...lol.

[BigRanS123]

this is what I get

http://bigrans.250free.com/test.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Cool it worked. I suppose the model I made had steeper curves, so you would need to adjust the height amount to get the rust to fit closer in the seams?

[BigRanS123]

Thats what I was thinking.

BTW Can we start a thread about partical flow?

[JeffPatton]

"BTW Can we start a thread about partical flow?"

I think it's a good idea. If you have something to share or questions about PFlow, start a thread out in the main 3ds forum. Then as the thread grows and becomes packed with info, the admins will move it to the resources section.

Thats how this one ended up here.

[deetee]

Yeah, it would be very cool having a PFlow resource, I spend some time fiddling with it :)

You can also update all the main links, I've added the .zip to all of the servers, so the mirrors are up again. everyone should be ..\CGtalk-mr.zip instead of the .mat.

The rust texture was pretty interresting!

[da_rock21]

i have been pretty busy at work lately and have barely had time to read all the stuff that everyone is doing, much less try it myself. maybe i will get to play with it all this weekend but unlikly with the folks comming in to visit. right rans?..

[BigRanS123]

A link to the P-Flow thread.

P-Flow Thread (HERE) (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114324)

[opus13]

folical, thanks for the ideas on the dirtshader, but no luck... i noticed that the 'splotched' sphere in you nmaterial editor does not appear the same in my setup.

!?

any chance you could post the file with the greebled sphere, or teapots in the box and let me dissect it?

thanks!

[joske]

Originally posted by opus13
folical, thanks for the ideas on the dirtshader, but no luck... i noticed that the 'splotched' sphere in you nmaterial editor does not appear the same in my setup.

!?

any chance you could post the file with the greebled sphere, or teapots in the box and let me dissect it?

thanks!

yes i agree guys

I've been following this post with great intrest myself for a wile now and I must say is great to see all the cool shaders and to be able to try them :applause:

but it gets real confusing to search for all the right .mi .dll, plugins, shaders, ... to get a sample scene to work like it should

the dirt scene and the green SSS scene look really poor or wrong in my try-outs, so I assume there's a whole lot more to it than desicribed
A well working sample scene with all in would work instantly, and it's much easier to 'dissect' all the little tricks and settings

i tried folical's sss scene,

Originally posted by folical
Here's the scene (minus the model...just place your model where the sphere is located). I wasnt sure if I could add a mix material that references other materials to the .mat file


just put in a test object as described, and this was the result :
so I assume I'm still missing some settings here...???

no disrespect folical!
i am greatfull an I do apreciate your work and time that you put in this post but there's no point in posting things no one can use beside the people who all ready know how...

:bowdown:

[joske]

my dirt map scene try :

I try to look for all the setting ddl and mi in this post
I assume I got all of them as described...

as you can see :
no bounce from the light on the wall... to the back of the ball

so again I think something still missing...

[JeffPatton]

no disrespect folical!
i am greatfull an I do apreciate your work and time that you put in this post but there's no point in posting things no one can use beside the people who all ready know how...

I understand your point. However, the problem with the SSS scene in specific is the difference in models. Scale, size and thickness have a huge affect on the SSS material. There's no smoke and mirrors on my posts, I have just spent alot of time adjusting the material settings to optimize the material for my particular scene.

"but there's no point in posting things no one can use beside the people who all ready know how"

I disagree. I don't think any of us really know how. We are all experimenting as we go. Atleast I know I am. So it's crucial to share info in these early stages. I'm not an expert, just a regular joe like everyone else. Sharing info and learning as I go.

I will revert to posting all my scenes with that little odd shaped mesh I originally started with. That way I can post materials with a working scene. I would love to have time to add an explanation with each material I post. Cause and effect of each setting, but with my work load, thats impossible at this point.

I will be happy to re-visit both the mixed sss scene and the dirtmap scene. Expect a post soon!

:thumbsup:

[da_rock21]

i understand to an extent of what folical is doing but i too would benifit from a little more indepth description. i know you may not have time folical but if anyone else does understand and has time it would be greatly appriciated.

[jampoz]

Guys let's understand that you have to work on it by yourself

Don't expect those files you download here to do the job you're supposed to be doing eheh

Don't mean to be rude but it's not like "download the file and everything works perfectly" you gotta understand you have to use your head as much as Folical is doing


I got the same files but they work perfectly

What you should do is not only get those files but search for even more information about MR in the web, example download the video tutorial in the Gifts section on this site (http://www.evermotion.org)
There is much more around if you search for it, I will post URLs when I find more for sure, even if I believe this URL has been given before in this thread

-----

I've been having fun on the Displacement, well just gotta love it! (pic included at the end)

I come from Brazil and I had to mix both Bump and Disp to get such a strong effect, even if MR render is slower I find it gives much more control than Brazil, this way I think I can easily make it slower or faster than Brazil depending on the quality I want

So my conclusion is that MR *COULD* be even faster than Brazil, it's all a matter of getting used to it and tweak it
We all saw in the beginning of this thread how much the render time improved just by changing some photons, I got the scene and did the same, whoa, i now tested all my test scenes with a reduced Photons number and just WHOA, don't have to switch to the other computer while rendering anymore ehehhehe


Thank goes to you ALL :beer:

http://www.melomaniac.it/Gmannucci/CGtalk/Displacement_Muro.jpg

[da_rock21]

im not asking someone to do it for me. im not even saying walk me through it. im just asking for a better understanding of what steps are involved and how you determin those steps. if i can understand what you are thinking while you are doing this that i can understand more of what im looking for.

im not sure if i worded this right but i think you get my drift.:curious:

[JeffPatton]

I understand. I'm getting ready to make such a post. Guy's just don't take my posts as the end all be all information on these shaders. Just as jampoz mentioned, experiment and research with the shaders for yourself so I may also learn from your experiments.

Again, thanks for the comments everyone. I will try to add more notes to my posts.

:)

[jampoz]

Sure da_rock21! Forgive me but I REALLY didn't mean to sound rude, just point out which settings you don't understand and we could try to explain to you and to the others who didn't get it :thumbsup:


EDIT: For the records I still can't make Glare render a single scene, seems like it takes up to much processor and Max kind of freeze while attempting to do it, sucks, but as you guys told before we got other ways to do that

EDIT2: Damn the VideoPost Glow doesn't work with Mental Ray, used to work with Brazil, hints anyone?

[opus13]

I've been having fun on the Displacement, well just gotta love it!

i have had my ass officially knocked on the floor by mental's displacement capabilities! i have been working on a schoolbus, and wanted a warped effect on the sides... i was all prepared to use an extremely dense mesh (the old way of doing it!) and then remembered that mental will do proper displacement on a sparse mesh!

woot!

now: holes and punchouts can simply be painted along with other maps, and no mesh editing required.

mr = teh winnar

http://www.users.uswest.net/~choltorf/mr1.jpg


one thing that i am trying to figure out at the moment is assigning displacement according to vertex color. so far, no luck, but i havent exhausted ass of the possibilities yet :)

[JeffPatton]

Ok, here we go. Let me know if this format of posting is better?

Dirtmap teapot scene: Download Scene (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/tutorials/aocc-teapots.zip)

Here's the output directly from renderer:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/tutorials/teapots.jpg

Notes:
I used a standard material on this one, not a mental ray material. I placed the dirtmap in the diffuse slot and copied it to the self illumination slot.

The self illumination dirtmap picks up the colors from the environment. The diffuse dirtmap created the shadows.

If you increase the samples in the dirtmap shader, you get less grain, however render times will increase.

If you use dirtmap in the diffuse slot of a mental ray shader, the material is unaffected by lights in your scene. You do NOT need any lights whatsoever. This is why I chose to use a standard material for this scene. I still wanted one light to serve as the sun and use the dirtmap for a GI effect only.

Dirtmap appears to ignore indirect lighting or bounce effects I should say. See next post for more details on that.

[JeffPatton]

Dirtmap continued.

I further explored the bounce light issue and came up with following results.

Scene: Greeble Ball Dirtmap Scene (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/tutorials/aocc-greeble.zip)

I placed a checker map for the environment and used a gradient color to help illustrate the environment effect on the material.

The following render uses no ground plane, no lights and the dirtmap is placed in the mental ray surface slot:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/tutorials/ball-1.jpg

Now, I wanted to see how it would react if I added a large ground plane to block part of the environment. Same material, still no lights in scene:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/tutorials/ball-2.jpg

It ignores the ground plane and renders the same as the first image. The background is black due to the plane and no light in scene.

Next I changed materials to a standard material and added the dirmap to the diffuse and self illumination slots just as I did in the teapot scene. I added a direct light and left the ground plane enabled.
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/tutorials/Ball-3.jpg

Although the target light now affects the object, it still doesn't recognize the ground plane.

Maybe I'm using this material incorrectly? Does this info help more?

[jampoz]

Opus13, that's great, did you try to use Displacement to do the tires as well?
I'm pretty sure MR would handle it perfectly!

[opus13]

thank you folical, i appreciate it.

i noticed that after i rendered the default scene, that your rendered shadows are a lsight bit darker than mine.. did you do any photoshop adjustments after the render was complete? or maybe mental is a bit less rigid in its output than we might have imagined? (way unlikely)

pretty weird. in my material editor, the map looks nothing like yours, but the settings and scale of the scene are quite similar, but i was getting very different results.

funny. thanks once again.

edit:/ thanks... but no, its all geometry i realized the displacement possibilities after they were done, and i havent been able to tear myself away from 'texturing mindset' on the other pieces to contemplate redoing it.. good idea though. it would probably speed up the viewports immensely

[JeffPatton]

I have made no adjustments to the last images. They are straight from the renderer and from the posted scenes. They both have a contrast effect added just to enhance the image, but thats done in 3ds as an image effect (brightness & contrast)....So it should be already setup in the scene.

[jampoz]

Folical I can't understand why we should use an HDRI for the dirt, makes it looks like reflection instead, which is no good

I wouldn't waste much time on such a feature as the normal dirt works great, uh?

By normal dirt I mean Probe Geometry instead of Probe Environment


By the way, yes, you do wet your pants in the real world, so be careful :)

[JeffPatton]

"Folical I can't understand why we should use an HDRI for the dirt, makes it looks like reflection instead, which is no good"

I was thinking that it was more of an illumination effect rather than reflection. I thought it was picking light up from the environment....I dunno, maybe it is more of a reflection.

Come to think of it, if it were a reflection, wouldnt we see the checker pattern more than a gradient light effect?

[Force-10]

Hi, first I'd like to say WOW! This has got to be the most informative single thread I've ever seen, regardless of subject-matter!

My first question (for my first post ;) ) is regarding the plastic/rubber material from page 3 of this thread. I can't for the life of me get those dark "dirty" looking patches to show. Are they caused by the GI caustics? Here's the closest I could manage:

http://studioblackbox.com/files/rubber_01.jpg

[jampoz]

I see that makes sense, I was quite wrong!
But then the main purpose of HDRI is to light the whole scene so why trying this setting on the Dirtmap shader?

Doesn't Dirtmap object get light from HDRI like everything else does?
I mean, do you NEED to use this Probe Environment in order to get HDRI work on Dirtmap objects?

I'm asking 'cause Probe Environment slows alot on my machine, should try to apply HDRI in a normal way but I'm hooked to this Displacement, lol


Just tried Dirtmap and Displacement together, works perfectly, you can check the dirt (RED) on the rock I previously posted

No texture applied on Diffuse this time, just to show Dirt effects better, so it's just a Displacement texture AND Dirtmap using Probe Geometry

http://www.melomaniac.it/Gmannucci/CGtalk/Displacement_MuroDirt.jpg

[da_rock21]

thats funny you mention the videopost jampoz... me and my friend had a discussion on the advantages of MR and his liking of video post over MR. unfortunatly VP only works with scanline. what exactly are you trying to do...

note: if VP does work with MR ive never read that, but hey maybe someone else knows how to make it work.

[jampoz]

Well I was trying to add a Glare=Glow effect by VideoPost effect for two reasons

First: The Glare shader does kill my computer (AMD 2Ghz-256ddr)

Second: Glow shaders don't actually glow, dunno why, they produce lights but they don't glow :shrug:

[JeffPatton]

Dirtmap again. I posted this over at CGarchitect and thought I would add it here. I used dirtmap in a radiosity simulation.

Here's the light pass (mental ray GI). I used low settings to speed up the render. In hopes the dirtmap would cover some of the splotches.

Light pass:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/GI-pass.jpg

Here's the dirtmap pass (kinda neat looking by itself):
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/aocc-pass.jpg

And then I combined the two in photoshop:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/aocc-Bldg.jpg

It did a fairly good job of simulating radiosity. I think I will try it now with a scanline radiosity render, mixed with the MR dirtmap pass and see what happens.

(building model came from cgarchitect light test thread)

[da_rock21]

i am doing a quick lighting job and so i used e-light. in the e-light pannel there is a "choose bitmap". and one of the options is to choose HDRI. has anyone experimented with putting a HDRI in e-light? i will laterbut right now i am trying to make a deadline so i dont really have time. if no one posts befor i get to it i will let you know my outcome.

[BigRanS123]

If you just turn up the quality to 3 and not turn up any of the settings, you should be at a good starting point.

I will get in on the sharing discussion. I feel that the shaders are not for me to use directly in a project. I just use the information that I get form a shader and splice that in with what I know or already have in my library.

I feel that the more we educate each other the stronger are art will become. Not only on a personal level, but also as a 3d World.

I still have not had the time to get the dirt map stuff to work in max, but i like all the stuff that I am seeing.

[Cabbage]

Originally posted by Force-10
Hi, first I'd like to say WOW! This has got to be the most informative single thread I've ever seen, regardless of subject-matter!

My first question (for my first post ;) ) is regarding the plastic/rubber material from page 3 of this thread. I can't for the life of me get those dark "dirty" looking patches to show. Are they caused by the GI caustics? Here's the closest I could manage:

http://studioblackbox.com/files/rubber_01.jpg

Those "dirty" looking patches depend on your light setup.
If you want the scene add me on MSN and I'd gladly send you it :)
vampire@yaxay.com

[joske]

that more like it!!! :beer:

I do think everyone is saying the same thing in different words here no? and everyone does have a hugh workload and doing the MRay testing in there spare time, so :

All I would like to ask is to try and give as much relevant settings and special tricks that are used in the sample renders and scene's. This way more people can start doing the real testing and fine tuning from the shader itself. There will be faster results i'm sure! :thumbsup:

[matlock]

folical9: "Dirtmap appears to ignore indirect lighting or bounce effects I should say."

Try unchecking Invisible to Secondary Illumination.

[JeffPatton]

I did. It still ignored the ground plane or any light bounced from ground plane.

[jampoz]

Oh god... I got something rendering an animation in MR that TOTALLY weirded me out... :shrug:
I'm speechless 'bout it, gonna show you all when I mount the video :sad:

[matlock]

folical9: Ok, how about turning on final gather. Or you can maybe try and put a raytrace material in the environment slot of your material. I haven't tested it, it's just a suggestion.

[cris castro]

good cant wait too see it,please post tips and tuts about your cool renderings:eek::p

[joske]

I gave folical's dirtmap a try :lightbulb

1 = GI mental ray + caustics
2 = dirtmap
3 = combination in photoshop (faster and smoother then when using only GI)

works great folical :thumbsup:

[joske]

tested the greeble sphere scene to get the color bleed folical was asking for :

turned of the environ.
turned of probe environm in the dirt mat settings
groundplane is plain red material
turned on GI photons (very low settings)

so only bleed color could come from the red ground plane bounce from light

result = red bounce is visible

it seems very simple to me : turning of GI an caustics and using only the dirt shader gives no bounce from the ground plane (like in folical's setup scenes)

turning on either GI or regathering would give bounce from the surrounding objects mixed with the dirt mat... no?

(the 2nd sphere is just for reference and has a simple white color material)

I wonder if mixing the materials in the scene with the dirt could permit to have lower settings for GI and regather to speed up?
so the step of rendering in 2 passes and combining in photoshop could be done in one render in one pass!!!

[joske]

Originally posted by folical9
Ok, so I couln't adjust the specular, reflection, etc of the subscatter shader. So I thought I would try mixing a raytrace glass material WITH the subscatter material and this is the resulting render.

Here's the scene (minus the model...just place your model where the sphere is located). I wasnt sure if I could add a mix material that references other materials to the .mat file

Download Subscatter Glass scene (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/subscatter-glass.zip)

yo folical,

you think you could have another look at this scene with the sphere?
It seems something's not working or still missing.
Can't get it to look like your statue man... :banghead:

the sphere's allways broken up in lines and washed out in white...

[JeffPatton]

"I gave folical's dirtmap a try

1 = GI mental ray + caustics
2 = dirtmap
3 = combination in photoshop (faster and smoother then when using only GI)

works great folical "

Any thanks should really go to Markus for writing a usable interface for the dirtmap shader. :thumbsup:

[neods]

So how are the rendering times with dirtmap, when compared to a basic animation GI solution? Intresting 20pages i must say.

[JeffPatton]

Joske,

I tried the SSS glass scene again and it worked fine for me. I added the model from PENdzel's post and after I make sure it's ok with him, I will repost the updated (added new colors) SSS glass .max file.

Also, make sure you have the latest subscatter shader version (link is on page 8 of this thread).

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/ladies.jpg

[joske]

still no go folical...

:cry:

let just go over it step by step, mabey there's an obvious step (for you) that I skipped??

I got the latest subscatter shader version here
http://www.lightengine3d.com/downloads/plugins/subScatter/md_subScatter_shaderPack.zip

did a copy of the md_subScatter.dll and the md_subScatter.mi to the max 6 folders ('shaders' and 'include')

opened your glass shpere scene
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/subscatter-glass.zip

didn't change the MR render settings (no GI no Caustics no Final Gather are set by default)
rendered : the sphere's allways broken up in lines and washed out in white...

played around with the GI, caustics and final gather :
same result

If I turn on the caustics I get this error :

RCGI 0.2 error 361053: no photons stored after emitting 1000000 photons (canceling emission job)
RCGI 0.2 warn 362004: no photons stored after emitting 10000 photons

(the caustics work fine when I use another glasslike material for the sphere)

So I can't think of anything else dude...
any suggestions?
anybody else tried this scene? Cause if i'm the only one with this problem, I don't see the point of sharing this on this post.

[Rich Joyce]

i keep getting these problems and can't figure out why. any help please?

MI 0.0 warn 122001: standard startup file ray3rc not found
MSG 0.0 error: Shader declaration 'Dirtmap' has no apply type. This shader cannot be used in 3ds max until it has at least one apply type.
API 0.0 warn 302004: Z:\3dsmax6\mentalray\include\md_subScatter.mi, line 42: while defining declaration "mr_subScatter": declaring nonexisting function mr_subScatter


dont understand at all - also how do i unlock the 'glare' shader? (is it a shader?)

[BigRanS123]

You can follow the steps on the bottom of this page to unlock the glare.

CLICK (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104578&perpage=15&highlight=sss&pagenumber=12)
The file is under this path on my computer..

C:\3dsmax6\mentalray\include\lume.mi

As far as the Dirtmap, I have no Idea on that.

joske: did you turn on "all objects cast and recive costics" in the GI pannel at the bottom?

[Force-10]

Originally posted by joske
didn't change the MR render settings (no GI no Caustics no Final Gather are set by default)
rendered : the sphere's allways broken up in lines and washed out in white...

Joske, I get the same results as you do .. :argh:

[JeffPatton]

I believe that others may not have to go through the process of unlocking the glare shader. All they would need to do is just download one of the sample scenes in this thread that uses the glare shader. Mental ray "should" recognize the shader in the scene already without unlocking anything. Then simply save the glare material to any .mat file and thats it!

If someone who has not already edited the lume.mi file could verify this, that would be great.

Joske shouldn't have to change anything for the SSS glass file to work. I don't, just load and render. Has anyone else had problems with rendering the SSS-glass scene? If so maybe I have something setup differently in 3ds and will have to research it.

EDIT: HOLY COW, 21 pages and still going....geeesh.

[Force-10]

Originally posted by folical9
Joske shouldn't have to change anything for the SSS glass file to work. I don't, just load and render. Has anyone else had problems with rendering the SSS-glass scene? If so maybe I have something setup differently in 3ds and will have to research it.

folical9, I think I'm getting the same results as Joske. Opening the your sample file and hitting "render" gives me this (cropped):

http://studioblackbox.com/files/sss_hdr.jpg

Removing the hdi env. gives me this (cropped):

http://studioblackbox.com/files/sss_noenv.jpg

For the record, all your other files have produced successful results similar to or identical to yours. This is the only one giving me problems.

Thanks!

[ODIN_6]

folical9

How do I get mantal ray to recognize Simbiant Max shaders???

I biult the bike in Max 5 and transfered it over to max 6 to try the HDRI stuff .. for the bike paint I am using simMax metal paint shader. I do this because I can add in a image and it looks like it is painted into the paint ,, and takes less time to render that raytrace.

If would like I can post the renders and the long error log ..

anyhelp would be welcomed..

thanks

[BigRanS123]

they now have a new Max 6 sembiont set up for download.

DarkSim (http://www.darksim.com/html/download_simbiont2.html)

Hope that this helps

[ODIN_6]

Well I have already done that


here is an old render with the designs on the finders and gas tank:
http://www.treetop05.com/images/full-bike-el--rend5.jpg

Here is the Mentalray renders:
http://www.treetop05.com/images/new-test4.jpg

here is the Error log :
http://www.treetop05.com/images/errors.jpg

I think I might have to reapply all the materials , unless anyone knows another way

[treed]

Well Simbeont Max is listed under incompatible for MR.

Also when I open that subscatter_glass max file i get this error message. Missing DLL's: MentalRay.dlz Class:Mr_Subscatter



Anyone know why this is happening?

[Rich Joyce]

Thanks very much BigRanS123, anyone know the cause of the dirtmap problem? i know daniel who wrote it and its never worked for me - always just exits out of max - i was hoping thjis mentalray port would sort that but it still has some errors - the 'apply type' problem - i have no idea how to sort that.

thanks again BigRanS123 - much appreciated

[JeffPatton]

I've been snooping around my .mi files again and have un-hidden many additional shaders. I will give a list of stable ones after some research.

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/shdr-list.jpg

[treed]

Ok I can open the file now, but i'm having the same problem Force-10 is having.

folical, where did you get all those additional shaders?

[JeffPatton]

These came from the base.mi file. I just started hunting for "hidden" and removing it everytime I came across it. Some of them don't seem to work yet...like the polka-dot shader...Man, that sounded like a fun one too.

Here's some tests. The blue sphere material is "ward deriv", the green one is called "illum ward" and the orange is "illum blinn". There's also phong and strauss, and some others.
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/new-mat1.jpg

Here's another test, this time a lens shader...it's called "lens DOF physics"

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/new-mat2.jpg

[neods]

what does the "lens DOF physics" lens shader do exactly?

[djlane]

folical your right about not needing to unlock the lume glare, i`ve loaded up a scene up that uses it and I can access it without modifying lume.mi.

cheers

Dan

[Damm]

@ neods,

i think it's just an other way to produce DOF

[BigRanS123]

Oh man, I don’t know what the capabilities of half of the new shaders do and you go and give me more to learn about...:eek:

I love it, and I hope that some of the new shaders bring some cool materials into light.

Thanks

BigRanS..:thumbsup:

[JeffPatton]

I suppose I should have made the DOF lens shader render a bit easier to see like this:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/dof-lens.jpg

I will post a scene shortly using all of these "new" shaders to see if they work for you guys without having to edit your base.mi file.

[JeffPatton]

Here's what the sampled scene looks like when I render it (this is straight from 3ds max, no post)
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/new-mats.jpg

The three spheres on the top use "volume" (was this one already listed or not? I can't remember). I started bright (blue), the dimmed it gradually in red and more in yellow. That way you can see what I adjusted to make them brighter or darker.

I have the lens DOF shader turned off so you could see the materials better. To use it, go to your camera shaders (under renderer tab) and enable it.

Materials that you should find in this scene:

Illum Cook Torr (strange green specular on this one)
Illum Hair (I have no idea how or why on this one)
Illum Lambert
Volume Base Blue
Light map (not sure about how this one works yet)
Lens DOF
Illum Phong
Wet/Dry (I couldn't remember if this one was new or not)
Volume Base Red
Illum Ward
Illum Blinn
Illum Ward Deriv
Volume Base yellow

Thats it for now. Hopefully this will work without others having to edit the .mi files. If they do work, use these at your own risk, but so far, I've had no problems with them (other than figuring out what they do and why)

Heres the file:Download File (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/new-mats.zip)

Also, here's a link that may help explain some of them:
http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/URZ/hardware/parallel/local/xsi/XSI_html/files/mental_ray/shaders/shd-Contents.html

[siliconbauhaus]

cheers for all the hard work folical9...much appreciated :beer:

[BigRanS123]

The file works for me, and I got the DOF shader to work also..

Good work, and I hope to try some of this stuff out soon.

[DDS]

hey this thread is very interesting. I think I'll add myself to the investigation "understanding of mental ray"...

but...my max crashes with every mr map I add..., i will not do much thing with this...

bye!:D

[Damm]

yeah really cool work F9 ;)...

mm i'm having some props too, the lume shaders crash my max. even tho i've deleted the hidden stuff.. really strange. And what's even stranger is that i can render images with them but i can't edit them, that's when Max crash...

gonna check out the new mats now :)..

Edit: looked at the shader.. altho i couldn't experiment with none of them that use a lume shader :/

same thing as before

[treed]

Well when I open the file I get some missing dlls.


Scripted Plugin Class: Specular Bloom



I can hit open still and it renders out just fine.

[JeffPatton]

Ooops, I forgot to take that out. It's the specular bloom script that Rizob was talking about on page 12 of the thread. Yeah, it should still render ok.

I'm not sure why some are experiencing problems and some are not. Very strange indeed. :shrug:

I do know those .mi files & mental ray are VERY sensitive to even the slightest changes. I wonder if it's legal for me to post my .mi files? Or if that would even help any problems?

[DDS]

wow, i know why the lume shaders didn't work...the lume.mi...

maybe i didn't edit the lume.mi correctly

i can send it by email if somebody wants...my server doesn't allow direct downloading (it's free)

let's rock!!!:D

[ODIN_6]

I am really loving this thread...

I know nothing about mi files or how to edit them . I do get some missing dll's and dlz for dirt map and other things.. I have mostly been playing with and changing settings on the files all of yall have posted.. after I rematerial my bike so it does not need sim max , I will run some test using all this wonderfull help:beer:

Keep up the good work guys :thumbsup:

[scroll-lock]

ok, why i can`t make the neon shader to illuminate the other objects in the scene ? May be it`s something simple.
and what exactly the Extinction, min.step.level and max.step.level do?

[Damm]

look at page four and five,

a glow lume shader and final gathering :)... i think

[scroll-lock]

ahm. yes - thank you. I figured out what my problem was about the neon light.
But my other question about the extinction and the other parameters - i read that physics.pdf file a while ago, too. I know what extinction is for, i know that it all depends on my object, distance from light , etc. but how can i figure out what value to enter ? Because now, what i`m trying is randomly enter some numbers.. that`s stupid you know.

[JeffPatton]

Here's a little better explanation of the parti_volume shader with sample r1 & r2 settings.

http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/URZ/hardware/parallel/local/xsi/XSI_html/files/mental_ray/shaders/shd-2_5Participating_Media.html

[Damm]

ah yes :( sry... haven't experimented with it yet so i can't help you

[Swifty]

nice render, you really pulled off the glassy effect with the first large blue geometry
you could make some nice props with your process
keep it up

[JeffPatton]

Ummmmm, ok I feel like a total boob right now. A kind soul (Drew), over at the Discreet board just pointed out to me that the entire freakin' mental ray manual IS included with Max.

Go to help > additional help > mental ray user manual, or lume tools help, or standard mental ray shaders library...

Gosh, and ALL the time I've wasted searching the net for this info, and it was right under my nose the whole time.:cry:

[BigRanS123]

Wow, thanks for that.. That take all the fun out of tring to see what everything does.. :bounce:

Now that I know I can look up some help on some of the stuff that I dont know, I will get to work on some differents shaders soon.

[da_rock21]

wow, i just found it all too. its good to know that now. but i can imagine it is very upsetting for you and all the time you have waisted. i do hope this thread will continue to grow with poeple still contributing tests of what they have done and made. thanks for the tip folical

[deetee]

I dont see it as time wasted at all - Think how much you've learned from all the time fiddling with it - And now - Think of the utterly cool stuff we can create :D

[cris castro]

:surprised

[deetee]

If anyone dont have any place to upload their MentalRay MAX files, jpeg images, animations etc - I've just installed a file uploader here :

MentalRay Uploader (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php)

Wich you all can use for more easy sharing of files.. e.g. - Upload a .max file and a .jpg file of the same name, so they display underneath eachother, an you can view the image and download the max if interrested. Or drop a .nfo .txt of the same name also. Hope this is interresting for you..

[treed]

folical9, yeah but the manual is still written poorly. You need to right one so everyone can understand it. I'm sure it would be the best MR docs out there then.

[scroll-lock]

folical9 , believe me - i read the manual long time ago.. it says some things, but not all the things i want to know. I have learned more from this thread than from the manual. And i still keep searching for the answers ... :(

[treed]

Yup, this thread is sure a lifesaver. Whenever I have any MR problems, this will be my first place to go. Thanks again folical9. :)

[JeffPatton]

Yeah, I didn't mean this thread was a waste of time. Only the time I've spent searching for info. Most of the information I have gathered from the internet can be found in the MR docs that I had access to the entire time.

In the end I guess I've learned more by doing than by copying things from the help files. I too hope this thread keeps growing. Now, atleast others will know of the MR documentation, as I'm sure I'm not the only one who overlooked it.

And thanks for the uploader Deetee, that looks great, very nice of you to provide that.

:thumbsup:

[scroll-lock]

folical9 - is your name Jeff Patton ?

[JeffPatton]

Yup, I hate going by "folical" here...that was an old screen name I used YEARS ago. Now that I'm older it just sounds silly. I would change the screen name here, but I don't want to lose my stats.

[Damm]

why don't you ask one of the mods to change it for you?? if it's possible.

[visualboo]

Only admins can do that.

Jeff, email Leo. He'll hook ya up I'm sure.

[covrigel]

Guys great job :-D

[opus13]

Now that I'm older it just sounds silly

doesnt sound silly to me... the first thing i associated it with is 'f9' or... 'render last' ;)

[scroll-lock]

I guessed so. I am the guy who was asking about the volume photon shader parameters in the Discreet forum. Marin Petrov. I`m trying to make a scene with glass figures and GI, caustics , etc. Different kind of glass.. but i`m trying to make very bright caustics cast by a sss glass - something like your glass, but i`m pissed off by the render time needed. If you want to make it photoreal.. you must make a 1000000 photons minimum, and then the render time goes far way up!

ah, and something else - you can achieve the same sss glass effect without turning on the caustics. BUT - the object doesn`t cast shadows then - may be because the photons are transmitted directly trough the volume.. i don`t know.

[da_rock21]

Hey jefF9, i too didnt meen that this thread was a waist of time at all. i was just saying that all the time that you spent looking for discriptions and things that the manual would have was waisted. but the manual does not even scratch the surface on this thread. this thread and the manual should be used together to help the MR nubbies like me understand what you guys are doing and how benificial it is to guys like me:bowdown:

[JeffPatton]

Hi Marin, good to see you around here too. I agree about the caustic render times...Thats why I don't tinker much with caustics any longer. But, I think I still have lot's to learn about optimizing things in MR. Hopefully theres a way to optimize the caustics (and stay realistic)

[ToddD]

Jeff, any tips for windshield glass, I've been getting nowhere. Here's what I have tried, standard raytrace glass mat, seems a bit dark, even though I am using clearglass mat. Tried reversing the falloff, changing the falloff type, no good. I tried glass lume, rendered out as a solid material straight from the menu. I haven't had this problem before scanline, or brazil 4.53 when using max5, just wondering if there are any issues with MR I had seen a maya thread where they mentioned photons not passing through a glass mat. I am testing with a windshield type shape, with a shell modifier, so there are polies facing in both directions, is that influencing my glass mats rendering output? Anyway, are there any settings I need to change, or functions I need to enable(photons?) to get an elegant glass with just the right balance of reflection, and transparency? Thanks for any help.

Todd

Sorry if this has been covered, it's possible I missed it.:beer:

[bobg]

I took Folical9's advice (thanks) and managed to get the neon to work recently based on previous postings with this thread. I used the CGTalk-MR.mat library and my initial problem was that I hadn't been using Final Gather. Now that I got it to work, I have a finessing question:

Without going throught the process of creating alpha mattes and re-compositing, is there a way that I can increae the light emitting from the surface without blowing out the emitting surface itself. I Tried a simple example of a torus knot on a flat surface. One example with the settings of Brighness in the Glow (Lume) setting in Lumiosity are 2 for the other image with brightness at 8. There are no other light sources in the scene. Both shine light on the scene 'floor' but very little. The briteness of 8 shows more but not a suffiecint amount yet the neon surface starts to blowout. I tried attaching images, but no matter how small it was (20K), I got a error saying that the attachment was too big.

I just want to use the natural 'neon light' effect emitted on surrounding materials/objects without the neon tube becoming oversaturated and blown out.

Has anyone dealt with this?

Bobg

[Notum]

Does anyone know if there's a scratched/worn edges shader for mental ray?

Kind of like the dirt shader but for edges instead of folds and such...

Any ideas on that?

[cris castro]

sorry have a little question:
whats the only mr shader that can not be omitted?
thanxs

[DDS]

I think that the skin shader in the Cgtalk-mr.mat, is freaky awesome, and fast. Let's see how it works now with real reflections!

MR rules :buttrock:

[JeffPatton]

Tbonz, I will see what I can come up with (if anything) on a windshield glass material. I too have heard about the photon issues but havent done any testing yet to verify.

Bobg, as you've said, if you increase the glow, it will eventually make the object too bright. Two things come to mind for a solution. First, leave the settings lower and just use an omni light for the surrounding light. Second, increase the glow amount then try to correct the overbright parts with exposure control.

There are probably other ways, but these are just my thoughts.

Jeff

[ToddD]

On the first page of this thread:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64205&highlight=glass+material+mental+ray


Someone posted a maya mat tree showing their glass mat(Jozvex-Thanks) I tried to simulate this with max with a decent result. So here are the settings if anyone wants to play around with it.
Standard material
Phong
ambient/diffuse value RGB 79,79,79
SpecLevel 200
Glossiness 95
Extended Parameters IOR 1.1
Reflection-Falloff-fresnel
Fresnel+black in top slot
White in bottom slot with raytrace reflection map in the slot
Override mat IOR value of 2.0

EDIT: Sorry I forgot to post it earlier, Opacity is set at 2

Thats it, I got it on right the first try, was pretty straight forward thanks to the maya post! I'm sure it could use some tweeking, so feel free, and thanks to Jeff for all of his work, even when the trials go smoothly I'm sure it takes a bit of time----so thanks!


Todd

[TheHenk]

I really like this thread alot!

I thought Mental Ray behaved really strange when I first got Max 6. But this thread has helped my understanding it! At first I couldn´t wait for the new version of Brazil to come for 6, but now I stick to trying with Mental Ray. And that´s all thanks to you guys!

Anyway, I´m having trouble understanding the glare shader. It has so few options but yet I don´t get any good results. I try to recreate something like folical9´s "cgarchitect scene" but with another building. I guess I could just use the scene and exchange the model, but that wouldn´t teach me anything I think so it´s not an option.

Could you please try to explain how you use the shader? I would really apreciate it...

...Maybe it´s just me not thinking straight...

Thanks!
/TheHenk

[JeffPatton]

Hi TheHenk, I'm glad this thread has helped. About the glare shader, there's a pretty good explanation of it in the lume tools help file. If you go to help>additional help>lume tools help.

Now, with that being said, there's one thing that doesn't quite work right for me. The quality setting. I read somewhere that a setting of two should work fine for most scenes. However, I don't see any effect at all when quality is set to two or lower.

I set quality to 3 and it works fine. Just takes a bit longer to render.

- Jeff

[JeffPatton]

If any of you are subscribed to the mental ray mailer, you already know this, others may not.

A question was asked about how to make a basic shader for mental ray in 3dsmax6

The response was to go to: http://sparks.discreet.com/downloads/
and search for: Mental Ray

There's a very informative document that explains the .mi files and how to create them. You do need to signup before you can download. But no worries, it's free.

[da_rock21]

thanks folical. i needed that doc. and i also needed to be on that mailing list.

i must have more knowledge..... give it to me.:deal: :drool: :deal:

[JeffPatton]

I played around with different glass settings for windshields. This is what I've come up with. I used the lume glass in a mental ray material with a gradient for the diffuse of the glass (to recreate the shaded part of the glass at the top).

Anywho, here's the results. One indoor render, one outdoor render.

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/windshield1.jpg
and
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/windshield2.jpg

[treed]

ooo, thanks a lot folical for the info. Now i'll recieve good info about MR. :)

[treed]

I'm guessing that the second pic has an HDRI map in it?

[Damm]

looking good F :)..

[JeffPatton]

"I'm guessing that the second pic has an HDRI map in it?"

Not a HDRI, just a spherical jpg.

and btw.

"When you come into work on monday does anyone ever say to you sounds like somones got the case of the mondays"

Naw......hell no....I believe you'd get your ass kicked.

lol.

[jucarojin]

I've been lurking at this thread for quite sometime now and its been very helpful, especially that discreet's MR documentation still has much room for improvement.

I've read about layering displacement shaders in a shader list in order to control the direction of the displacement vector. Has anyone of you here tried that? It seems the test i've made has been futile.

[BigRanS123]

Its far easier than that, you just place a map in the direction map spot. It has work for me all the times that I have tried it.

I will post a file when I get the time.

[DerekZ3D]

can u give more in depth detail on unlocking them shaders. and the sss max file i get from yall gives me an mentalray.dlz missing dll error it dont render?

[JeffPatton]

DerekZ3D,
Did you download the subscatter shader from lightengine before trying the SSS scene? If not, there's a link on page 9. It has to be installed first before the SSS shader will work.

On page 12, Pendzel has a screenshot showing editing the lume.mi file. Basically, you just open lume.mi in notepad or the text editor of your choice. Then remove all instances of the word "hidden". That's pretty much it. Just make sure to backup your mental ray folder before doing any editing (just incase).

Also, you don't really need to edit the lume.mi file if you've downloaded the scenes & materials in this thread. You will find the glare shader used in some of the scenes. Your unedited version will still find the glare shader and work just fine.

Next update of the CGtalk.mat file I will include the glare shader, etc.

[DerekZ3D]

it tell you how to install it for maya , how to do it for 3dsmax6?

[DerekZ3D]

sorry for the post before i got it.
but unlocking shaders i keep getting MR errors can u put up a text doc of yours for me?

[ODIN_6]

hey everyone ,,,

I do not know if everyone knows all of this but , I figured I'd post it anyway.. plus I found places to get free HDRI's


http://www.3dkingdom.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=431

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76542

http://www.3dkingdom.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=337&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0&POSTNUKESID=f44a717fbf3972b74cb5aa5041f66d21

http://www.highpoly3d.com/writer/tutorials/hdri/hdri.htm

http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/downloads/max/hdri/_contents/docs/html/hdri_i.htm


free images
http://hdri.3dweave.com/library/





http://www.hdrimaps.com/

http://www.debevec.org/FiatLux/hdrview/

http://www.realtexture.com/hdri1.html

http://www.debevec.org/Research/HDR/

http://www.trinisica.com/sub_learn_typedissue.asp?lv=3&mode=1&issue=002

http://www.geocities.com/night_sky_vfx/IBL.html

program to edit and create HDRI s

http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/

[treed]

Hey, thanks for all those links ODIN_6. :applause:

[JeffPatton]

Well, I wasn't happy with my original car paint material so I've spent a couple of hours (no....seriously) making some new and improved ones.

And eventhough it's not an actual mental ray material, I'm going to add them in the MR shader library since thats what I've created & rendered them with.

Speaking of renders, here's a few of the colors I have whipped up thus far:

Dark Red
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/red.jpg

Dark Green
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/green.jpg

Copperhead & Mediterranian blue
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/blue-cpr.jpg

I also have black and a silver, but didn't want to overload the thread with renders. I will update the .mat file sometime over the weekend.

[treed]

Those are looking pretty spiffy folical. :)

[DerekZ3D]

hey folical9
can u help me makin a simple reflective metal and a glass material to use with caustics. for metal i use a mental ray materials with metal<lume> in surface and photo basic in photon
and glass for surface i use glass <lume> and transmzt photon in photon they work pretty good but the glass dont do refraction causrtics and for both they give lots of MR errors . ill like to make my own rather than use the default ones.

[geoMan]

i switched to max 6 only for mental ray.i am a shader freak and i often work on threedy forums.....these lovely renders have made me to jump from the scanline to mental ray....

now....i wanna learn all this...
i wanna start with sub surface scattering...! is anyone here kind enough to tell me what it is? if u have other things to tell....do tell me!

[JeffPatton]

DerekZ3D, can you post a picture of what your trying to achieve? Sounds like your using the right materials already.

Geoman, as far as SSS goes, here's a great page of info about it:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/translucency/translucency.htm

Jeff

[DerekZ3D]

this is the error i get sometimes.
http://68.105.38.187:1024/Nup/error.jpg

[em3]

folical9, first let me say thank you for all the research you and alot of others have done here, very selfless! :thumbsup:

How long did those renders of the cars take? I am currently trying to render my copter here (http://www.digital-minds.net/forums/images/show/copternurb.jpg) in MR. Its "only" 220k polys and it literally takes 24+ hours to render no matter the resolution. I am doing something wrong for sure but I dont know what it is. Alll the meshes are set to receive caustics and I have selected the caustic option in the MR render lighting tab. My light is a standard target spot and skylight. I am using one of your plastic MR materials included in the CGmat library :thumbsup: . I am rendering on a AMD 2600 - 512 dual channel RAM - I guess my question is, could you post some .jpgs of a standard setup scene for MR so I can eliminate some variables? I rendered your glass scene in roughly 15 minutes. Thanks again!!

[JeffPatton]

em3, I like that render alot! I'm pretty sure we can decrease that render time though.

Are you using both GI & final gather or just final gather?

On my car renders above, they rendered in about 2 minutes each. The setup is a daylight system with skylight and only final gather.

Final gather samples = 200

Global light properties:
Energy = 50000
Decay = 2.0 (I sometimes change this to 1.8 or so to make things brighter)
caustic photons = 0
GI Photons = 15000

I always start out low on the final gather amount and work up to clear the artifacts. A high number on the final gather samples will absolutely kill your render times.

Hope that helps a bit.

Edit: Also, what are your sample settings for the anti-alias? I normally use 1 minimum and 4 maximum for test renders and sometimes thats even good enough for final renders. But most of the time I use 1 & 16 on my final renders. Higher numbers here will increase render times as well.

[Breinmeester]

Thanks for those settings, Folical9! I've been following this thread an fiddling about with the matlib trying to grasp this rather daunting Mental Ray.
When I rendered the red car paint material on a sphere in an enviroment (used your patch o'grass) the reflections took on so much colours that the material looked quite fake. I take it you used HDRI in those car renders?? Have tried moddeling an enviroment to see how that looks or shouldn't that make a difference?

Also: I really like your daylight rig. I was wondering what was the best way to rig a night scene. I have to render a car at night soon. Anybody any ideas?

[JeffPatton]

Hi Breinmeester

I didn't get a chance to update the .mat file with the new car paints. I spent alot of time on the new paints mainly due to the reflections as you mentioned. I think I have these set about right. I will slap a scene together and update the .mat file today with the new car paints.

I've never had to make a night scene! I will try to make one and see what happens.

[em3]

thanks a million folical9, I will post a render as soon as I get a chance - snow has kept me from my house/computer for the past couplea days.

[Breinmeester]

Wow, that's great Folical9, thanks! How did you work those reflections? Did you get them to desaturate somehow?

[treed]

Hey folical, I need help with getting a good water shader. I'm having water pour into a glass which is glu3d particles and i'm getting wierd brownish looks to the water. I applied a glass_physics phen shader to it, and the only problem is the refractions. Ohh yeah i also have an HDRI for the environment, and for the glass I'm just using the glass_physics phen again. If you could point me out in the right direction that would be great. Heres the links. :) One more thing, I tried getting caustics to work but they don't seem to want to turn on. I've done what i think should be correct. :)

http://lando.freewebpage.org/glu3d_pouring4.jpg

http://lando.freewebpage.org/glu3d_pouring5.jpg


http://lando.freewebpage.org/glu3d_pouring7.jpg

[dprgb]

Quick question to all out there (and a big thanks before starting) -

Is there an issue with the translucency shader? I've been testing it out tonite, and while it makes the object look really great many of the buckets either do not render or render darker than the rest.

It was working for a while, then stopped working... any ideas, or is this what we get to live with until discreet gets their act in gear?

Thanks...

[geoMan]

thanks folical9....

by the way....i am sorry for disturbing again.......
i installed max 6 and i am now experimenting with the glass physics phenomenal.....i am using a radience map for the evironment.....i want to render my sphere with caustics...


like....i have a sphere and a plane....one mr area light omni......glass physx_phen map for the sphere....renders good.....but when i turn on caustics from the rendering>indirect illumination rollout....and render....it says there arent any caustic generators....

i download max6 mental ray video file and checked out...but no solution to my prob yet...

can u help me...what can be the possible cause...

moreover....

it is in the user reference guide that increasing the no. of photons gives a good effect...

can u tell me whats this all about...the photon anbd caustics and stuff... i am desperate to know:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :wip:

[matlock]

Right-click your sphere and under the mental ray tab check "Generate Caustics".

[geoMan]

i did that.....no use! it still says the scene has no caustic generator!:cry:

[BigRanS123]

treed

Can you post the file that you are using in the p-flow thread? I would love to know more about the glue3d stuff.

Have you tried to use the ocean shader?

[geoMan]

i got it....it doesnt displays that message again...
but, it gives some photon emission and storage stuff error...and the stuff never does right! no rendering

[RazzMataz]

Hey, Geo man.
I was trying to render caustics in a simple scene myself, and it was giving me the same errors as well. In my case, the material I was using on my sphere had no specular value. Thus there were no caustics being generated. Try giving it a map in the specular slot or just give it specular value with the curves at the top of the material tree.
Hope this helps.

[scroll-lock]

geoMan , i think your problem is that the photons emitted don`t hit any surface.. for example, try to add huge plane below your objects.

[treed]

BigRanS123, Do you want me to post the max file in the pflow thread? I haven't tried out the ocean shader yet, but I really don't know how to use it.

[BigRanS123]

Yes, I want to look at how you set up your file, and I will see if I can get a shader that looks like good water.

Thanks

[treed]

The only problem is that I was going to use that file for my demo reel, and i don't want anyone to take my idea, or does this matter at all?

[DerekZ3D]

Does MR have a mulitplier in materials to up the gi or caustics multiplier like FR1 has?

[geoMan]

- i am using a glass physics phenomenal...i cant have a specular value.

- the plane i am using is also 10000x10000 in size, with recieve caustics checked on.

- IOR for glass phen is 2.451!

still no work..........are there any more possibilities!:hmm: :blush: :cry:

[DDS]

hi people, just a test changin' a bit the skin shader that comes with the material library that is in this thread. Model&texture by me.

I've used hdri. The final gather settings are like folical9 told in the "mr hdri thread" (samples 500, energy 5000, caustic ph 0, gi ph 5000).

render time: 1 minute.

If somebody likes it, maybe you'll want to ask me the settings for the skin shader that I changed, anything to help, see ya!
the image (http://membres.lycos.fr/dreamdesigner/she/noiatex2hdri.jpg)

Any suggestions of mental ray settings are welcome!:D

[da_rock21]

great. thats the first time i have actually seen the skin shader used as skin. sometimes its hard to judge how good somthing will be if its only shown on a sphere. but it looks good.

only crit. it seems to be only the color of skin. skin has more texture to it. see about adding a little bit of a bump to the mat.

other than that, keep it comming

[geoMan]

its good....try this with a scene full of some lights......maybe then we'll come to see the real work of the shader:bounce:

[ODIN_6]

DDS,, I would like to see your settings ,,,
also I have model I am testuring and using composite material on it ,, exactly were would I put it???

[geoMan]

i finally got the caustics effect.....i just thought that the surface lso has some diffuse reflection so why not try a raytrace for the reflection on the plane.......... and, when i rendered....the caustics worked fine.....

what can be the reason? here's what i have done till now....and i am happy with it..:bounce: :applause:

[JeffPatton]

Nice, what type of light are you using?

[geoMan]

i am using an MR Area omni light............it gives a nice shader;)

by the way....thanks a lot folical9.....its only becoz of u and this thread that i can do anything in mental ray:bounce:

[JeffPatton]

No thanks necesary man. This is a great community based on sharing info and ideas. I'm just glad to be a part of it and learn from it like everyone else.

Now, I've had problems with using the mr lights and caustics. However, it's probably just me doing something wrong. Maybe give a regular spotlight a try and see what happens.

I'm working on a test caustic scene now too. If I get something decent, I will post the settings.

[geoMan]

lemme test it with a spot light....lets see.....

and i am curious about ur test.....lemme see it!:beer:

[geoMan]

here's the spotlight test......i 've turned on final gather but ther seems to be no use....no HDRI color effect....why's that?

[DDS]

well, I deleted the standard material on the first Shellac, and put there my skin material, with a multilayer shader.

then, in the shellac inside the first shellac (the one composite with the mental ray material), I put the color blend parameter to 0, because I didn't like the effect It was giving to me...

The subsurface scattering doesn't seem to work :hmm:, but I like the whole effect.

Please click the links below, and if you can, help me in anything of the shader:
body (http://membres.lycos.fr/dreamdesigner/she/noiatex4b.jpg)
Face (http://membres.lycos.fr/dreamdesigner/she/noiatex4c.jpg)

thanks:D

[geoMan]

i like the way u have used the shellac for this....i am curious about the settings:bounce:

[BigRanS123]

geoMan

do you have a HDRI in your env. slot? the light should not effect the reflections that are coming off the surface.

Be sure to set your HDRI to spherical

[DDS]

geoman, the settings are in the skin shader of the materials library of the thread :D

btw...does anybody know how to make blurry reflections without the default defocus of the max default raytrace? with a mental ray shader if it's possible? thanks in advance :bounce:

[BigRanS123]

If you use a Metal(lume) you can turn on blur reflections and change all the samples and spread.

[Entangle]

I'd removed the hiddens from the lume.mi, and many of the things don't work. Like the other guy, they render, but do not allow you to edit the settings.

Any fixes etc?

[treed]

Hey folical, i'm trying to create a crystal sharped edged object, and i tried the glass-sss shaders and they turned black. What am I doing wrong here?

[JeffPatton]

Hey treed....Are you trying to get the blue SSS effect with that shader, or just a glass? For the blue effect turn on caustics. If you render it without caustics it might render out black until you remove the parti-volume shaders. Then it would render clear.

Here's a test scene I have been tinkering with in what little spare time I have had lately:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/cgtalk.jpg

And the scene:
Download Scene (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/caustic-test.zip)

Hope that helps a little.

[DerekZ3D]

i know how to do a reflection caustic and refraction caustic but dont the reflection one need more energy?
how would i do this with both in scene with out puttin alot of energy on the glass one?
dont they have a multiplier somewhere?

[JeffPatton]

Derek, try this:

In the scene I have posted above, replace the glass material with an architectural glass material (glass-clear). Don't change any settings. Render the scene. You will notice the reflective & refractive caustics are equal.

Then change the transparnacy of the architectural glass material to 70% (down from the default 100%) and render. The reflective caustic is the same (maybe a bit brighter), however the refractive caustics behind the glass is darker.

As far as a global setting for reflective/refractive caustics. Possibly the trace depth settings are the answer? Try reducing those and see what happens.

[stefan]

Hello
U all are doing great job and I would like to thanx to all witch are triing to share their informations.
I would like to ask one question:
Is there any way how to use maya_ray displace shader for mental ray under 3DMax?
Ray displace .......... http://www.drone.org/

Thanx and sorry for my english.

[BigRanS123]

Hey folical9:

How can we get the light comming through the CG to be the color of the glass? Would you have to fake it, or can MR take care of it on its own?

[deetee]

BigRanS: Just enable Final Gather, and it will use the material of the objects, tho it highens the rendertime 2-300% :) just did a 1600x1200 test of it, and it looked sweet :)

Nice work fol :D

btw, added the caustic to the MRUploader

http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php?act=view&file=Y2d0YWxrLWNhdXN0aWMuanBn

[JeffPatton]

I knew I forgot something...I was going to post that file on your file uploader...DOH. Thanks for putting it there man.

Also, I've found it easier to get good results with caustics if I just slap an architectural glass material on the object. It will color the caustics WITHOUT final gather on so render times stay low.

Just use the clear glass architectural material and change the color to red or whatever floats your boat and boom colored caustics.

stefan, that's an interesting site. I've been reading on the mental ray mailing list about 3d displacement maps. Daniel Levesque posted a sample file. I just put it on deetee's uploader here:

3d-displacement example (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php?act=view&file=M2RfZGlzcGxhY2VtZW50LnppcA==)

I would think you could unwrap the model and paint a bump map and try using that for displacement mapping?

Here are the notes that Mr. Levesque posted with that file:

"Here is a small sample (3ds max 6 file) that shows 3d displacement creating something that looks like a wave. The textures should be tweaked a bit more to make it look like what you want.
Create a flower using displacement should be very very difficult. It’s a cool thing to show at a demo, but probably not very practical for production. It’s probably easier and more efficient to create the actual geometry.
· AFAIK a bump map is a greyscale map whose derivative is
· used to perturb the surface normal.

A bump map is actually a color map. The colors are mapped to a XYZ perturbation vector. If the map were grayscale, the bumps would all go in the same direction - only the amplitude would change.
· Now a 3D Displacement Map (apparently) can do more: It can extrude the
· surface in all 3 directions of 3D space, and it can do this
· “progressively”, basically changing the direction of the extrusion while
· it extrudes.

Actually, I think a progressive approach would be flawed since the displacement shader doesn’t know when the displacement algorithm will stop subdividing. Instead, the 3d displacement map could simply map every point of the original surface to a new point in space, through these steps:
· determine the vector that separates the original surface point from where it wants to go (by querying the RGB value from the map). A HDR or procedural map would be best here.
· normalize this vector and store it as state->normal
· return the length of the vector as the displacement amount.
· How is the direction of
· the displacement along the extrusion defined? Are the displacement
· direction map colors some sort of Roll-Pitch-Yaw? If so, how do they
· relate to the UV mapping coordinates?

Our own 3D Displacement shader treats the direction map much like a bump map. It uses the RGB values as a XYZ vector. The XYZ vector is added to state->normal, the result is normalized and then used as the new normal.
Regards,
daniel"

[cris castro]

hey folical could you post for download the "glowing light tubes" (the one you did with a brazil file reference)scene?
cheers

[JeffPatton]

Download Light tubes scene (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php?act=view&file=TGlnaHQtdHViZXMuemlw)

[treed]

Hey folical, thanks for that scene. Well I just tested that same glass-1 shader in my own scene and this is what I'm getting. I don't think it likes sharp edged objects that much.


http://lando.freewebpage.org/mrglass.jpg

[geoMan]

nice test folical9....my browser is hjaving problem downloading the scene...can u post a mirror...or the settings of the scene and the shader of course!:bounce:

[JeffPatton]

Hey GeoMan, you can find that file and others on deetee's mental ray uploader (thanks again deetee!)

http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php

[treed]

Ok I have another problem. MR keeps giving me these wierd photon errors and i don't know why.

http://lando.freewebpage.org/problem.jpg

[JeffPatton]

http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/store/SSS-glass2.jpg

I've posted this scene over at the mental ray uploader. If you put a ground plane under the statue....the SSS-glass material goes crazy. I'm thinking we can turn off internal reflections and it may solve this...I haven't tried it yet though...

Go here it's called sss-glass2.zip (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php)

[JeffPatton]

Hey treed, most of the time when I get those errors, I can eliminate them by putting a Photon Basic (base) shader in the photon slot of the material. Then change the transparancy (in the photon basic material) from 0 (black) to .5 (middle grey).

Give that a try.

[treed]

Well, since my glass i'm using the glass (physics_phen), I can't add the photon basic map there so I added it in the architectural water material under the mental ray connection and under photon. I'll check it out and see if that works. Thanks. :)

[geoMan]

thanks a universe folical9 for this lovely link....:bowdown:

[JeffPatton]

Guys, try these new car paint materials and let me know what you think. They use a facing material so I'm not quite sure if these will work in all lighting situations....

I have the greeble box as a test of the final gather in this scene. I think this lighting setup comes close to a brazil render look?

Here's the render:
http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/store/new-paint.jpg

Get the file here:
Download scene (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/store/new-paint.zip)

[treed]

ooo, very nice. :beer:

[cris castro]

folical : the sss-glass2.zip file it ask me for a missing dll :"mr_subScatter" that must be the compile mr shader and new car paint file ask for a hdr file that not included,could we have those files,anyway nice renders.

[JeffPatton]

Cris, you need to download the mr-subscatter shader from lightengine3d.com. On the HDRI, just replace that hdr with any outdoor hdr you already have. If you don't have any, check out page 25 here and grab some from the listed links that Odin-6 provided.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104578&perpage=15&pagenumber=25

:thumbsup:

[ToddD]

They use a facing material so I'm not quite sure if these will work in all lighting situations....

Folical, Just wondering what type of problems might be expected? I did a test render using my current WIP, the material was much better as far as reflections IMO, the old mat was a bit too reflective, this 1 is more subtle. I did notice that the color(red paint) seemed quite a bit darker (unnaturally so) as it was further from the camera-- I have to play with the lighting to see if that is the culprit.
The old paint featured in my WIP thread is based on a shellac material from Danielbuck.net for standard max scanline, it came across too reflective when subjected to hdr in the renders posted. I am going to play with your material, it seems promising.

[JeffPatton]

Kickass WIP Tbonz...Gotta love anything that needs wheelie bars!

The gradient ramp in the diffuse channel of the car paint material uses a "normal" map. Therefore, the normals of the object that face the camera will be the brighter color. Now that's ok as long as the main light source is behind the camera facing towards the object. I'm not sure how it will look if the main light source is behind the object facing the camera. It may be ok, I haven't had time to test it yet.

Also, if you need this new material to be more reflective, increase the falloff amount in the reflection slot....I'm sure you know that already Tbonz, but other's may not.

[ToddD]

Thanks Folical, I haven't posted up the version with this new mat yet, but I will soon. Makes sense, I figured that the gradient is what affected the color, so I tried replacing it with a shadow/light falloff in the diffuse slot, not a bad result, but I had more transmitance of color from the paint to the ground. Thanks for sahring this stuff Jeff, it has had a great impact on my own experimentation!:beer:

[Masterpiece]

Hi everyone Im very new to max 6 and CG in general
I just bought max 6 in january and Im now familiar with most of the interface and creating primitives and lighting and stuff
Im like a Veteran n00b or something I have created a few scenes out of primitives that look decent.

I just wanna say that this thread has helped me along way in the materials, MR, and texturing phase and thanx F9 and to everyone who contributes and or give valuable info in this thread.

I am now familiar with the material editor and have created some nice looking materials and I want to know how do I save them as a matfile for uploading I will post shots of the materials applied to some prims so you guys can see later on
Im still going through this long thread im onb page 22

[Masterpiece]

ME again

F9 that text you did on page 28 i believe, Man ive been trying to get that text affect from day one when i first installed max

[JeffPatton]

Hi & welcome Masterpiece. I'm glad that text scene helped out.

Regarding creating a custom material library, I normally just copy and rename an existing .mat file, then delete the shaders that are in that .mat file and add my custom shaders.

If I need to be more detailed than that, just let me know.

Jeff

[JeffPatton]

Tbonz,

Yeah, I originally tried the shadow/light falloff too. I wasn't happy with the results when compared to the gradient with normal mapping. But again, I didn't spend a lot of time testing the materials with different lighting setups.

I am looking forward to your updated dragster rendering. The metal texture & details on the wheelie bars looks amazing.

[Masterpiece]

I figured it out. when your in the get material box, check the material editor up under the library and then go to save as at the bottom and it will save all the materials currently in the material editor.

[ToddD]

Hi Folical, here is a link to the version with your new paint material you can see the color change (except the vents forgot to change the paint ;) I love the richness of the color as opposed to the paint on my previous version. It seems to have more range, and more subtle reflectivity, I wish I could get the effect of the rear fender throughout the whole vehicle. If it wasn't for the drastic color change this would be quite a material. It was lit with an HDR, and 1 spot for a little backlight. I will experiment a bit, unforutnately my pc is SLOW so it may not be very productive. Sorry to distract the thread, let's get back to the subject at hand!:beer:

Here's the link:
http://zneekinround.250free.com/newpaintRR-01b.jpg

[treed]

Ohh sweet. Yeah that car paint shader really does look good on it.

[JeffPatton]

I think that paint looks better on your model Tbonz. It looks deeper & richer like you said. :thumbsup:

[joske]

Originally posted by folical9


I've posted this scene over at the mental ray uploader. If you put a ground plane under the statue....the SSS-glass material goes crazy. I'm thinking we can turn off internal reflections and it may solve this...I haven't tried it yet though...

Go here it's called sss-glass2.zip (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php)

hey folical
great job on the car paints man!
looking almost as good as janet jackons right b£*p in the superbowl last night

:applause: :drool:

I gave your sss scene another try however :
i still have the same probs with this scene man
the statue's allways broken up in lines and washed out in white...
Any idea by now why this might be?
Are you sure this is the exact scene setup u use for the render above? (lights on/off , same shader,...)
also adding a plane doesn't give me any difference, ...same result

I'm not doing anything custom with my max6, so if there is something different I assume it's on your pc...

someone else tried this?

cheers dude

[DerekZ3D]

i cant find that mr_subScatter file at that site?

[cris castro]

joske : why do you quote an entire image ,why dont you refer to it by its name and if you quote an image why dont you make it a little bit smaller, your using real space and bytes for no real purpose.

[joske]

point taken cris
removed the image...

this long tread makes it sometimes confusing, so posting the entire image seems to me the most clear way, cause there are so many topics going around at the same time...
overhere in Belgium almost everyone has cable, so we don't really remember what it is like to have a slow connection i guess...

:wip:

[JeffPatton]

Joske, check your private messages.

[ToddD]

Hey Folical, I tried something different, I used your new paint material, and my old paint material as components of a blend material, softened the color changing. I still need to play around, but if you are interested I will upload a pic and link it. It's getting closer, I really want a bit more of the quality I see in the paint on this tutorial, A little bit more white falling off to the base color, check out the paint in the Clean pic with just the paint(no mud). Here's the tutorial link:

http://www.rethinkfx.com/tutorials/cooper.htm


Thanks!

[JeffPatton]

Cool idea Tbonz. Please post the image when you get a chance. Don't feel like your off topic for posting that here. It really helps illustrate the paint material on an actual model rather than a ball or something.

Jeff :thumbsup:

[DrainLife]

Someone can tell me how to install dirtmap plz? :shrug:
Because it wont work :blush:
i dnl it at:
http://www.lightengine3d.com/downloads/plugins/subScatter/md_subScatter_shaderPack.zip
unrar in the 3dsmax6/mentalray...
:cry:
help

thx :thumbsup:

[JeffPatton]

Place .mi files in your include folder (3dsmax6>mentalray>include)
Place .dll files in the shaders folder (3dsmax6>mentalray>shaders)

Thats it.

[DrainLife]

HAHAHA... Haha... aaaa....
I forgot to put the dll...
SHAME ON ME :blush:

thx folical9 :thumbsup:
:bowdown:

[ODIN_6]

what about the .ma .mel .slb .slo and the rest of them???

[maxFX]

Hey ppl, i am following this post since its beginning, never to post something though. folica9 , and all the others i would like to thank you for the hard work and the time you spend for this to happen even though it was fun.

I actually made this still using MR maps from this thread
The HDRI map is also in Use. Metal_chrome was used with some custome noise for bumpness ( just increased the size slightly ).

Render times using 4 - 16 Quality and Reflect 5 Refract 5 sum 5 settings was 16 mins on a 3.06GHZ machine ( 1,5gigs ).

Render times using 1/4 - 4 Quality and Reflect 2 Refract 2 sum 2
settings was 3 mins ( ! ).

I am now checking to see what GLOW can do to make metal more well...glowish...any ideas?
I will port more of my models using MR materials, and i am hoping to gather all my materials to a zip and post it here.. Note that the silkish red material was achieved using raytrace controls. ( i finally found a use for the metal max shader )!


http://animation.maxfx.gr/wip/TALISMAN1.jpg
Btw...i just posted this on the gallery section...if you have the time post some crits.http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=120308

[DerekZ3D]

hey folical where to get the mr subscatter install?

[JeffPatton]

I know there's a ton of information in this thread and sometimes it's easier to just ask before reading through it all or doing a search.....however.....

DerekZ3d & ODIN_6, both of your questions can be answered on page 9.
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104578&perpage=15&pagenumber=9

I hope you guys don't take offense to me pointing that out. I'm really only trying to keep from posting the same data over and over again. Which makes this thread longer and even more difficult to browse.

And if I'm stepping out of line by saying that, mod's please let me know. :shrug:

MaxFX, thats a great render man! It's good to see folks using these shaders and making cool renders like that! :thumbsup:

[DerekZ3D]

nm sorry

[ToddD]

Hey Jeff, here's a link to the new blend version of the paint. I might eliminate specularity, not sure if I like the specs on the rear portion. I also changed the HDR to uffizi, the other 1 I was using was getting old-hehe. Is there any way to have specularity affected by hdr (both in intensity, and shape) as opposed to being influence by other lights? I have a few other questions, I wonder if it would be ok to e-mail you as not to hi-jack the thread. Here's the link, and if you would like the material let me know.:beer:

Todd


Link: http://zneekinround.250free.com/RRuff-01B.jpg

[bobg]

This is a new question. I have a nightmare rendering problem to solve and I'm wondering if anyone has already done something like this.

Single light source (sunlight or any suitable substitute.
Simple room with HDRI environement.
Small hollow glass dome. Inside dome is a small turning tetrahedron with metalic mirror like surface.

Light beams hit turning tetrahedron through glass with volume light and reflect off the tetrahedron with volume light while going through the glass dome twice. With casustics for the glass and tetrahedron, can this (or has this) been done? I realize that this is going to be a long slow render, but I'm allowing for that.

In case its not evident, this will be in Max6 MR for an NTSC resolution final. ( I may render for HDTV for archiving sake.)

I hope I've been succinct.

[DerekZ3D]

i got the SSS glass to work and not give me errors. but it renders like this so whats wrong?

[JeffPatton]

I sent you a PM DerekZ3D that hopefully will help.

[treed]

Well I was trying to render this animation last night, and my comp died because my hard drives lots power. :cry: Well anyway before it died It was going at 20 min a frame. Do you know why this is happening. That was doing it at 320x240. At 640x480 it was going freakin 40min a frame!!


EDIT- I think i figures out why it was doing that. I had 500 samples in my caustic and photon samples. I'll give it another try tonight. Cheers. :beer:

[joske]

Originally posted by DerekZ3D
i got the SSS glass to work and not give me errors. but it renders like this so whats wrong?

that's exactly what was wrong when i tried it...
folical and me narrowed it down and we know now what's the cause of this :
it seems that the md-subscatter files you can download aren't exactly the same as the ones folical uses

However i leave it up to him to post the solution or not.
I'm not sure if it's legal to just post these files like that...?

[Rockachew]

Hey guys,


I need some of your expert help. I'm messing around with folical9's "Neaon Blue" shader in a scene and for some reason I cant get it to glow. For example.... I made a tube and it laying just above a piece of black leather material. when I render the scene the tube is a nice neaon blue color but there is no blue light casted on the leather material.

I'm using Max 6 and rendering using MR and final gather.


thanks in advance for shedding any 'light" to my problem.

- Shawn

[JeffPatton]

It should work as long as you have final gather enabled (and you already said you did). Have you tried increasing the glow amount? I think I set those at 2.5 or so. Since your trying to light an already dark object (black leather), then increase that glow amount to 10 or more and see what happens. I'm fairly certain the glow tube will become overbright at that level, so exposure control may be necessary as well.

[JeffPatton]

Mental Ray & final gather HDRI tip:

If you've had problems with shadows making your objects appear to be floating when using HDR's and mental ray, this may help.

You need only to adjust the Max & Min radius of the final gather to fix the bias of the shadows. Have a look at the images below to get a better idea of what I'm talking about. These renders are only lit with a single skylight using a HDR image.

Default settings: Note how the wheels appear to be floating.
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/fg-1.jpg

With radius adjustment:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/fg-2.jpg

This also increased the render time, but I haven't tried to optimize the radius settings.

[em3]

here is a sword wip I am working on. Thanks to folical9 for all his help with this thread. Though intimidating at first, MR is a very powerful renderer.

http://www.planetyoda.com/wip.jpg
http://www.planetyoda.com/closeup.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Lookin' good em3. You may want to try increasing the blur sample number on the metal material? :thumbsup:

[geoMan]

cool sword...

i am trying to do an optimum glass for me...a simple glass.....using 2 spots.....but the shadows are dense....and if i put a falloff masked raytrace for reflection...the object gets somewhat white. I also have specular....i will show my tests soonn...

will ask for help!

i wanna sort out a good refractive and reflective caustic glass!:bounce:

[deetee]

Anyone tried to make an MR eye shader? Or a way to make the Cornea look "wet"? Im trying to make an eye, but cant make it look wet, just a dried ugly look.. hehe

[maxFX]

Can you post some of the eye shader you have so far?
I am really interested on the matter

additionally i believe that you can achieve this
by making a hemisphere with painted eye
and then another duplicate using a glass material to get the opacity?

Please be detailed.

[ToddD]

Jeff, nice find on the min/max radius settings, Thanks for sharing that! I'll be updating my WIP over the weekend with any luck:beer:

[Entangle]

What other settings were you using for that scene folical? My render doesnt seem to be coming out so clean as yours.

[JeffPatton]

Not really any other settings than what I showed. A skylight with hdr map (skylight intensity = 2.0). Maybe it's the hdr map your using? Try different maps to see if you get better results.

Note: One more thing, put an omni light somewhere in the scene and then turn it off. (this disables the default light setup). That way you know the only light your getting is from the skylight/hdri.

[Entangle]

Eh, there wasnt any real improvement. I've tried various maps too.

[JeffPatton]

can you post a render? Maybe we will be able to figure out whats going on.

[Entangle]

This is currently what I am getting with those settings, the model isnt finished either.

http://69.57.155.125/~jalder/new/diablo.jpg

[JeffPatton]

Try changing the final gather minimum radius to .001 and the max radius to .5

The scale of your model may be smaller than the one I used for my settings, thus you would need to make your samples smaller.

edit: Also are you using a blurred hdr for your light or a regular hdr. I always use a smaller blurred version of the HDR for the skylight. I don't know if that would affect the shadow quality or not though.

[Entangle]

Gah! I never even thought about that, I tried it on another scene, seemed to work. I'll render this out now, see if it has worked on that too. Yeah, I also use blurred hdr for the lighting. Thanks folical.

[JeffPatton]

bobg - Man, I hope you have a fast PC or LOTS of time! (hopefully both)...Do you have any images of a similar scene for reference? Sorry for the late reply.

[Ech0]

very nice work guys keep it up

[jim_uk]

this thread is great, but slightly intimidating for a beginner with mental ray :)

I was wondering if someone could help me with a small question i have. I downloaded the caustic test.max file and it's great. However, when i compare the image i get after rendering with the image folical9 posted up, my version looks a little dull and not as sharp. I've changed some of the settings and i've looked in the thread to try and find my answers, but as yet i have had no luck.

I also turned on final gather and was almost blinded by the light :cool:

If anyone could tell me where i'm going wrong i'd be very grateful. Thanks again.

[bobg]

Folical9: No problem for the time lapse.

Here is a quick test render that I did with the volume beams added in using Photoshop. The Glass is the Mental Ray Generic Glass and the tetrahedron is the Max Generic ChromeWhite with a MR Targeted Spot. This should give you a rough idea of what I'm talking about.

I'm already assuming that the render is going to take a long time and a lot of power. I have my home and office PCs (both dual Xeons with XP Pro) to parse out the rendering. My home PC is home-made and actually faster. If I could accomplish this with less than 4 hours a frame, I'd be extatic.

If the image concept is not self explanitory, just ask for more specifics.

To reiterate, however, the issue is: how do I get a volumetric beam of light from a single light source to (1) go through a layer of glass, (2) strike a highly reflective object, (3) acurately beam back out (with any dispersion caused by surface metal blur) (4) beam back through the glass, (5) strike/illuminate the final surface.

My head is telling me that I should probably take the approach of multipass renders and composite it in After Effects, but, since I haven't done this before, there may be an easier way that's eluding me.

[Obaid3DFX]

This is a Great thread

thank you all CGTalk guys specially folical9 Thanks Man for the hard work.

I am a FinalRender guy and I just start to like mental ray...

thanks

[Shigawire]

This has been a very enlightening thread, but I am having trouble with MR's pickyness. I am a big fan of using procedurals (and in the end baking them to bitmaps).
MR does NOT accept the best procedural package around (DarkTree), which I am otherwise quite used to. Nor does it accept Digimation Groundcrew, nor "The Essential Textures."

In each circumstance the errorlog MR comes up with is:
". . . not supported by the translator. Will render black."

This probably won't be fixable until one of the parties make a patch for this.

[edit]
I've found a 3rd party tool to use in order to get Darktree working with MentalRay. It's called TIWDTE, and you can get it from Darksim's website at this url:
http://www.darksim.com/w/TIWmaxMental.zip
[edit]

In addition, MR does not function with Shag:Hair - contrary to what the advertisement of Shag:hair on digimation.com says (the image of Marilyn Monroe - says "rendered with mentalray").

Is there something banal and simple that I've completely missed?

[ClementC]

I just put a blue Dielectric material in surface ( Basic shaders ).
and a Photometric light
http://lopokin.free.fr/gif_images/test_menatal1.jpg

http://lopokin.free.fr/files/GLASS_blue02.rar

thanks folical9


[B]:thumbsup:

Mr_Clems

[JeffPatton]

Kickass! Thanks for contributing Mr_Clems. :thumbsup:

[MarkSnoswell]

Hi,
Anyone have any experience or reccomendations for using normal maps in mr?

Thx

Mark.

PS. This thread had been an excelent resource. This is the sort of information we want ot collect together in a resource/tutorials etc section of the web site in the near future.

PPS. We are using Dirtmap for ambient occlusion along with custom mr shaders we have written for A Sound of Thunder (movie) -- big budget Hollywood feature film being done in 3ds max and rendered with mr.

[JeffPatton]

We are using Dirtmap for ambient occlusion along with custom mr shaders we have written for A Sound of Thunder (movie) -- big budget Hollywood feature film being done in 3ds max and rendered with mr.

It sure would be nice to have some tips/techniques on writing mental ray shaders for 3ds.....:drool:

- Jeff

[da_rock21]

i am rendering a scene for work and am having great trouble trying to achieve real carpet look. i am usung a flat plane and tyring every mr shader, bump, displacement, ect. i can think of. i am completly stumped and have no idea. any help?:banghead: :banghead: :cry:

[eloop]

Originally posted by Mark.Snoswell
Hi,
Anyone have any experience or reccomendations for using normal maps in mr?


I looked into this for my current project but ran out of time (I am using the excellent Dirtmap shader though). Here's a quick brain dump ... You may glean some useful related info from here (http://www.drone.org/) if you haven't already found it. The mankua Kaldera tool can generate the normal maps. It can't be too difficult then to write a normal map displacement shader for MR, surely no more than a few tens of lines of code and there are RMAN shaders (http://www.drone.org/tutorials/rayDisplace_renderman.html) around that could be used for reference.

Also check out ZBrush for building the high res mesh and get on the Texture Layers 2 beta to get hold of some very useful new (for 3dsmax) texturing tools (particularly good for dinos I imagine). Best of luck!


-Drew


PS would have loved to get a cgSkin beta for MAX6 for my current project ;-)

[visualboo]

Here's a really simple scene I just did to test a simple case of displacements in MR. But what's up with the artifacts? The map is a procedural checker so it's not that the map itself is imperfect.

http://www.visualboo.com/misc/mentalray/grabola_2-9-2004-2.36.53%20PM.jpg

[edit] Oh I forgot Mark, I'll post some normal map stuff in a bit once I get it all organized.