Mental Ray - Shaders

[visualboo]

It's due to aliasing of the mesh with the map -- you simply have to increace either/or both the detail (edge length) and levels.
Well actually I tweaked some settings pretty high and it really didn't look to much better, but the render times went way up. But if I understand you correctly that doesn't explain the artifacts on the flat spots of the mesh.

Here's the scene if anyone wants to play with it. I think the settings in the files I saved were 1.0 edge length/6 max levels. I tried .25 for EL/7 levels but it wasn't that much better.
Scene file (http://www.visualboo.com/misc/mentalray/displacement%20test.zip)

[ODIN_6]

I must agree MR displacement is way better than max's default ...

I did a little test of some hoses I am making for a model of mine ..


Render ,,, it took 1 hr 3 mins

http://www.treetop05.com/images/hose-test3.jpg



Here are my settings

http://www.treetop05.com/images/hose-settings.jpg

[eloop]

Try rendering out the checker map with some blur to soften the borders a little (eg blur=10) to a file and load it back in as a bitmap texture to your displacement slot, I used 1024x1024 (For some reason the blurred checker map isn't getting translated properly across to mental ray directly.) Then render with edge_length = 0.5, max displace=1.0 and max_level=3 or 4. Renders in approx 50s on my dual proc 2GHz xeon machine. Less artifacts, and renderable in a reasonable amount of time albeit softer.

Originally posted by visualboo
Well actually I tweaked some settings pretty high and it really didn't look to much better, but the render times went way up. But if I understand you correctly that doesn't explain the artifacts on the flat spots of the mesh.

Here's the scene if anyone wants to play with it. I think the settings in the files I saved were 1.0 edge length/6 max levels. I tried .25 for EL/7 levels but it wasn't that much better.
Scene file (http://www.visualboo.com/misc/mentalray/displacement%20test.zip)

[instinct-vfx]

Hi everyone,

this thread plainly rocks! Thx a lot all you ppl for all your contributions...will see if i can come up with some things to contribute myslef.

Just a quick question, anyone knows a link with descriptions of all the standard mr shaders that come with max ?

like the dielectric material and what exactly the properties mean ?

the mr manual that comes with max is rather confusing and focusing on scene description language and the apis...

a more basic intro would rock...or a plain list of the shaders and their parameter meanings..

thanks in advance!

Thorsten

[ToddD]

Hi Jeff, ever used the Adjustment Lume? I won't have a chance to test for a couple of days, but I was thinking it may be a good way to affect contrast etc in the carpaint material for example. Any ideas or experience? Sorry I haven't updated, need a little time away from the project hehe



Todd


EDIT: Instinct, might want to try google on that, I believe there are explanations-they may be maya related, but I am sure they apply to max:thumbsup:

[JeffPatton]

Adjustment Lume: I've had no luck using the "region specific" parameter. So it adjusts the whole image. If we could figure out the "TAG" that it's looking for it may work great for adjusting the levels of a specific object in the scene.

It may be easier to render it out as a .tga file and adjust the levels with photoshop though.

Jeff

[itayg]

hey folical9, this is really a great thread, lots of stuff to learn here :thumbsup: . i'm trying to creat that blurred metal you posted on the beginning of the tread.
i'm modeling a camera and its too reflective right now,
i'm using max6. thanx

http://yourimagehost.com/data/85/1076498576rndr_test15b.jpg

[BigRanS123]

make the material a mental ray material, them make the surface a metal (lume), then under the settings for the metal turn on surface blurring. then you can adjust the strength of the blur. Don’t forget to turn up the sampling of the material or it will produce a grainy look to the surface.

Hope this helps,

I also would like to see some stuff about normal mapping and understand how to animate while using normal mapping.

Thanks for all the help.

[JeffPatton]

make the material a mental ray material, them make the surface a metal (lume), then under the settings for the metal turn on surface blurring. then you can adjust the strength of the blur. Don’t forget to turn up the sampling of the material or it will produce a grainy look to the surface.

Yup, just as he said. Also, if you have problems with the material casting or receiving shadows please let me know.

Ok, I have been unable to get a solid answer from the powers that be regarding posting the edited MI files. Most say it shouldn't be a problem so I'm posting them. This should fix any problems with rendering the SSS shader. These files have the "hidden" tags removed as well.

USE THESE AT YOUR OWN RISK. PLEASE MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR MENTAL RAY FOLDER BEFORE REPLACING THEM WITH THESE FILES (just in case)!

Download mi files (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/mray-files.zip)

[DrainLife]

thx folical9 for the file :bounce:
Just what i need :thumbsup:

[philipbruton]

:thumbsup: hello all



Lots of cool stuff going on here as usual, and i must say everyone has been brilliant in there input to this discussion group, especially the time folical9 has devoted to helping others with problem areas. Congrats to all !!!

I've been trying to use the illumination shader unlocked from the lume.mi file. as it comes under the light catergory i guess this is used as a light shader.
Every tome i apply this shader it works, to brighten the scene, but turns things red. It wont let me use it with photons for that specific light active, mr regects the photon emission.
In the lume help files it is said to use this in conjunction with the glare shader to get realistic exposure effects, but this doesn't alter the problem with the illumination shader turning the scene red !
I thought about adding a coloroption to the shader but i'm not sure if this will then load, but i'll give it a whirl.
I'm gonna do an example image and post asap.

Btw, does anyone know how i can put a nice image under my name, like everyone else has when they post. I'm feeling like a new born baby with a number, not a name, Thanks.

Philip Bruton :cry:

[JeffPatton]

Hi Philip,

Thanks for the kind words. I've tried the illumination shader and it always turns everything red just as you have found. The ONLY way I have found to fix the color is with the adjustment lume shader. However, I can't figure out how to have the adjustment lume only adjust the color of a single object in a scene. It's looking for a "tag" on the objects.

I suppose this is why Discreet "hid" these shaders. It will take quite a bit of research and testing to get them to work (IF they will work). Some of the Maya or XSI folks could probably help us out on figuring all this out.

PS - To put an avatar under your name go to "my profile" at the top of the page. Then go to edit options and you can add the avatar there.

Jeff

[DrainLife]

Originally posted by visualboo
Well actually I tweaked some settings pretty high and it really didn't look to much better, but the render times went way up. But if I understand you correctly that doesn't explain the artifacts on the flat spots of the mesh.

Here's the scene if anyone wants to play with it. I think the settings in the files I saved were 1.0 edge length/6 max levels. I tried .25 for EL/7 levels but it wasn't that much better.
Scene file (http://www.visualboo.com/misc/mentalray/displacement%20test.zip)
I've try length 0.2 and Level 6:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/drainlife/D1-L3-a0_2-n6.jpg
here the scene:
the scene fixed (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/drainlife/displacement%20test%20moi.zip)
No?

[itayg]

BigRanS123, thanks alot for helping me out with that blurred metal. its really did the trick, i've posted the updated render over at the camera WIP tread if you want to check it out. thank you too folical9.


wip: digital camera (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1137760#post1137760)

[huijiao2001]

Originally posted by Mark.Snoswell

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.

dirtymap for ambient occlusion. details?uasge?

[jason-slab]

i don't know if this has been discussed yet, but how do i get spec/glossiness when using glass/metal suface shader, my scene lights just don't effect the model anymore, even if i change the light's color.

i've tried different lights, and a few different shaders.
i'm looking mainly at glass and metal for the moment

plus, most of you guys all seem to use raytrace material, any particular reason?

thx
|jason

[JeffPatton]

I've added some new materials to the .mat file. Metal flake paints and another metal and tire/rubber texture.

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/metallics.jpg
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/misc.jpg

[DDS]

hi!

I don't know If someone tested mr_subscatter this way, I think, it just ROCKS!

render time: 42 secs.

no GI
no final gather


Hand is skin shader provided by you
shellac inside first shellac is deleted (the 2 materials inside too, of course), then add raytrace material as shellac to the first shellac material, and mr subscatter at the surface of the mental ray connection...touch settings...make only affect the light you want subscatter....first colour red...excinction 0.2
shellac value: 94

I don't know if it's a good contribution but i like the result.

http://membres.lycos.fr/dreamdesigner/she/hand_subscatter2.jpg

[RazzMataz]

Thats awsome, DDS!
Maybe post the material for visual reference?
Nice rendertime too. :buttrock:

[DDS]

wo, you like it?

I'm gonna see now how to upload to the ftp of deetee, for the moment, another test.

rendertime: 47 segs

as before, no GI or final gather


http://membres.lycos.fr/dreamdesigner/kiras/head_subscatter.jpg

bye bye

[instinct-vfx]

Damn nice look indeed DDS....the SSS effect looks damn cool. The surface looks somewhat to shiny tho in my eyes...

Anyways GREAT work...thx a lot!

[bobg]

folical9: Incredible Metal flake!

I've been trying on and off for weeks trying to get a metal flake material. I can't wait to try this out and see how you did it! The ID people I work with have been on me for something like this and you've beat me to it (thank you, thank you, thank you!)

Your silver flake looks exactly like the powder coat I'm working with. I hope I can do something for this thread that will be half as useful.

[deetee]

I updated the material over at The MR Uploader (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php) too!

[DDS]

I updated the max file of the hand to that mental ray uploader as "hand_subscatter.zip".

bye bye :beer:

[RazzMataz]

Cool, thanks DDS.

[3D_Mike]

You guys rock awefully.

[DDS]

added a movie "hand_Subscatter.avi" in the mental ray uploader.

It's only a test, but if you see it frame by frame, you may see some interesting things. It consists on an omni makin 360º around a hand, obviously changin the subscatter effect.

bye!

[jason-slab]

if i want to use glass luma, do i put it in my refective or refraction slot?

when i put it in my mental ray surface slot, i loose all my scene lighting, but it seems to render quicker!!

thx
|jason

[DDS]

you must put it in the surface slot of the mental ray connection.

If you put it in the reflection slot, you will only be using the reflection properties, and the same with the refraction.

I'm not sure if it works good even if you only want reflection or refraction properties...

I don't understand why your scene loses all the light, maybe use mr lights? :shrug:

sorry, bye:thumbsup:

[jim_uk]

After downloading the glass cgtalk scene posted by folical9, i've not been able to make it look as sharp as the picture he posted up. I've changed the settings, but i must be missing something ... probably something really obvious :shrug:

If anyone could help me out or point me in the right direction i'd be really grateful. Thank you. :)

This is the original one.

http://www.jamesboulter.co.uk/pictures/cgtalk.jpg


This is my version which seems duller and not as sharp.

http://www.jamesboulter.co.uk/pictures/cgtalk2.jpg

[3D_Mike]

Just wanted to shout out my respect to everybody who has contributed to this thread :D For the last 2 days (and nights) I have been reading and rendering like mad to get to understand Mental Ray. I find it incredible how a few well tweaked settings can totally 'complete' your image. Heres a small testrendered pic to show yall why Im so thrilled :) http://213.84.68.21/thnx.jpg
I dont want to mess up the thread so if you like theres some more pics when you follow this link. (http://http://213.84.68.21/thnx_big.jpg)

Once again, you guys are doing a super great job and thnx a lot!
~Mike, happy 3D-dude

[JeffPatton]

Wow 3D_Mike, that model and pose is great. I saw this in the WIP forum and loved it. The copperhead color one is awesome! How about a 1280x1024 (or larger) render for my desktop?

About the new metallic shaders. When I was making these, I had problems with the noise appearing correctly. I had to put a UVW map on my object and tile the noise map 4 times in order for the texture to work. I find it strange that I needed to tile a procedural texture? At any rate, if you guys put the metallic paint texture on an object and the "metal flakes" look smeared, then apply a uvw map and tile the texture.

Jeff

[3D_Mike]

I already wondered why you put the Noise to Explicit texturemap channel instead of object XYZ

Man, Id feel honoured if youd want my model on your desktop, after all its practically your clothes hes wearing :) If you follow the link and wait for the pics too load, youll see its actually 1 huge (1 mb) pic sized 1280x2150. Just crop a model you like :D This pose is just a temp though, you can see theres some interesections and I dont really like the head like this. Hopefully I can render some more original poses somewhere over the weekend. Drop you a mail if you're interested?

[JeffPatton]

Just crop a model you like This pose is just a temp though, you can see theres some interesections and I dont really like the head like this. Hopefully I can render some more original poses somewhere over the weekend. Drop you a mail if you're interested?

Will do, and yeah feel free to drop me an email when you update the pose. Again, great job.

Jeff

[jason-slab]

@DDS - yeah i figured, but i'm still having problems with my lights.
i've tried regular and mr lights, but still nothing. all i get is the reflections from my hdri.

have a look, top and bottom image with the same lights, red one side and green the other.
http://www.3dluvr.com/jasons/tmp/mat_problem.jpg

@3D_Mike- sweet bot, love the centre one, whats the render times like?

|jason

[JeffPatton]

stal3fish,

Put the metal lume into a standard materials diffuse slot and give that a try.

[jason-slab]

yeah i tried it, it works, BUT it renders much slower

if i do glass, would i put it in diffuse to, hmm guess the refration slot would work!

thx
|jason

[JeffPatton]

yeah i tried it, it works, BUT it renders much slower

Thats because you are picking up the specular, and shadows (if enabled) now. For glass, I would just use either the glass (physics_phen) or the architectural glass, but thats just me.

[3D_Mike]

Rendertimes are surprisingly fast. I havent really paid much attention to it but say 2 minutes a frame on a dual 1600, 1 gig ram. Im using 1 Omni with raytraced shadows and 1 skylight, final gather with only 50 samples and sampling quality at min 1/4 max 4. Ill do a better render as soon as I have some more time

[philipbruton]

hello:thumbsup:

I've received some info through a mental ray shader, mailling group on mental ray tag feature. I'm not too sure i understand any of it, but here's what was asked and a professionals reply

Question

I'm new in MR shader developement. I work on Maya 5.01 using MR 3.2 How can I get the shader associate with a parameters in a shader ?

Answer

Short answer is that you can't. mi_eval_* evaluates the connection for you automatically. It was a design decision of mental images not to expose how this works internally nor let you travel around the shading network tree as you are bound to be wanting to do very bad things, most likely.
Yet... if you want to live very dangerously....I'll tell you how :
You can find out if a shader is connected at all with something like:

template< typename T >
inline bool connected( const miState* const s, const T& p )
{
return (!(s)->shader->ghost_offs ? false :
(!*((miTag*)((char*)(&p)+(s)->shader->ghost_offs)) ? false :
true));
}


you use the function like ( I hate c pointers, that's why I tend to code in c++ whenever possible -- use a macro if you hate c++):


if ( connected( state, params->color )
{
{

If you also see mi_eval() in shader.h and you will kind of understand how you could perhaps get the tag you want.

Potentially, my guess is that the expression: ((miTag*)((char*)(&p)+(s)->shader->ghost_offs) is returning a pointer to the miTag of the shader you need.
But I would not trust it to keep working in future versions as it is undocumented.
Perhaps the question is why do you need to do that (ie. what are you trying to achieve in the end)?
And if you really, really have to, why not pass the shader name from maya directly as a shader parameter and then you can do a simple mi_api_name_lookup, perhaps, as that is indeed documented.

- I know this appears to be maya related, but i'm sure the same basic code applies to max aswell.

I hope this helps ! :applause:

Philip Bruton

[philipbruton]

hello

Pholical9 told me how to add an avatar to my name, but i can't do this
I followed your guide, my profile, edit options but this is all i get here is a message saying :


"choose your avatar from the available list"

"Displaying avatars 1 to 0 of 0"


how do i get a list?
This is doing my nut, let alone mental ray !!!!!

Philip Bruton

[JeffPatton]

Jim_uk, take your glass render into photoshop and hit it with a sharpen filter and it should look identical to mine. :thumbsup:

[bobg]

philipbruton:

You can't add an Avatar until you've posted at least 25 times (according to the CGTalk moderator/webmaster).

[ToddD]

Jeff I gave that new paint mat you just posted a run, not bad at all! :beer: I did some tests before applying it to my car, I found that with the IOR of 2.5(what it was set at when Dl'd) it wasn't giving me much reflection at all. I turned it up, probably too much, and did a render of the Rolls. The IOR is about 4.2, a bit too reflective now, but the render gives the idea. The renders you posted were they with the ior set at 2.5? Just wondering if I was doing something wrong;) I also applied your tire rubber material to my tires...looks very good! Anyway, I did have to apply mapping co-ords for the paint, the first car render had an area of splotchiness. Here's the link for those interested in seeing it applied to a model.

http://zneekinround.250free.com/speckgood-02.jpg


Thanks again for all of the info!



Todd

[Grooveholmes]

Hey guys, is it possible to bake textures with mental ray in max6?

I know it is possible in MR for Maya...

[3D_Mike]

I found a little Max/MR/this-thread related prob:

Draw a spline and add a Lathe modifier so it becomes geometry. Then apply the Black Paint material found in the CGTalk matlib and hit render. MR should crash and Max shuts down upon translating the scene. So far this only happens this material but it might flag a problem with typically Max related geometry and MR. Weird thing is it only happens with the black_paint material assigned. I also noticed a weird little bug where sometimes Max Material Editor doesnt show the specular spot of the black_paint material in the slot.

You might be able to replicate the mat editor bug by doing this:
Open scene
Open Mat Editor
Get Black Paint from matlib
Close scene
Open Scene
Look for lighted specular dot on blackpaint material in mat ed slot. If it aint there, press the show background button on the mat ed panel. It should show up now.

With me it doesnt happen all the time thoug :/

You can work around the crash render bug by collapsing the geometry.

[philipbruton]

:thumbsup:

thanks bobg

Phil b

[philipbruton]

hello grooveholmes


you cannot use the max texture baking facility with mental ray, it isn't supported. Although mental ray does support its own light maps and the "write light map" shader is available in one of the .mi files in the include folder, i can't remeber which. it needs unlocking though, and i haven't been able to successfully use it myself yet, still testing

Phil b

[jim_uk]

Thanks folical9 :) I was looking for the solution from the render settings and it was a photoshop thing all along ... hehe

Sometimes the obvious answers just go unoticed :p

[Grooveholmes]

Ok.. Thanks for the speedy reply.

Do you know of a workaround then for baking textures in a scene that has Reflection, refractions, and Caustics?

[OCT]

Originally posted by folical9
I've added some new materials to the .mat file. Metal flake paints and another metal and tire/rubber texture.

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/metallics.jpg
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/misc.jpg

What is your lighting/rendering setup? I can never seem to get anything to look good! would you mind posting some pics or possibly the scene?

[joske]

Originally posted by Grooveholmes
Ok.. Thanks for the speedy reply.

Do you know of a workaround then for baking textures in a scene that has Reflection, refractions, and Caustics?

Grooveholmes,

it's not very usefull to texturebake reflections and refractions imo,
unless you do not move the camera position that is :

cause the reflections and refractions will be different each time you move the camera :shrug:

so i suggest u use the lighttracer (supports textbaking) to bake the lightning of the scene and render reflections and refractions on the fly.
caustics are not supported with lighttracer, but you can allways do a topview render in mental ray and replace the texture from your groundplane you made in lightracer...

hope this workaround can help...

cheers :D

[jack9911]

this seems VERY nice
i downloaded the mat file but: how do i aply the content of that files to my models? sorry im totaly new to mental ray

edit: i opened the mat file, aplied one of the "textures" to my object
now how do i config mental ray please? my rendering is "normal" red

[JeffPatton]

Todd, the car's looking good man. I would love to see that car sitting on a drag strip about to launch though. :thumbsup:

Edit: Also, yes the renders I made (trans-am), had the IOR at 2.5. Maybe the HDR that I used is a bit brighter and thus reflected more?

OCT, just grab one of the many scenes that I've posted in this thread to see the setup for those renders. It's just a sunlight system and final gather with an HDR in the environment slot for reflections.

Jeff

[OCT]

Alright, thanks man!

Cheers :beer:

[eloop]

Hi,

I'm wondering if people have a solution to the following problem - I have a particle system that has to render as a transparent cloud. Then I have a surface with reflection in the scene. For render time and other reasons I *don't* want the particle system reflected. But turning off reflections on the particle system also turns off spawned refraction rays (even if IOR==1.0) which are neccessary to render the layered particles. To complicate matters further it's inside other fog like volumetric effects which do need to be reflected. Any way I can get the control needed ???

update: turning off the reflection/refraction flag in the global events properties (the one at the top of the event chain) does the trick. I could have sworn I verified this didn't work, but that was in a more complicated setting using MR only materials. I'll update here again if I can characterise the behaviour more fully..

update2: the key was the fact that the particles were encased in another volume. When they are inside a volume you have to turn on "autovolume" for opacity mapped faces to work properly and it's at that point that turning off reflections/refractions stops the particle system itself from rendering. Any comments/ideas ?


http://anusf.anu.edu.au/~drw900/cgTalk/particle_reflection.jpg


max file (http://anusf.anu.edu.au/~drw900/cgTalk/particle_reflection.zip)

Updated max file where particles are inside another volume (lume mist) ...
max file (http://anusf.anu.edu.au/~drw900/cgTalk/particle_reflection01.zip)


-Drew

[itayg]

i'm having trouble rendering a scene with a mr metal shader reflecting a hdri file, the final gather just crashed when it trys to render the camera's body.
i've tried lower rays (50) for the FG setting, now the FG doesnt crash but the render takes 6 hours on a 800x600 rez. i'm not using GI in the scene. is the a way to speed things up?
i've tried to turn off the skylight and use a spot and omni to make it less heavy on the rendering.
the camera's body has a mr metal shader with samples on 25 maybe thats too high but thats how it doesnt look grainy
:cry:
and another question about the FOV quality, the back of the background is out of focus but the quality is really bad, i've tried higher smaple still looks bad:hmm:

[ToddD]

Shakey, I'm no expert, but I would tend to think it is the material that is causing your woes. Is the material you are using 1 of the mats featured in this thread? I would say to test it, try changing the mat to something different and render.
As far as your background, from my limited experience, HDR files almost always look blurry when in the environment slot, it has nothing to do with your FOV settings AFAIK. You could either, build some background elements to obscure the hdr from the cameras view, or you could place the hdr in each materials reflection slot, and not in the environment slot. The second option should result in your object reflecting the hdr, but the map will not be seen as your background when rendered. Oh you could also use a high camera angle that would eliminate seeing the hdr as well. I'm sure others will offer some solutions as well, hope this helped.:thumbsup:


Todd

[dg]

One of the best threads ever done!!!!

Simply amazing work and studies, congrats to all, even tho I'm not a Max user now we all have a common language, mRay one.

So cool!!!! :love:

I bow to you all :bowdown:


Cheers,
dg

[philipbruton]

Hello shakey3d

can u plz post the max file for us to test. You aren't giving a full explanation of your problem, and it seem that you've got a lot to sort out in that scene.

Phil b

[JeffPatton]

i've tried lower rays (50) for the FG setting, now the FG doesnt crash but the render takes 6 hours on a 800x600 rez. i'm not using GI in the scene. is the a way to speed things up?

Shakey3d, do you have the min/max radius enabled on the final gather? If so, turn them off and it will speed up the render. You will need more samples though. Also, what setting are you using on your max. trace depth (under final gather)?

The blurred metal material does indeed take a while to render as you increase the sample amount. But as you know, you have to increase the amount or it looks grainey. Another option is to use a blurred bitmap in the environment slot and not use the metal lume material at all.

Jeff

[philipbruton]

Hello Eloop,


You're not the only one to get confused about particle flow properties, it's a common mistake to make.

All Object properties for particle flow particles should be accessed through particle view, this is done by right clicking the event boxes and selecting properties.

From here you can uncheck "visible to reflection/refraction" and this will solve your problem. Be aware that all Object properties work this way for particle flow. Therefore setting this at the top level (pf source) will disable reflection/refraction for the entire particle system but you can also set specific events to be reflected or not reflected and so on therefore creating a wide combination of effects through one pf source.

If you need more info on particle flow go to the thread below as we are trying to keep this thread specifically for mental ray discussion, thankyou.


www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114324 (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114324)


Phil b :thumbsup:

[eloop]

Originally posted by philipbruton
Hello Eloop,
...
If you need more info on particle flow go to the thread below as we are trying to keep this thread specifically for mental ray discussion, thankyou.


www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114324 (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114324)


Phil b :thumbsup:

Hi Phil,

This is related to mental ray as I mention in the second update note that its only a problem with mental rays "autovolume" feature, so I thought it was more appropriate here, but I guess it's a toss up ....

-Drew

[itayg]

Originally posted by folical9
The blurred metal material does indeed take a while to render as you increase the sample amount. But as you know, you have to increase the amount or it looks grainey. Another option is to use a blurred bitmap in the environment slot and not use the metal lume material at all.

Jeff

i guess that is really what effects the render time, i've lowerd the samples to 15, looks a little grainy but its ok, the render took 9 hours for a 1200x800 rez. now its 2 hours with FG on and 40 minutes when its off.
here is the render that took 9 hours, i'll re-post it soon in the finished work forum because i have focus (FOV) problem in this one. thanks

http://img22.photobucket.com/albums/v66/shakey3d/final_casio2.jpg

[Q_B]

Alrighty then!

First, let me apologize if this thing is off topic, but i just couldn't resist.

One thing that really bothers me is not having fur tools in MAX.
So, i decided to take a shot at it using MR.

But, crappy as i am, the best result i could pull so far is:

http://www.linhadeterra.com/alberto/monkeysuit.jpg

http://www.linhadeterra.com/alberto/monkeysuit2.jpg

For this i'm using, as u already have figured out, MR displacement. along with some opacity maps.

And then i thought "where the heck are the best mr brains out there?" and, of course, this thread just was the obvious place.

As far as disp goes, i guess it's almost ok. Now what i liked to see is some ideas, sugestions, on simulating the fur softness, cos obviously the opacity maps are not working very well.

Care to take a shot?
Thanx alot!

[BigRanS123]

There are some people who are getting some good fur withe the partical flow. I have now Idea how they are acheving the look that they are gitting, but I would also like to see how it is done.

Here is the link

Look at theotheo's jpg (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=114324&perpage=15&pagenumber=13)

[maxmanjake]

I was just looking at the first few threads. the mental ray stuff is great. It seams that the documentation is real slim. thanks for the help

[philipbruton]

Hello eloop,

sorry bout that, didn't really read through your post fully.
I did download your file though and the answer i gave works prefectly, do you agree ?

Phil b

[philipbruton]

hello maxmanjake


if you're looking for good mental ray reference apart from this thread then may i suggest "rendering with mental ray", very good from a starters point of view and in conjunction with forums like this.

Phil b

[Q_B]

Hey BigRanS123! Thanx for the tip, absolutely cool fur they'r doin! I'll try to track that down too!

But i really wanted to elaborate on MR! I was wondering if the Volume slot could be used ... like when u use Submerge to get fadeout underwater, maibe some shader in the volume slot could be used to fadeout across the lenght of the displace ... or even using the normals of the mesh... just throwing mad ideas here...
Anyone care to pick them up and turn it into something useful? I'll keep trying it, that's for sure :)

[philipbruton]

hello q_b


mental ray does use the volume shader but isn't capable of translating it yet. There are some phenomenon shaders out there that have been used to simulate fur, but i'm not sure where to get these and if they'll cost you anything

Phil b

[zkydz]

This has been a very informative thread. Many thanks to those who have shared...it's been quiter illuminating. i thought I'd post a pic of a wild car paint I came up with.

[spiralof5]

Hi all,
Have been reading through posts, some good information. Kinda new to this mr stuff. I put the dirtmap.dll into the shaders and the dirtmap.mi into the include folder. This is the error I'm getting when max first loads.

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 302005: E:\3ds max 6\mentalray\shaders\Dirtmap.mi, line 21: while defining

Whats this mean and what do i do to fix it.

Thanks
spiral

EDIT - disreguard previous statement...........I think its all good.

But now a question...........someone posted previously about putting this in the illumination map. What is meant by this.

[Anton980]

Hello everyone! I was wondering if anyone has tried to make a realistic skin shader with mental ray, and if so, could you post some images and maybe a tutorial?

[eloop]

Originally posted by philipbruton
Hello eloop,

sorry bout that, didn't really read through your post fully.
I did download your file though and the answer i gave works prefectly, do you agree ?

Phil b

Hey Phil,

Well as I'd written in the first update that does the trick when the particles are not inside another volume and autovolume isn't being used. I've added another max file to that post that better illustrates the behaviour.

Cheers,
Drew

[eloop]

spiralof5 - the illumination map is the "Self illumination" slot in eg the Standard material. You can collect the contribution of light from a small (typically) diffuse environment map here using the Dirtmap shader.

-Drew

[spiralof5]

thanks drew I thought that was it. Well I guess I don't understand the whole process. Maybe someone has a sample scene of dirtmap that I can download? I'm a kinetic person when it comes to learning.

Anyway this is what I tried. Dirtmap in Surface. Environment shader in Mental Ray set to white. I render with Probe Geometry on and P. E. off. Renders fine. Then I set P. G. off and Probe Environment is on and it renders nothing. I've read all the tutorials but they don't help me as they show something rendered when P. E. is on.

Thanks guys

spiral

[maxmanjake]

hey

I rendered out the file with the settings from matlock on page two in addition to changing to photons to 35000 as stated by folical9 and it took 15 min 4 secs on a P4 2Gh, 512MB RAM.

Thanks for all the info on this thread!!

http://www.geocities.com/jasonparuta/images/MR-render-15min.jpg

[eloop]

Heres a quickie done between play blasts. A quick GI like look with some direct sunlight added as well via the diffuse channel of the standard material. Substitute a nice bg env map instead of the cheesy noise ;-)

http://anusf.anu.edu.au/~drw900/cgTalk/dirtmap.jpg

max file (http://anusf.anu.edu.au/~drw900/cgTalk/dirtmap_example01.zip)

-Drew

[spiralof5]

thanks drew I appreciate it very very much. Wow there's so much stuff to wrap my brain around in this forum.........wish I could contribute but until I get through the basics and intermediate MR stuff I'm afraid I may not be contributing to the thread much.

spiral

____________________________________________________

"Overthinking, overanylizing separates the mind from the body."
-Maynard James Keenan (Tool)

[JeffPatton]

Here's a quick hair test. It's based on a standard material (totally transparant). I used a cellular map for displacement and parti-volume for the color. This is a low detail version. I can make it thicker (which looked alot better), but the render time goes through the roof...and it crashed before it completed with an "out of memory" error. :hmm:

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

[StoneR]

alright ive been messing around with this mental ray shit lately but ive been having trouble acheiving the effect that i want, i downloaded the mr files that folical put up to supposed unhide all of those shaders but now i get an error screen when max starts but what i want to know is what makes that glowing effect in the windows of this shot? its the light-me test scene i also downloaded from this thread, ive been trying to put the glare lume shader in some camera slot in the rener window but it does nothing. could it be the error causing this to not work?

http://img5.photobucket.com/albums/v15/StoneR/gifg3.jpg

p.s. i changed the camera angle of course...

[EDIT] o the error message is a mental ray error, i dont remember what it said, it had a bunch of stuff about files, but even when i put my back up files back it still gave me the error

[JeffPatton]

what i want to know is what makes that glowing effect in the windows of this shot?

Glare (lume). It's a camera shader (output) to be exact.

If your using the glare (lume) shader in a new scene you must adjust the quality before it will be rendered. It defaults to 2, increase it to 3 and then adjust the spread to suit your needs.

[spiralof5]

I saw a model with glare applied to the camera............of a statue or something. Are the specular highlights that are a little brighter done by the glare effect on the camera?

Sounds dumb but what the hell is the DGS all about. It says in the max reference that to turn the shinyness to black that it will not reflect the outside surroundings. Yet I do so and it still does.

One more question: I find it strange that you cannot apply negative output information while MR is the active renderer. Yeah sure you can put an ouput map in it then put in your bump, but when your pushing 25 materials in a multisub and each material has composite-->mask/base texture-->map/alpha, it seems a little redundant and time wasted when the roll out is right there. Switching the color swatches on say a cellular white/black black/white doesn't work either. Is there an explanation for this?

spiral

[StoneR]

yeah ok well i did all of that only there still isnt anything, im pretty sure its the error thats causing this since the last time i rendered a picture that had the glowing effect was before i messed around with the files i downloaded from this thread, from you folical, heres a screen of the error message

http://img5.photobucket.com/albums/v15/StoneR/error.jpg

sry, its a little fuzzy....

[JeffPatton]

StoneR, not sure why your getting those errors. Others have used those files I shared and experienced no problems.

My advice would be to backup your materials, scenes, etc. then completely uninstall 3ds max (not a repair from cd). Remove the folders that the uninstall leaves behind and then re-install. That will get you back to original.

[eloop]

Originally posted by spiralof5

...

Sounds dumb but what the hell is the DGS all about. It says in the max reference that to turn the shinyness to black that it will not reflect the outside surroundings. Yet I do so and it still does.

spiral

DGS == diffuse/glossy/specular reflection. All the light you see is reflected it's just a matter of how directional that reflection is. Think of DGS as a gradual change from very dull reflection to perfect directional. Glossy is somewhere in the middle and its computed by sampling a bunch of directions around the perfect reflection direction. The D/diffuse reflection is usually sort of faked mathematically speaking and isn't effected by the the objects surrounding it except directly by lights. In that sense the Dirtmap shader is a more correct diffuse shader which is why you do the tricks I illustrated in the dirtmap example I posted earlier.

-Drew

[eloop]

stoneR - before a complete re-install, if you can, just get a clean copy of the 3dsmax6\mentalray\include\*.mi files.

-Drew

[JeffPatton]

even when i put my back up files back it still gave me the error

I assume his backup files were the originals before modification. Thats why I said the full uninstall / reinstall. Been there done that and the only way I could get mine working again was a fresh install.

[meth0d]

what light are you guys using to get these shaders to show properly cuz when i render almost all of them render a shiny black

[Q_B]

Ok that furball looks very good!

So parti volume eh? Ok lets go for that one...

Experimenting ... yep, nuttin...

U need GI for that, right? And it goes on the volume slot, yes?

Still no valid results ...:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

U said u use partivolume for the color ... not the opacity?

Cos my main problem is, i just can't get any opacity to work on top of displacement ... a sphere, for instance, with a fallof on opacity, will render fine on the sphere surface, but the peeks generated by the disp will remain unafected by opacity ...

Heeeeeeeeelp!

[AsDsA]

hi,

i finally found a good free web pages site (thx evermotion), and i registered. I loaded 4 simple images: 2 with FR and 2 simbiont mats. Can u see thise images? I'm new to those web procedures, so i dunno if i did right or not.

THX folical9 for the great helps u give in this shader post.
:beer:

Cu soon
AsDsA
:wavey:

[JeffPatton]

Q_B, here's the scene:
Download (http://frodo.hiof.no/~deetee/mrupload/index.php?act=dl&file=SGFpci10ZXN0LnppcA==)

[geoMan]

the hair's cool...

by the way.....can i know how is that glare effect done like the one in stoneR 's picture?

[maxmanjake]

Wow, I didn't know your could do fur with MR. But I wonder if it is any quicker or more controllable then Shag or Shave&Haircut? That render time is long even with a small 320x240 render.

[Q_B]

Well, it's not that u can DO fur with MR ... :cry: unfortunately!

Just rattling mr cage to see what comes out lol!

Still, as far as i have experimented, render times are prohibitive, and of course there is no proper control as for real fur simulation.

Folical9, the parti-volume thing, well, besides not generating alpha, seems not to support objects inside/underneath the mesh to wich it is applied ... er ... i hope that sentence was understandable.:hmm:

Begining to think this fur stuff is not a good idea after all :banghead:. As i see it, we'll only get better results by brute processing force, that is, upping the sampling, upping the settings, upping the displacement map, UPPING THE RENDERTIMES!

Still i'll stick to it just a bit more.

Oh, so anyone knows if u can use opacity, in the opacity slot, and make it affect the displacement too? Cos as i tested it, it affects the original surface fine, but the displaced part still remains 100% opaque.:wip:

Greets and thanx to all!

[JeffPatton]

Hair/fur:

I think you can use shag hair with mental ray if you change the hair to actual geometry? I bet that would really use a systems resources though? Can anyone verify (I don't own shag...yet)

[spiralof5]

I happened upon a pretty nice website for creating pologynol hair.....Its in lightwave but there's no reason it can't be done in max.........the best part about it is that it can probably be controlled by Reactor's cloth sim so that you don't have to animate it (if your good with reactor too).:buttrock:

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/modeling/hair/

I know this doesn't have anything to do with MR so sorry. But a lot of people asking questions about hair and MR, this is pretty good stuff.

spiralo

[Rich Joyce]

does mr work with clothsim? if so then possibly you could turn your shaghair into a clothsim instead and then render, might reduce the use of resources compared to changing to geometry. got me interested though folical9

[Texlon]

Hi, I am new to MR and trying to make a ghost-like shader. This "ghost-shader" should be very translucent. It should have a light reflection and a slightly unreal refraction of its evironment, and I am trying to let the shader glow. But because I am new (only to MR, not to Max) and does not know very much about shaders, I need a little hint and some tips to make such a "ghost-shader". I hope here in this thread is someone who can give it a try or help me with some of the probably upcoming problems. I am going to post the infos and an image, if I achieved something.

btw: Very good Thread, lets go on :applause:

[ODIN_6]

folical9

Is there anyway to make the background hdr image not show up when rendering ??? I tried boxing in my objects but it makes the render look like crap.


thanks

[60WE]

Originally posted by folical9
Hair/fur:

I think you can use shag hair with mental ray if you change the hair to actual geometry? I bet that would really use a systems resources though? Can anyone verify (I don't own shag...yet)

You are right folical9, if you whant to use shag you must convert hairs in geometry and this is a real pain 'cause everything will slow down! Tested!

[eloop]

odin_6 - Put the HDR bitmap in the objects material environment slot. For final gathering you can put it in the map slot of a skylight.

-Drew

[JeffPatton]

ODIN,

As eloop stated, you can put the HDR in the environment slot of a material....and that indeed works. For me, I would rather save the image as a .tga file and then use the alpha channel to composite the object over a nice background. I have more control that way.

Or you could buy one of those HDRI CD's that have the really high quality HDR's and just use it as the background without much if any distortion like a small HDRI produces.

I've also tried mapping a HDRI onto a sphere around my scene and then making the sphere non-visible to the camera. I didn't have much success with this however.

As a side note, I did map a gradient map as the color of a glow shader onto a half sphere around a scene and was pleased with the "GI" look. Give it a try sometime (be sure to enable final gather or it wont work).

Jeff

[stefan]

Does enybody looked into geoshader.h file from discreet site?
What it is good for any practical use? One programer witch I asked said that could help to write shader but he has no EXP with mental ray so he was not shur.
May be it is nothing, but who know?

[pixelherder]

*note: this was a seperate thread, and someone suggested i post here. So apologies if you've already seen, and ignored it. Happy to delete it if its getting on anyones nerves*

i've been messing around with displacements in max and i was wondering if there was a way of smoothing out the results i'm getting

MR doesnt seem to interpolate the pixels in the map (2048x1536) so up close it looks like a lego deathstar

Anyone got any ideas?

thanks

http://aidan-wilson.com/albums/aidan_test_lab/displace_settings.jpg

http://aidan-wilson.com/albums/aidan_test_lab/displace_02.jpg

[eloop]

pixelherder - I don't have a good feel for the displacement mapping under MR yet but it does seem to be quite dependant on the size of the polys to be displaced, so try doing a meshsmooth or two on the base geometry. Also you might look at softening the texture map a bit so that the map doesn't have very sharp discontinuities which are very hard to approximate with a recursive subdivision style tessellation, and natures not that sharp anyway ;-)

Does anyone have a good handle on the differences in behaviour between MR and Reyes/PRman displacement mapping ? Does MR's scanline mode offer any benefit in the displacement mapping arena ?

-Drew

[philipbruton]

hello pixelherder

what i tend to do if there is messy displacement like this is to use the max displace mesh under the modifier stack and use one colour to very slightly diplace the mesh, which smooths it out. Give it a go

Phil b :thumbsup:

[philipbruton]

sorry


That didin't sound very helpful


1. the map you've used to diplace this face can be used with the displace modifier directly onto the mesh in the modifier stack.

2. in the material, place a gradient, output, whatever, with one colour (mid grey) across all slots, and ste the diplacement to less than the gaps between the geometric displacement of your mesh.

3. if you can see the basic shape of the bitmap diplacing your mesh, you should only need a max level of about 2 and don't forget to set your max distance to the amount you're displacing by, this'll speed up the displacement pre-sampling.

the only other way i think you'll get good results is with a higher poly count and a much higher resolution image as the displacement map



Phil b :thumbsup:

[jason-slab]

@pixelherder: don't know if this helps, but i've had problems using max materials(i noticed u using a composite) as bumpmaps and displacments, try just using a bitmap. dunno might help.

also u could play around with the blur value in the bitmap slot..

good luck

|jason

[jayjun]

How's this for a ghost shader??

Actually it's only a standard max material with super blown-out output with falloff at the self-illumination slot. The mental ray part is suppose to be glare(lume) but can't seem to get it working. I'll post the max file when I get home (if anyone wants it??).

Wooo ... the haunting Venus ...
http://www.jayjun.com/cgtalk/ghost.jpg

[3D_Mike]

Originally posted by folical9
Can anyone verify (I don't own shag...yet)

lmao, I read: 'I dont shag yet' :P ;)

[Q_B]

LOL!:cry:

[Ian Jones]

Your eyes must've tracked along and 'shag' caught their attention before 'own'. Perhaps its time for you to turn off the computer for a while. lol

[JeffPatton]

lmao, I read: 'I dont shag yet' :P

LOL, thinking about it, Digimation could have some funny ad's for "Shag" if they wanted to.

BTW, wow this thread is getting FREAKIN' HUGE. 615 replies and almost 90,000 views! I'm sure it would take a while to read from start to finish for someone who just stumbled upon it.

[shoey]

Originally posted by folical9
LOL, thinking about it, Digimation could have some funny ad's for "Shag" if they wanted to.

BTW, wow this thread is getting FREAKIN' HUGE. 615 replies and almost 90,000 views! I'm sure it would take a while to read from start to finish for someone who just stumbled upon it.

Agreed!

i visit this thread quite a lot but even i get lost sometimes. Maybe another thread could be made with a summary of the shaders and a screenshot of each etc. but close the thread from posts and just keep the shaders updated.

Just a thought:shrug:

[JeffPatton]

Maybe another thread could be made with a summary of the shaders and a screenshot of each etc.
I will update the shader info on the first post to try and help. But I wonder if people will check the first post or if they just read the last posts? It may be better to split it up like you mentioned.


Also, here's my try at a "ghost" material. I will add it to the .mat file if anyone is interested.
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/ghost.jpg

Jeff

[Q_B]

Cool! I'm kinda busy right now, otherwise i'd post a shot at it, but here goes one tiny sugestion: can't u use a fallof on the opacity, a fresnel maibe, to make it more ethereal? :)

[3D_Mike]

It took me 2 days to completely understand all thats been said on this thread :)

And no, keep it like this. First post should contain all the info.

[3D_Mike]

woooops, double post. Someone's been drinking :S

[saiko]

i saw the earlier posts having blur metal but could not find the parameter to make those,
can anybody please tell me where to find blur sample number on the metal or any reflective material,i want to make a metal with matt surface.

thanks

saiko

[geoMan]

very cool...can u post the settings?:bounce:

[Damm]

I made this blured shader with the "Lume Metal Material(phong)"
in the surface slut under MentalRay Connections.
just check blured reflections in there and you're set to go :)

http://shadow.krabbit.com/abbe_personal/rim_corvette8.gif

[Texlon]

Hey folical9 and jayjun that are cool "ghost" materials. I like yours folical9 a bit more with these glowing stripes. In your shader is nearly everything I wanted, but a slight refraction of the evironment, a good example is the film "hollowman" when he is completely invisible and you see nothing but a light refraction and flickering in the air.
But your shader is very good so far.

btw: I have some pictures which I want to show here in this thread, but I haven't got webspace to put them on, and 20kb is not much. Have you any suggestions?

Thx so far,
Leon

[JeffPatton]

Abbegon, nice work on the wheels. Look just like the images you sent. Sorry for not responding sooner.

Here's some tips on using the metal (lume) shader:

If you simply place the metal (lume) into a mental ray surface material, you can't control the specular and it will not handle shadows. If you use a standard material and place the metal lume shader in the diffuse slot, you can control specular and it handles the shadows.

Here's the settings I used in the metal (lume) parameters.
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/Mat-1.jpg
and
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/Mat-2.jpg

Here's the renders:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/wheels.jpg

As you can see I changed the spread amounts to blur the reflections. As I increased the spread, I also increased the number of samples to prevent the grain. With a spread of .5, the samples were 5. When the spread was at 5, the samples were at 18 and spread of 10 has samples of 28. Render times increase with the increase of samples.

Also the wheel was made from a great tutorial on turbosquid (free). Go to wheel tutorial (http://www.turbosquid.com/HTMLClient/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/189604/Action/FullPreview)

[JeffPatton]

I forgot to post the update on the "ghost" shader. I made it a bit more transparant and ethereal as Q_B mentioned.
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/ghost2.jpg

However, if I remember that hollow man movie correctly. You could probably just adapt a water shader to make that effect?

[Damm]

thnx Jeff

np on not responding sooner :). I might have learnt more now since i figured it out by myself :). Partly :P.
hmm i was able to controll the spec i think, power and spread.
i can't check how i did atm, rendering, but i think it had something to do with the colours on the "Lume Metal Material(phong)" shader... i think i did that anyway :).. gonna check later.

altho your way is better i think since it's easier to see what one is doing. thnx for the tip :D

[JeffPatton]

hmm i was able to controll the spec i think, power and spread. i can't check how i did atm, rendering, but i think it had something to do with the colours on the "Lume Metal Material(phong)" shader...

Yeah, I used the plain metal (lume), not the lume metal material (phong). You can adjust the specular with the phong version (plus the spread, etc too). I would probably still place it in a standard material as well though so I could use the anisotropic specular highlights.

just a thought anyway.

Jeff

[zkydz]

I've been playing with trying to get a 'ghost' effect like what you have Folical9, but mine keeps coming out more 'neonish' and not as etherial as either example. What kind of settings did you use (or you can just post the mat file for dissection), but I'm trying to get the look without the cheat. LOL

[Damm]

aha, sry for my miss read :)

yup more control like that

[JeffPatton]

Ok, I added 3 more materials to the .mat file. An electric blue, electric red, and ghost blue. All 3 are based on the ghost material. Basically, I just mixed a buttload of glow shaders with different coordinates and also for the final render I added the glare shader, but you don't really need to.

Give'm a try.

Jeff

Quicklink to the .mat file:
Updated .mat file (http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/CGtalk-mr.zip)

[philipbruton]

hi jeff,


nice shaders you've added, you're always messing with something, good to see.

Are you a reader of 3dworld ?
and if so have you seen the lovely ghost shaders they used with renderman11 for the army of the undead.

I'm might sit down tomorrow and have a bash at building a nice layered ghost shader to simulate rotten flesh n torn clothes, fancy giving it a stabb if you've time ?


Later dude


Phil b :beer:

[zkydz]

Thanks for the quick reply Folical :) I'm firing up the work 'puter to check the materials out. I didn't think of the glare shader tho...good idea. Still trying to get a handle on the MR thing. This thread has basically been my introduction to it.

Thanks again.

[zkydz]

Thanks to Folical9 I managed to unhide most of the "hidden" textures and play a bit. I got the "Polka Dot" texture to work....sort of. Here's the image (if it fits) and I'm putting the file up on the MR upload to anyone who may want to play with it. It's got a lot of possibility this one does. Well it didn't fit, so it's aqll on the MR uploader.

[eloop]

Hi,

I posted the following on the Discreet forum but I thought I'd run it here as well as someone here must have solved this one....

I'm trying to set up a scheme which allows me to have one shared path to place new .mi and .dll files and have them included by both MAX and/or standalone MR. Using a combination of ray3rc and $include I can get link statements to work and the associated .mi files are being parsed but its seems that once the ray3rc file has been parsed the shader declarations are being ignored and replaced by the declarations in the 3dsmax6\mentalray\include\*.mi files

This is a real nuisance if every time I write or modify a new shader I have to go around to all the machines in our renderfarm copying .mi and .dll files into the standard 3dsmax6 directory. There must be a better way ? (I'm using backburner as it seems to be more robust than using ray.hosts and distributed rendering).

I'm trying to use

ray3rc -------

$include "//server/my/shared_path/shared_rayrc"


with ....

shared_rayrc
--------------

registry "{DRW_PATH}"
value "//server/my/shared_path"
end registry

link "{DRW_PATH}/shaders_win32/eloopshaders.dll"
$include "{DRW_PATH}/include/eloopshaders.mi"


Any help much appreciated ....

-Drew

[Stroker]

Finally got around to trying the mats. Many thanks for them.

Looks like some of them are not MR specific, so I thought I would toss a regular out there. All this shader does is render normals. That's it. Nothing fancy, but it can help on occassion.

[jayjun]

Hello all, I've finally read every post on this monster thread. And yes, please split up the thread soon. :)

Just one (probably dumb) question, I noticed much earlier people were posting render times. Where do you view them? The mental ray message window doesn't seem to display stuff like that, ala brazil.

[Damm]

when the render is finished you'll see the render time down here, thnx Jeff ;)

[zkydz]

The polka dot file that I uploaded was actually a checkerboard test (the Mr checkerboard). It was late and I goofed when I made the files. I've fixed the zip file and posted it as Polkadot fixed.zip. It has both the checkerboard and polkadot test. Sorry about the mix-up

[dragster]

Just wanna say thanks for this thread, it has answered alot of questions so far, i still have a few problems with scene prep and some reflection problems..if some of you guys that have done some cars in mr with some success ,could you shoot me some mail ill explain...
okiedragster1@cox.net



thanks guys
steve

[hardimage]

Originally posted by folical9
Markus,

I just tried the dirtmap and wanted to say thanks again. I tried to get it to work a while back and was unable to. I have read the .html file but I'm still unclear on what exactly I'm suppose to do with the output from this map. Is it used to texture bake? Or am I missing something?

EDIT: I figured it out. MAN, this is going to be GREAT for rendering buildings, etc. Thanks again. The image below was rendered with only 1 spotlight and the dirtmap. NO GI.

http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/aocc-sphere.jpg

how do you want to use this for rendering buildings? i mean how do you want to texture or "model" those displacements correctly (all the windows, etc etc) so they look like real buildings?

[Rich Joyce]

nice tutorial....

greeble city (http://www.schloerb.com/tutorial/greeblecity_1.htm)

[da_rock21]

that electric ghost looks really cool. thanks for keeping that mat. file updated. i am playing with some of the same things you all are but at a slower pace. im still a noob to the full power of MR.
i would post progress but i have no sort of hosting to do so. i gotta buy webspace.

[MikeKaplan]

Hey guys...awesome thread !!:beer:

would you know a visualisation company that uses mental ray for ARCHITECTURAL renderings ?
or great artists who made pics (architectural or environnement only) whith mental ray as renderer ?
cause surfing on mentalimages site didn't give me satisfaction on this point....

in fact i work in an architecture agency, and we have an internal 3d "cell"... we bought max6, but i don't know yet if we will use mental ray as renderer (it seems very good though)..
we'd like to have more datas to make our choice
is it possible for a company which does not have hundreds computers (only 4-5 for renderings) to make reasonnable rendering times to achieve good quality architectural renderings ?


Sorry for the bad english

Thanks

Mike Kaplan:beer:

[BigRanS123]

Here is the company that my friend works for, and they have a small render farm. You may be able to contact them and ask some questions.

www.corgan.com
www.corganmedialab.com

[joske]

is it possible for a company which does not have hundreds computers (only 4-5 for renderings) to make reasonnable rendering times to achieve good quality architectural renderings ?


MikeKaplan,
simple question simple answer : YES
in my company we're using Mray/Max6 mainly for architectural renderings (in - and exterior).
Before we only used max5 scanline and light tracer. So I can assure that we improved a lot both render quality and renderspeed!
(I can't really compare to other adv render software, cause we never used it sofar... but to what I have seen sofar for architectural renders there are no big diffs with other software...)

But keep in mind it's more the guy that uses the software than the software itself that will be mostly responsable for speed and quality. :D

So if I was to make your decision, I'd worry more about learning the software than deciding wich one to choose...
In our case it was very simple : why buying another adv. renderer package if Mray is included with max 6 for free :rolleyes:

cheers

[siliconbauhaus]

Originally posted by MikeKaplan
would you know a visualisation company that uses mental ray for ARCHITECTURAL renderings ?
or great artists who made pics (architectural or environnement only) whith mental ray as renderer ?
cause surfing on mentalimages site didn't give me satisfaction on this point....



try here (http://www.kdlab.net) I'm pretty sure they use mental ray

[jason-slab]

some messing about, only used final gathering
30mins on my p4 3ghz@ 720x576px

http://www.3dluvr.com/jasons/tmp/paper_weight.jpg

happy rendering
|jason

[MikeKaplan]

Thank you for the time you took to answer my interogations :)

in fact mental ray seems to be a very complete tool to render whatever u want.... and i want more and more to learn and use it in a near future.
this thread is awesome, but even on the discreet's cd's, ther is not what could be called a "mental ray user manual"... and a "lume tool manual"...
for the moment i'll focus on learning it through forums like this one, and i hope the documentaion will be up to date as soon as possible.. :p



See you soon

Mike Kaplan

[derelict]

Very nice! but the bubble in the paper weight looks 2D, it looks like the bubble is on the surface of the paper weight.

Originally posted by stal3fish
some messing about, only used final gathering
30mins on my p4 3ghz@ 720x576px

http://www.3dluvr.com/jasons/tmp/paper_weight.jpg

happy rendering
|jason

Very nice thread! Interesting indeed. Why didnt i click on the 5 star thread earlier? Well.... i'm here now :)

[jason-slab]

hey dere, long time no see/hear!!

yeah it does look like the bubbles are on the surface, guess i should try add a volume shader, maybe that will help?

|js
EDIT: some smokey volume http://www.3dluvr.com/jasons/images/3d/paper_weight02.jpg

[rocknroland]

Originally posted by folical9
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
can you post that carwindow material ??
i tried and tried but it didnt work

thx a lot for all the great stuff

[rocknroland]

by the way,
this is my window glass:blush:
dont know how to handle the glass (lume)
witch material in witch slot??
can you help me, PLEASE ?

thx

[JeffPatton]

rocknroland,

I didn't post that windshield file because I was able to acheive good results from the architectural glass. Give that a try and I think you will find it easier to control. :thumbsup:

Jeff

[zkydz]

I've been playing with the dirtmap and I don't get as crisp of results as you did folical9. It seems to have a full washed out look and the lighting I place doesn't seem to help emphasize the shadows and light direction the way you accomplished them. I followed your instructions on your sphere posting and it's still washed out. Could you post your sphere file to dissect?

thanks :)

[JeffPatton]

zkydz,

I posted the file with those tips on page 19 or are you talking about another one?

Jeff

[Rich Joyce]

make sure you have the limits set correctly, and change the base colour as needed. after you have done that, you can also decrease the dirt colour into minus figures (in the colour picker) though you probably wont need to.

[da_rock21]

mikekaplan,

i guess BigRans doesnt count me as his friend anymore(thanx:cry: ) or he doesnt consider me because we are a small firm.

either way, we are a small architectural firm that specializes in student houseing. i am the only 3d person here and i use max6 with mental ray.

yes with only 4-5 computers you can get what you need done with a minimal amount of pain. i use 3 computers when i render and things seem to run pretty smoothly for the most part.

good luck to you and yours

[Texlon]

He guys, it seams that the thread has't such a big host of visitors anymore since the first posts. I realy miss the great people in this thred like folical9 and so on, who replied every day in such a satisfactional way.

But now I stop talking... and tell you somthing fitting to the topic ;)

I the last two days I worked on a very "exotic-water-shader". I tried to make it look like the water in the caribbean, you know, the slightly greenish/light blue, and very clear water were you can see the sea floor with no problems at all. Below I attached an image were I build up a simple scene to test, and present the "exotic-water-shader". I thing it's realy close to the real caribbean water, but the reflection is missing, and I don't no what to do. I set up a hole MR-material with everything I needed to create such a shader, but what ever I do, I don't get any reflection on the water surface. Until now I haven't found a slot or a setting to ajust the reflection (OK, there's a reflection-control in the water-surface (lume) but it doesn't matter which value I put in there, there's no reflection at all, just the refraction. But maybe someone (espacially the experts) has an idea.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/newbow/water-test2.jpg

Please only focus/critics on the water shader, it's the only
important thing.
INFO: Water is just a plane with the material that's all

LEON

PS: If you're interessted in that material I'll post it, when it's done, not yet, because it isn't finished.

[hv2]

Hey guys, I moved this to the resources forum to have a focussed discussion about the creation of mental ray shaders, please keep it that and that alone. if you are having errors and shaderunrelated questions about mental ray, please use the regular maxforum

Cheers 3D

:buttrock:

[eloop]

Dirtmap doesn't use lights at all. It simply uses the environment color and probes the surrounding geoemtry (including its own) to see how much of the environment is visible at any point on the surface of your object. Its not really doing an illumination calculation at all. Think of it more as a building block for faking illumination.

Take a look at the file I posted a while back which illustrates a way to fake a GI look while having direct lighting as well (the one with the teapot and the color noise background).

-Drew

Originally posted by zkydz
I've been playing with the dirtmap and I don't get as crisp of results as you did folical9. It seems to have a full washed out look and the lighting I place doesn't seem to help emphasize the shadows and light direction the way you accomplished them. I followed your instructions on your sphere posting and it's still washed out. Could you post your sphere file to dissect?

thanks :)

[joske]

in my experience the dirt shader is also scale dependent
so if you do not get a good result, try merging in a dirt scene that looks ok (like the teapotscene earlier posted here) and scale your scene to fit the teapotscene

small example :
http://www.cgtalk.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=1154113
(scaled down this scene to fit the teapot scene... otherwise no good dirt!)

using background textures also gives some wierd resluts
:surprised
it looks like the texture is mixed and projected at the same time onto the dirt...??

[zkydz]

Thanks for the reply folical9. i missed that one way back when I tried to search for the post. At 40 + pages it's starting to get hard top find things in a back reference.

[Rich Joyce]

Originally posted by Texlon
......I the last two days I worked on a very "exotic-water-shader". I tried to make it look like the water in the caribbean, you know, the slightly greenish/light blue, and very clear water were you can see the sea floor with no problems at all. Below I attached an image were I build up a simple scene to test, and present the "exotic-water-shader". I thing it's realy close to the real caribbean water, but the reflection is missing, and I don't no what to do. I set up a hole MR-material with everything I needed to create such a shader, but what ever I do, I don't get any reflection on the water surface. Until now I haven't found a slot or a setting to ajust the reflection (OK, there's a reflection-control in the water-surface (lume) but it doesn't matter which value I put in there, there's no reflection at all, just the refraction. But maybe someone (espacially the experts) has an idea.

in the mr library there is a material for this type of reflection.

It's called "Q_B Ocean Shader" and you can control the diffuse colours with your current diffuse method of shading.

[zkydz]

Again, thanks for putting that out there for me Folical9. The files I missed were really instructive as I had not thought of putting Dirtmap in the other locations. I'm still getting used to the idea that MR mateials con't have to go specifically in the MR Connections or in the MR material. I went in and played with textures and re-did most of the teapot scene playing with a way to make textures instead of the standard ghost grey GI look. The file is on the MR Uploader as "dirtmap textures.zip". It has the scene that I tweaked, two images (scanline and MR...same light and settings) and the scene has all the materials I made with them. Scene is MAX 6.

[deetee]

joske: Or you can scale _up_ the dirt by apx 100 times, and get the same effect :) So you dont have to scale down the scene all the time

[eloop]

Originally posted by joske
in my experience the dirt shader is also scale dependent
so if you do not get a good result, try merging in a dirt scene that looks ok (like the teapotscene earlier posted here) and scale your scene to fit the teapotscene


Hey guys, I can tell you the Dirtmap is scale dependant in as far as since it isn't a MAX standard shader it will get fed in MAX's underlying *system units*, not the user interface level units (See Customize>Units setup...). This could affect the behaviour of Dirtmap's near and far settings. The code tells all ;-)

Its important to read the documentation and understand that its *not* an illumination shader. One way to think of it is as a texture map that encodes the amount that a point on a surface can see the world above it and then optionally samples and averages the colors of those directions it can see. So the teapot scene I posted is *faking *the effect of gathering light from the sky/environment around it.

-Drew

[Q_B]

originally posted by Rich Joyce
It's called "Q_B Ocean Shader"

LOL! I didn't knew that shader was in the library! Eheheh it's kinda like havin a statue in your honour and don't knowing it! :eek:

Anyways, Texlon, i haven't played with that for a long time now, but if u have any probs, i can try and dig up the scene and maibe help :)

Yep and that's really true, this has become a monster thread, hard to pick up older things!

Cheers!:beer:

[Rich Joyce]

Hi Q_B I've been playing with that scene and i'm trying to get a more storm-like wave with it currently its a bit of a scale issue, how can i control the displacement size of waves - there is a smallest, biggest and size variable, and i'm not fully mastering it yet!

[stefan]

May be U all allready know it, or it is in manual but I had little problem with use of Multi-SubObjekt material with mental ray. Two reflective materials with other enviroment /HDRIsphere/ than max enwiroment /black/. When I rendered this mat It reflected black ENV nothing helped. Until I used default mental ray material with "material to shader" shader in surface slot. Into this I puted my Multi-Sub Material. Into Env slot of mental ray material I gave Enviroment shader /HDRI/ Then was all right.

[Q_B]

Rich Joyce, it IS a matter of scale indeed. I remember i had to go by trial and error till i get the kinda look i wanted. Anyways, u can read in the Lume help file "Largest sets the size of the largest waves in the ocean, Smallest sets the size of the smallest waves in the ocean, while Quantity sets how many wave sizes are between Largest and Smallest. Increasing the number of sizes will give a rougher look to the ocean."

Can't really help any further ... To be honest, i still haven't mastered the displacement part of the shader, can't get the sea to look realistic in animation :(

Please keep on posting ur progress!

[Texlon]

I found a way to get a reflection on the water surface, but it looks kinda weird. I put a DGS-Material in the surface-material slot of the water surface (lume) and in that DGS-Mat. I put a noise-map for the colors in the diffuse-channel. Below I attached the two images (with and without refl.) to compare them. Which is the better one? And is there another possibility to achive a reflection with the water surface material?

BTW: I knew there is already a ocean shader in the libary but I didn't like this one, its too dark and I don't know why but It didn't work well because I saw not really the surface and I thing it doesn't look like real ocean-water, but maybe sonthing just went wrong with my settings or so. I thought it would be the best to create my own shader.

Beside that I have the question if it's possible to make foam and waves (the water becomes white and less transparent) with a shader. Let's say you have a water shader and a scene like me, were you have things in the water and small islands, and now you want to mix this water shader with another which is a foam/wave like shader based on were the islands and the things in the water intersect with the water shader/plane. I hope anyone has a suggestion.

That's the version WITH the reflection:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/newbow/water-test3.jpg
That's the version WITHOUT the reflection:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/newbow/water-test2.jpg

Cheers,
Leon

[stefan]

http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/

Linx to Transvol, RayType, Diffraction shaders for maya may be U will find way using it in max.

[Q_B]

Texlon, i may be wrong, but it seems u have nothing on ur scene environment.

Try and put a sky in the environment, an .hdr or just a normal image will do. You'll see all the dgs's will start to reflect it and add it to the other reflections.

Give it a try and then tell us something:thumbsup:

[JeffPatton]

Speaking of DGS, I wanted to add this wonderful explanation to our thread here.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123944&highlight=dgs

[Q_B]

Seems u don't have any environment in your scene.

Try and put up an HDRI or a simple image of a sky in the environment.

It will show on the water reflections, and it will add up to the objects reflected in the scene.

Give it a try! Hope this helps :thumbsup:

[Texlon]

OK, now I put in a HDRI image in the environment slot but as you can probably see it distroys the image and it's too bright at all, that's not what I want. I liked the version without the DGS and the only thing I miss is the light reflection but these weird reflections and this overbright colors disturb the atmosphere in that scene. Any other suggestions, but hey these were not bad, they just don't solve the problem.

2. Any ideas for my question in the last post about the foam and the waves?

Here's the ...kinda weird version:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/newbow/water-test4.jpg

[ElmarNieser]

Hi, i need a glass material for something like a Coca cola bottle. just a simple white glass material that looks nice for a coke bottle. and works witj MR for max6.

thanks :)

[nebille]

Hello All.
I have just been directed to this thread and cant beleive the wealth of knowledge that we share. I have spent hours reading from the first to the last and would like to thank you all for doing what you do . I hope to have some stuff to put up here when i get more into mental ray..

Thanks again

Nebille

[zkydz]

Elmar, there are some really nice glass materials in this thread that you can get at the MR Uploader. With just a few tweaks you should be able to get the look you want.

[ElmarNieser]

Originally posted by zkydz
Elmar, there are some really nice glass materials in this thread that you can get at the MR Uploader. With just a few tweaks you should be able to get the look you want.

i download some glass materials. but they show up all black in my renders :| i can see a bit reflection. but its just masive black :(

the only glass material that seems to work is the material i got with MR "Glass physics something" but i cant use bump maps and stuff with that material :<

[DrainLife]

Hi, i would like to know what's wrong with my setting...
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/drainlife/1.jpg
I'm already at 2000 in finalgather

What can i do for make the render clean...
Thx

[Texlon]

I am not sure but you should play with the min/max radius in the FG-Rollout and I thing it's also necessary to have high amouts of FG-Samples when rendering only with FG and not in combination with GI. But anyways I am not sure.

Cheers,
Leon

[Presarc]

Hey everyone, great thread, read it start to finish (all 600 some posts) and I'll have to say that there is a good wealth of information here. Haven't been many .mat additions in the past few days though. I'll try working on something and post it here, we still need to add to this thread!

Thanks,
Jon

[zomboxy]

Hello all,

This is one awesome thread. I have been reading through it for the past few days on and off. I'm still quite lost but have seen some amazing approaches to using this really great renderer.
Thanks for sharing your experience and experimentation. Folical, you're an inspiration to all of us beginners for sure.

Cheers,
Zom

[Q_B]

@ Texlon : One thing that may help, take notice that MR values are normaly varying from 0 to 1, not 0 to 255. Meaning that u really have to be carefull in the value and saturation of your color settings. I remember i used to get all blown out over-saturated images. Tweak with the values, use very low saturation values at first.



@ Elmar Nieser : I'm kinda messin with MR glass right now, but my purpose is to simulate ice. I'll try and post the material as soon as i'm pleased with the results. But what u have to do is make a mentalray material, then in the surface slot use a glass shader, and that's preety much all there is to do. And don't forget to add an environment to your scene, and HDRI for instance. If u don't want to have a global environment for the scene, u can always put it in the material's environment slot.

Hope this helps :)

Keep it up guys'n'gals :thumbsup:

[zkydz]

In general, I'm beginning to understand some of the functions of the shaders, scale and lighting for MR scenes, but the questiopn I have on developing shaders is this:
If you have a standard MAX material (with the exception of materials not supported by MR) and render it out, it seems to work just ine. If you make a mental ray material and use the material to shader material, it looks no different. Are there any differences between the two? Are there any advantages to using the material to shader vs using the mental ray connections?

[nebille]

Hi everyone. Just got bumped by a client so decided to spend the time that they are paying me to make a shader for a gabion wall. It uses the displace shader much the same way as the grass displace shader does. Infact all i did was copy the parameters over. Im not a genius but im learning. Hope you get to use it. Also i have ordered a cd with loads of Hdri files on it so if anyone is interested im sure i can help you out. Thats if its not illegal. Any way hope you get to use this shader in your work. If it turns out better in yours than it does in mine i will be well pissed..Joke

Knock your selves out guys.

[Entangle]

I was wondering folical, have you had a chance to test out the mental ray camera shaders yet?

[nebille]

Hello all.

I wondered if anyone knew how to blur the reflections on the Metallic Silver material that folical put into the .mat file on the first post. I need them to be blurred big time . Any suggestions would be much appreciated..

Nebille

The image is how the material works know

[philipbruton]

hello nebille

if he's using the lume metal shader, then increase the spread and with it the samples to reduce grain.

Phil b

[nebille]

Unfortunately folical doesnt. Thanks for the advice on the lume shader though. I have been toying with the idea and got some good results but they are not what i want.

Cheers Nebille

[Pixero]

The DGS shader can do blurred reflections.

There is also a MR shader called Reflection Utility by Horvath Szabolcs.

Reflection Utility...and more (http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/)

Its originally for MR for Maya but since the MR shaders works across different packages you can use it with Max. Its faster than the DGS shader in most situations.
You need the .mi and .dll files
Open the .mi file in a text editor and add the line: apply material
just above: end declare
and it should work fine. Map to reflection of the material.

By the way there is also a link to Dirtmap and Diffraction.
Two other great MR shaders.

Good luck! :thumbsup:

[JeffPatton]

:surprised I've put several blurred metals in the .mat file and an example of the blur settings on this page of the thread:http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104578&perpage=15&pagenumber=42

The metal silver material (if thats the one your talking about) in the .mat file uses the lume metal phong material (and it has the blur option, just like the metal lume).

[Viper]

I started looking at this thread by pure accident. I clicked somewhere and boom, here I was. I spent a few hours reading everything, and I am surprised by some of the stuff here. Though, I am a Brazil R/S guy by heart and it's very integrated in my workflow now. So the actual time to learn MR won't be possible for now.

But, Looking at all these pics, I started to think about doing all that in Brazil :D Since I know my way trough it, I already did most of the shaders here, except for the ones that use SSS. I'm still finding SSS to be extremely complicated in Brazil. Maybe if you guys are insterested later in some comparison stuff, just drop me a note :)

Anyways, thanks for sharing all the info...I'm sure it'll come in very handy for everyone in the future :) Keep it up. I'll be keeping an eye, and throw in an idea or two :)

[JeffPatton]

I've re-created a room out of the new features guide that comes with Max6. They used a similar scene to illustrate the GI of mental ray.

I first used standard materials on the objects and one light with GI & FG enabled. Here's the render:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/Non-MR-Mat.jpg

Then I read on the Discreet board that you can use the photon maps to control the amount of GI per material (thanks to Fran Davey for the tip). I tested by using the material to shader map to convert the scenes existing materials into mental ray materials. Then I added the photon basic(base) shader to the photon slot and after some adjustment to diffuse and specular of the photon shader, here's what I ended up with:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/MR-Mat.jpg

Lighting, photons, material colors, and GI & FG were not changed in either of these renders, only the photon shader.

Jeff

[nebille]

Cheers guys. Am gonna have a look at the shaders that you suggested. Folical i have learnt so much from your posts. Thanks for introducing me to this thread. I hope to be able to contribute soon.

[Q_B]

Greetings, folks!

Need some help: what is the best Photon shader to use with Glass shader? For caustics, i mean.

Already took several shots at it with Base, Dielectrical and DGS Photon shaders, but none seems to work very well. Only with DGS i got almost the right caustics, but always over-blown.

I'll post soon the work without Caustics, so you can take a look at the glass material.

Meanwhile, any "light" on the subject?:cool:

[Macrog]

Hey,

Folical could you put some settings or scene (usage mental ray material) - shaders & GL ?

[zomboxy]

Q_B,

I have had success with the Glass [physics_phen] shader and a Mental Ray spot. I played with the energy values and the # of photons. There is a short demo on the Discreet site in the 3ds Max6 section showing MR using caustics etc. If you haven't seen it, it will show you the process in action.

GL,
Zom

[MikeKaplan]

Folical !:beer:

the tip of the material to shader whith the photon basic shader in the photon slot of the mental ray material is very usefull !!!

Thanks a lot.... :beer:

[Q_B]

zomboxy: I'm using the glass shader too for the surface and shadow shaders, but it won't work on the photon slot :(

Bout that demo, can u post me the link? i've been searching but couldn't find it!

<--- :cool: !

Thanx!

[zomboxy]

Q_B,

You don't need to do much to get the caustics to work. Simply assign the Glass shader and turn on caustics in the render dialogue.
I can't save the link but here's how to find it. Go to the Discreet site and from the products section choose 3ds Max and you'll see a section for video tutorials for Max6. At the bottom of the page is the MR tutorial. It is basically doing what you are trying to achieve with your product shot. I have downloaded the file and saved it. If you want me to send it I can via MSN. It's 3Mb.

Zom

zomboxy@hotmail.com

www.marksnyder.ca

[Q_B]

zomboxy:

Thanx for the tip, going search right now.

As for the shader thing, unless i put something in the photon shader slot, it simply won't generate caustics :)

It's not a MAX material, it's a mentalray material.:shrug:

[zomboxy]

Q_B,

You don't need to do anything with the slots. Just point your light and turn on caustics. Make sure that your glass object "generates caustics". Use the MR glass [phys_phen]shader and an MR area spot.

I know that sounds too simple but it works, I have done it.

Zom

Ps: I like your brushed aluminum texture. What is it? Max or MR?

[Q_B]

Gotto check it, tell u later.

Bout the glass, i'm not using the glass physical phenomena, using a mentalray material with glass on the surface :)

Gotta try it with glass pp. Thanx for the tips!

edit: the glass pp won't take maps to control the surface parameters. Grrrr.

[MikeKaplan]

doing a little study on a project i am curently working on, no hdri or environnement....
all materials are variants on the classical silver paint of the matlib... it can suits in many cases !

this pic is at the very beginning, it has to be mixed whith a photo later...


thanx all
:)

[ElmarNieser]

Hi, i am using the standart glass material that comes with MR for max6. "Glass (Physics_phen)"

Im making a coke bottle. but i get this strange artifacts at the bottum of the bottle :( can anyone help me with that ?

http://elmar.nieser.net/coke_bottle.jpg

[Q_B]

humm what strange artifacts?:shrug:

[ElmarNieser]

Originally posted by Q_B
humm what strange artifacts?:shrug:

well it just looks kinda strange imo :|

http://elmar.nieser.net/blh.jpg

[bobg]

Those artifacts look like the normal refractions from the environment since the same light areas appear in other parts of the bottle.

I'm assuming that you were referring to the light areas in the 'feet' of the bottle

Bob_G

[Presarc]

The artifact problem may be due to the reflection and refraction count and it's sum. In mental ray renderer you'll see reflection and refraction, and sum all set to 6. If you change the ref's to 12 and the sum to 24, this may solve your problem.

Jon

[Kalu]

Ola guys. I am new in the world of the Max and still things exist that would not understand so good.I would like that they explained me, for example, what it is to shader. Thanks for the possibility usufructing of this forum.

[Texlon]

Hey guys,
I thing it would be much better if we close this thread, and put all the important informations in one new thread, because it's getting more and more unclear. Putting all the cool shaders and tips 'n tricks in a completly new thread gives the comunity a more clear info-thread. Maybe we should open two new threads, one for just the finished shaders, and infos, and the other for questions and postings.
Just a thought, just a suggestion...

Best regards,
Leon

[cris castro]

yes texlon, i agree

[Rich Joyce]

Heres a quick scene i've started for the thread - using displacement for the sea (nurbs surface using a material based on Q_B's ocean material) and Rock (poly modelling).

i've also used the mist shader for the camera volume shader.

first rendering.

http://www.3d4.co.uk/3rd-d/RockAndSea.jpg

wire image.

http://www.3d4.co.uk/3rd-d/RockAndSeaWire.gif

[JeffPatton]

Here's a link to an Ambient Occlusion and SSS tutorials. Originally posted at Evermotion.org.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/ronchin.basket/umxprime/tutorials/index.htm

Also, I'm not sure what path this thread will take, but I'm hesitant to make any changes right now. There's a ton of info here and I don't want any of it to be lost. There may be a new thread created, I'm not sure at this point. If I have room on my server I was also thinking of making a page that describes each shader in the .mat file and shows an example. However time is not on my side right now (I'm Extremely busy with work).

Bottom line, some changes are on the way....just slowly.

[Damm]

cool. altho i'm wondering what version of subScatter ShaderPack he's using cause i don't have that Scattering HSV thing

[jackjackson]

folical9, I have a server im pretty much doing nothing with so I got about 2 gigs of storage and 60 gigs transfer. If you're willing to make some things im more than willing to donate webspace for it. e-mail me at capone@dustinsrealm.com if you're interested.

[treed]

Yah, I don't either.

[JeffPatton]

cool. altho i'm wondering what version of subScatter ShaderPack he's using cause i don't have that Scattering HSV thing

Really? When you pick a color for absorption or scatter you don't get the (H)ue, (S)at, and (V)alue options in the color selector box?

[treed]

Ahh ok, now I get it. :)

[Damm]

lol :).. my bad

I thought that there'd be something like the HSV Diffusion :).
hehe ;)

[AidanGibbons]

Wow, amazing thread..

I've really spent ages trying to find the link to the Model (the 5 pronged thingy that you use to test shaders). Did you take the link down? Thanks!
A

[JeffPatton]

I've really spent ages trying to find the link to the Model (the 5 pronged thingy that you use to test shaders). Did you take the link down? Thanks!

The links work for me. It's on the first post in this thread. (Glass - 3S).

[Arjan]

Wow, awsome topic:eek:
I really love Mental Ray now, I've learned a lot about this renderer thanks to all of you:thumbsup:.

One question; I can't download the Greeble6.zip file from the link, it's broken I guess:drool:.

Can someone post a link or send it to me?

Thans in advance!

Greetings Arjan

[Damm]

http://www.maxplugins.de/r6_files/hudson/Greeble6.zip
that's the greeble for Max 6 :)

And here's a skin shader i've started. Very basic and i haven't tested it on a char yet

http://shadow.krabbit.com/abbe_personal/skin.jpg

and here's the file

http://shadow.krabbit.com/abbe_personal/skin_shader.max

Edit: don't forget to download the mr_subScatter shader
http://www.lightengine3d.com/downloads/plugins/subScatter/md_subScatter_shaderPack.zip

[Damm]

hehe ok so i made a quick test.
this is my shader on a head. Lots to tweak indeed :)..

http://shadow.krabbit.com/abbe_personal/primitive/head_sss2.jpg

Edit: if you change the Scatter model blend to 0.75 you'll get a much better result

Edited image with the new result

[AidanGibbons]

Ah thanjks folical, i thought the glass link was just for the glass MAT.

Is the rubber link wrong underneath??

[JeffPatton]

Ah thanjks folical, i thought the glass link was just for the glass MAT. Is the rubber link wrong underneath??

Yeah, I'm not sure what happened to that link. But I know the rubber file is posted elsewhere in this thread, someone else asked for it a month or two ago.

I hope to have my work caught up within the next two weeks and be able to tidy this thread up a bit. :thumbsup:

[Viper]

Hey, I said I would be back to test Mental Ray ;)

Here's my first test. I really liked the idea of the dirtmap so here's my render:

http://realover.scifi-meshes.com/tests/chess-dirt.jpg

I took a look at folicals dirtmap scene and the settings were sort of equal. I'm going to try to take a look at the color bleeding thing later on :)

[Cabbage]

Here's a quick test:
http://www.digikitten.com/playhousev2/files/Cabbage/skin.jpg

I'd be glad to share the shader with you guys if someone can host it.

[Cabbage]

http://www.digikitten.com/playhousev2/files/Cabbage/skin1.jpg

[deetee]

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

There is the MentalRay uploader for this thread, and to everyone - USE IT! :)

[treed]

I just tried installing the dirtmap shader but mr had some errors pop up. I put the .mi file in include and the .dll in shaders. Am I doing anything wrong?

[Viper]

I was looking at the Dirtmap shader, and the only way I thought of doing the color bleed would be to fake it. Not a really good way to solve it though. If anyone is interested in how to fake it though, let me know and I'll do a write up on it....

Treed: Sounds like you did it right dude...don't know what's wrong...

[stefan]

To Treed- I do not know what kind of errors Your max write /may be a screenshot would help. Some of errors I personally ignore sometime max write that he need ray3rc file. But when I puted there one made like maya's ray3rc he started to show other kind of errors. Affter some edditing was all OK but mental ray worked also without this ray3rc. /. But when Dirtmap shader does not show in Material/Map browser it helps to edit dirtmap.mi file. Put "apply texture" without " " after version 1. Try to look into other *.mi files how they are writened.b

And sorry for my english.

[Pixero]

Here is my modified Dirtmap.mi file with Max gui declarations to make the default values show up in max.

Notice I´ve set the range for Dirtcolor from -1 to 1. This is a little trick that fools Max to let you set a Dirtcolor with a value lower than 0 (black) i.e. Superblack. This can sometimes be good for creating a more pronounced effect. Simply open the color selector and set the Red Green Blue values to something lower than 0.

_________________________________________________

# MI declarations for Daniel Rind's Dirtmap 1.2 Mental Ray shader
# by Horvátth Szabolcs (szabolcs@impresszio.hu)

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Dirtmap 3dsmax GUI declarations by Jan Sandstrom
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------

gui "gui_Dirtmap" {
control "Global" "Global" (
"uiName" "Dirtmap",
"category" "Texture"
)
control "BaseColor" "color" ("value" 1.0 1.0 1.0, "range" 0.0 1.0)
control "DirtColor" "color" ("value" 0.0 0.0 0.0, "range" -1.0 1.0)
control "BentNormals" "boolean"
control "ProbeGeometry" "boolean" ("value" 1)
control "UseEnvironment" "boolean"
control "m_IllumInvis" "boolean" ("value" 1)
control "RaySpread" "float" ("value" 88.0, "range" 0.0 180)
control "Samples" "integer" ("value" 16, "range" 0 128)
control "NearClip" "float" ("value" 0.1)
control "FarClip" "float" ("value" 10)
control "FalloffGain" "float" ("value" 1.0, "range" 0.0 1.0)
control "BasisVector" "vector"
control "VectorBlend" "float" ("value" 0.0, "range" 0.0 1.0)

}



declare shader
color "Dirtmap"
(
color "BaseColor", #: default 1.0 1.0 1.0
color "DirtColor",
boolean "BentNormals",
boolean "ProbeGeometry", #: default 1
boolean "UseEnvironment",
boolean "m_IllumInvis", #: default 1
scalar "RaySpread", #: default 88.0 min 0.0 softmax 90.0 max 180
integer "Samples", #: default 16 min 0 softmax 128
scalar "NearClip", #: default 0.1
scalar "FarClip", #: default 10
scalar "FalloffGain", #: default 1.0 min 0.0 softmax 1.0
vector "BasisVector",
scalar "VectorBlend" #: min 0.0 max 1.0
)
version 1
apply texture
end declare


_________________________________________________

[Rich Joyce]

you've been able to have negative rgb values for ages already. Muh put them in a good while back

[Couch]

Testing my ugly skin shader Dirtmap + SSS
http://www.couchgallery.pochta.ru/images/JellyFace.jpg
:surprised :eek: :surprised

[Pixero]

Ok, I didnt know that.

[Rich Joyce]

no probs - its good to see people developing the tools we've got! :thumbsup:

heres a link to a quicktime file for the animation of the ocean shader - i'm still tweaking it, but i will up it when its ready.

ocean test (http://www.3d4.co.uk/3rd-d/rock01.mov)

[Pixero]

Im fairly new to Max coming from Maya so I guess theres lots I dont know yet.

How do you get the negative RGB values in Max and is it possible to get negative values with HSV also?
I havent been able to do this.

Another MR question:

In MR with Maya you can change the Irridiance color of an object to lower its contribution in GI or FG or even have an object cast a different color than its own.
I havent found this in Max. Is there a different workflow in Max or is this something thats missing?

[Rich Joyce]

in the rgb levels you can simply enter negative figures, and it'll work. dont know about HSV - not tried it yet.

still trying to get the hang of mr in max - it's easier as a node based system in xsi - presume its similar in maya? I can't imagine it has been overlooked as its a fairly standard GI type control now in all renderers. i'll have more of a search

[Pixero]

When I enter a negative RGB value in Max 6 it doesnt work. It just pops back to 0.

[treed]

Pixero, thanks a lot for that script. I copied that and pasted into my .mi file and now the dirtmap shader works. :beer:

[JeffPatton]

Rich Joyce, nice job on the water animation! Looks great! Will you be able to share your adjustments to the ocean shader?

Jeff

[EmpY]

Hello, outstanding thread!!!

Duno if this has been covered?:

On the Renderer tab default settings for Raytrace Acceleration
are:

size - 10
depth - 40

While playing with it, settings 20/70 gave me some speed up.
(test scene with FG randered in 1:55 by default, and than
droped to 1:30 with altered settings). And there were no
visible consequnces. Second very complex test scene (FG,DOF,
HDRI Skylight + MR area Spot) went down from 15:54 to
12:48.

Can you test this?
And explanation on what these parameters are?

cheers,
EmpY

[EmpY]

Hello, outstanding thread!!!

Duno if this has been covered?:

On the Renderer tab default settings for Raytrace Acceleration
are:

size - 10
depth - 40

While playing with it, settings 20/70 gave me some speed up.
(test scene with FG randered in 1:55 by default, and than
droped to 1:30 with altered settings). And there were no
visible consequnces. Second very complex test scene (FG,DOF,
HDRI Skylight + MR area Spot) went down from 15:54 to
12:48.

Can you test this?
And explanation on what these parameters are?

cheers,
EmpY