CGTalk - Mental Ray

arturro

12-12-2004, 04:53 PM

Hi there Mental Ray freaks:buttrock:

I'm useing Mental Ray 3.2 in max 6 in my Grand Space Opera, and I have a problem with it. When I render a terrain in a high resolution(3636x2657) mental ray crushes... there is an error that it cannot free memory. It's usually after a nice few hour of rendering and it's not constant mistake... sometimes when I reload my computer it renders normaly.Biut with rendering huge scenes the probability of crush is about 70%(today it rendered in 18hours my terrain in high res, but crushed in the middle of rendering z-buffer for it for post production purposes, and as a result it didn't save the previous rendered blend picture...). I have the option in max that uses disk space as a additional memory on... and 1GB of RAM with 2,4 P4... the problem doesn't exist when I render 1024x748...
do you have any ideas? I would be greatful for your help...

more details and most importand setings...:
4 omnis, one skylight
final gathering:500
gi photons: 80000

hjalle

12-12-2004, 05:38 PM

See Page 113.
The first letter.

arturro

12-12-2004, 09:17 PM

thank you hjalle very much! I hope it helps:thumbsup:

ILS

12-13-2004, 08:15 AM

this might be a dumb ass question ?

but how do you save a final gather map?

fhodshon

12-13-2004, 11:16 PM

thanks Jeff!

http://www.hodshon.com/belly.jpg

arturro

12-14-2004, 09:43 AM

http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/7/4587/4587_1102990392_medium.jpg (http://www.cgnetworks.com/challenge/entries/7/4587/4587_1102990392_large.jpg)

As usual... 3AM and I give you what I managed to do and go to sleep.

It's a wip, please give me your comments especially on the background.

The city and the foreground have some mistakes, and will be changed tomorrow!
I have put old planets, how they look with this background?

Any ideas, crits and suggestions would be appreciated:)

Thanks for your help! It rendered without problems in 17 hours. But I have a question... Do you see this strange shadows in the foreground? I have no idea why there are so squary, geomtery there is rather smooth...

Ad72

12-14-2004, 02:37 PM

Thanks for the tips on the glass guys. I will check out those things as soon as I get a chance

amir elhossiny

12-15-2004, 12:03 AM

ILS

12-15-2004, 06:39 AM

i don't know about the rest of you guys but i model my rooms first then i scale them down so that the ceiling height is about 20 - 25 inches. and i find it works well - a little overexposed but nothing logorithmic exposure control won't fix.

BrianHarbauer

12-15-2004, 04:08 PM

I usually set my units to american standard and model as closely to real dimensions because mentaly ray is physically accurate... I know you can change settings but, a lot less of a hassle, especially if you end up match moving later on.

loran

12-15-2004, 04:21 PM

ih peoples,
I m currently working on realistic sofa render. I d like to use MR and I m painly creating a leather material ... anyone could help me?

here is some references:
http://yourgreenroom.com/images/images_os/red_leather_chair.jpg
and this render from VRAY
http://www.3dstation.se/winnie.html

loran

12-15-2004, 05:47 PM

and here is my first test

http://forumel.free.fr/mentalray/test02.jpg

i use a DGS surface
SKylight + final Gather
2 big boxes around the scene with autoillumin and output RGB up to 4 to create specular reflections on the leather (they are only visible in reflections)

Question for the experts :
the artifacts on the floor around the sofa are dues to final gather sample radius ?
help and comments wanted :]

ILS

12-17-2004, 07:01 AM

yeah ,

the best way to remedy this is to save your final gather map and the photon map and set the final gather to not rebuild and test out what size photon radii would work for me the best results were for min-12 and max-25. also if you use fall off for the final gather i find that it calculates faster - obviously those numbers depend on your measurements from the scene.

joske

12-17-2004, 09:14 AM

when people create their scenes, sometimes they use display unites in -meters, lighting unites -american, and system unites in mm.
and i knew lately that i should use one for all
and my question is what unites for a great results with MR ? is it mm? or what ?
thanks alot
which units u use is not important, just make sure the size of your scene is 'real' (don't have chairs that are 50 kilometers instead of centimeters for instance)
and make sure you know what u are doing with the radius (photon and Fg)... 50 = 50cm and not 50 meters for instance.

if u do not have your units AND your system units setup in such a way you know what you are doing you will never have quick and good results in Mray...

BrianHarbauer

12-17-2004, 08:52 PM

Hey loran, i'm curious as to how you acheived your puckerd carpet look. I've been trying for quite awhile with bumps or displacement and i can't seem to get it right. Maybe i'm asking a newb question but anywho, thanks.

-Brian H.

(Nice start on the leather, maybe use some procedual fractial noise for the texture so it doesn't look like it's tiled? Other than that, I think the mental ray demo scene comes with a shaded green couch that has a nice bump map.)

BrianHarbauer

12-17-2004, 08:57 PM

Heh, sorry loran, i didn't read all of your post. I didn't realize those where GI problems and not carpet, my bad. :rolleyes: Sorry. (kicking myself-stupid stupid stupid)

fhodshon

12-19-2004, 01:51 AM

thanks again to Jeff P for the scene!

http://www.hodshon.com/mmmnecks.jpg

soshiant

12-21-2004, 01:19 PM

hi all,
I didnt read all of the threads but wondering if anyone ever worked with MR hidden shaders in max 7.0.My current Q is:
what is the Ray Marcher Shader in MR? How and where can i use it?
What about hair shader?

hectic

12-22-2004, 12:43 AM

hi, I have a problem described here (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?p=1685536&posted=1#post1685536) (at the bottom) - I`d like to create something like this (http://www.healthcare.salford.ac.uk/crhpr/images/Slide_008.jpg), I want to create a visible skeleton inside of an alien ship living armor (challenge page (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=184220&page=2&pp=15) - top)

I tried everything I have found on this forum, thread and other resources, but I just can`t get it work :cry:

what am I doing wrong ? zipped .max scene (http://www.hectic.sk/mr_test3.zip)

thnx for any advice

JeffPatton

12-22-2004, 03:34 AM

On the first link you provided is your answer (I think). Post#1634 by MasterBercon
"It probably would work if you use SSS material for bones and set same light scattering group for them and then put all values to zero (disabling sss effect)."

It appears that your materials are using different scattering groups (one is set to A, another is B).

Here's more info on it as well:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=177439&page=8&pp=15&highlight=max7 - Post #109

JeffPatton

12-22-2004, 03:45 AM

Just verified that it was a combination of the scatter groups being different, and the setting on 02 - default material (the green one)

I set both scatter groups to A. Then moved the spotlight behind the objects shining towards the camera (so you can see the backscatter effect like the picture you posted).

But also change the back surface scatter depth (on the green material) to 100.0 or so (higher for more effect).

I also turned off GI and FG...wasnt needed.

soshiant

12-22-2004, 08:58 AM

Jeff dont u have any idea?can u help me?

BrianHarbauer

12-22-2004, 01:37 PM

Hey soshiant, yesterday i was attempting to use max 7's ambient occlusion, it said it worked best with illum_blinn or somthing. Anywho, my guess is if you didn't want to use the standard max shaders, you could use those? Just a guess. And maybe the hair shader is so shag can work with MR? I'm curious too so i'm playing around and using their "help" file.

Thanks all for this awesome thread, hope i can help out sometime, but for a question of my own...

Can Max 6 or 7 output a scene to a .mi file? or is this a maya thing? If so, is there a way to have MR render outside of max? Thanx!

Brian H.

JeffPatton

12-22-2004, 04:12 PM

I can't say anything about the raymarcher because I haven't read about it yet. The hair shaders you can use, but it's not going to make hair, it's just a color/shine contoller. I'm pretty sure it alone won't make shag work with MR. That's an atmospheric issue instead. I've used it in the past with Ornatrix hair and it worked ok. If I remember correctly it had some funky issue with shadows though.

soshiant

12-22-2004, 05:58 PM

I've read sths about ray marcher in maya, it is the same as volume light in max but there is no way to use the shader with lights, and nothing to do with atmosph...
thanks for ur replies!:)

neods

12-22-2004, 11:08 PM

This is a lovely thread. So informative. :love:

My question is that is it possible to make Anisotropic Reflections in Mentalray. I've managed to create blurred reflections, but not anisotropic reflections? Could some one help me on this? Thanks.

neods

12-22-2004, 11:09 PM

I found some nice information about them in this article by Neil Blevins

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

Mhyrdin

12-23-2004, 07:06 AM

......
Can Max 6 or 7 output a scene to a .mi file? or is this a maya thing? If so, is there a way to have MR render outside of max? Thanx!

Brian H.
Sure you can export to .mi file :)
It's an option in the processing panel of renderer
this one ...
http://dom.marques.free.fr/export_mi.gif

Mariano

12-23-2004, 03:26 PM

Hi all, first of all..excellent thread!
I have a question if someone can help me.. i have a scene with some candles, this scene MUST to be Photorealistic, and i need to use MR for that.. (i´ve never touched Vray), and my problem starts with the fire of the candles... i tried with Aura of chaosgroup, but MR seems to be non compatible :sad: , anyone knows how to make it?, i dont know.. maybe a shader combined with some omni lights.. :shrug: .

i hope someone knows...

thanks to all to share such great info.

Mariano

JeffPatton

12-23-2004, 04:44 PM

Will the candle scene be animated or a still? Will the focus be on the candle?

Eugenio

12-23-2004, 04:52 PM

I have the same doubt that neods (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=27225)...

There is a little time that I'm trying to find a shader that is capable of doing anisotropic reflections, and the only one I've found (reflectionUtility that is mentioned in this topic) is for Maya, a very nice guy converted to Max and everything seems to work fine, less the anisotropic reflections, I know that it needs some tweaking, but I've done and still could not get it to work. :(

Please someone knows if there is another shaders for this? I think this is the only effect that we cannot reproduce with Mental Ray for Max that other renderers can...

Regards,

Jr.

Mariano

12-23-2004, 04:55 PM

Hi jeff, always helping! yes, the scene will be animated, and the candle with fire will be focused, yet they are not part of the main objects of the scene.

thanks!

Mariano

msneath

12-23-2004, 06:21 PM

Using Max 7 and Mental Ray.

Any suggestions on how to do realistic human hair? Does Mental Ray have any good options or should I consider a hair plugin as a better solution?

Thanks

Sneath

msneath

12-23-2004, 06:24 PM

Anyone have a good basic Mental ray fabric shader? I'm looking for something that has the properties of cotton or polyester for clothing.

Thanks

Sneath

PS Great Thread everyone!

JeffPatton

12-24-2004, 01:24 AM

Mariano - try these:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=86586&highlight=candle+flame
and
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=196594&highlight=candle

The only thing I'd add is to use the glare shader if possible. It might add glare to other places though since it can't be defined to a certain object only (atleast I haven't been able to do that). So you might want to render your scene out in passes so the candle only has the glare on it.

msneath - It would be easier to visualize if you can post a picture of the exact type material you are trying to create. As far as the hair goes, there's a couple of threads on using Pflow for hair, other than that your best bet is to look into a plugin solution.

Eugenio & neods - I posted a fake anistropic material earlier in this thread, but I personally haven't had much luck in creating a true anistropic metal. Seems the DGS material is suppose to be able to handle it, but I haven't been able to control it that well yet.

Loran - I think your leather looks pretty darn good like it is. Mind sharing the settings?

ILS

12-24-2004, 08:44 AM

i did not get a very good effect but it was a step in the right direction or at least i thinks so. i started experimenting with DGS material that supposedly supposed to give you the optinion for anisotropic reflections with its shiny_u and shiny_v options and i have read almost everything that there is to read online about DGS both for maya and max and , yes , all the sources do confirm that anisotropic reflections could be achieved with shiny_u&v parameters. i had little luck. i got blurry reflections alright but not anisotropic. i was trying to emulate wet road with street lights - no luck. i came pretty close when i used a metal ray material with metal for the surface and illum_ward for the spread - blurry on. it gave me a nice anisotropic spread but it was not very accurate certainly not the same as neil's with Brazil.

edit: also tried using metal with DGS physical as the spread map - it works kind of but it is still very much unrealistic. i suggest to experiment with these settings more.

a few tips about DGS

if you want glossy - that is blurry reflections you have to set your specular to 0 - in addition your glossy and deffuse values have to add up to 1 or less something about reflecting as much light as coming in contact with the material grader than 1 will mean there is more light reflect than there is coming in. when shiny_u&v values are not 0 the shiny(plain) value is negated.

good luck

PS: i have a small tutorial on my site for a realistic flame. its using geometry and looks pretty good.

Eugenio

12-24-2004, 03:18 PM

Hi ILS! Thanks for the reply...

I think you are going to the right direction really! If you have some images would be great! I already thinked in to put a map in the spread value of Metal Lume shader, but if I remember well it didn't distorted the rays (don't remember if it was in max 7)...I'll try it again...

And the illum_ward shader is pretty hard to control, at least I cannot to acchieve an anisotropic effect like I expect, It behaves very strange. It seems more like a falloff map...

But it's good to hear that you could to map the spread parameter and change the apperance, It gaves me some ideas... :)

Hey, do you know ANY way to increase the quality of the blurred reflections of the DGS Material? I just cannot...

Jeff Patton - Hi man! I've already downloaded your file and it's really good but as it's a fake stuff it will work just in some particular cases. This is why I want to find a way to be able to render real anisotropic reflections...

Regards,

Jr.

JeffPatton

12-24-2004, 05:38 PM

Well, since I made this with Mental Ray shaders..I might as well post it here. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to you all.

http://jeffpatton.net/cg-post/christmas2004.jpg

Druid_Ctba

12-25-2004, 03:53 AM

Hi friend :)

Merry Christmas for all :thumbsup:

So, I need one tutorial for use this beatifull shader for MR: http://home.broadpark.no/~rslettli/lob_glass.html

I don't get it to used in MAX 6, please I need one help :rolleyes:

Fine thanks for all attention,

Druid®

ILS

12-25-2004, 06:50 AM

to increase the quality of DGS you have to increase the rendering samples - this i read from the thread on DGS for mental ray for maya and it works for max as well - it is almost not worth it because you can get the same quality of blurry reflection with metal at 1/4 - 4 as you would with DGS at 4 - 16 sampling, needless to say DGS takes longer to render.

forgot to mention that the smaller the number in shiny_u&v the blurrier the reflection is - i think it works on the same phong cosine relation as the standard materials - so i read - also the u is by default the direction of the brushing if in brushed metal surface - also if using a map 360 degrees of the circle are directly correlated with the 0-1 values - so what that means at value of .25 you have a 90 degree trurn.

so , alright here is a scene i quickly put together on the left is the illum_ward and on the right the same but with no map in the spread channel. surface map is applied at the surface of the metal material. unfortunately this is a bit of a cheat because to get the material to reflect right bellow the object the object has to have an omni in it. it is still possible to do it with regular objects but you have to use a light source within each of them and if that was not bad enough the light source has to be mr_omni with the radius set so that it encompases the whole object so that the reflection doesn't cut of any parts of the object.

http://img142.exs.cx/img142/3776/reflection54bo.jpg

http://img142.exs.cx/img142/2599/reflection46bk.jpg

http://img142.exs.cx/img142/2789/reflection30hg.jpg

JeffPatton

12-25-2004, 08:25 AM

Updated my Max7 files page to include a new iceberg/glacier shader test. This one is much faster than the previous one (it's using the fast-sss shader).

Here's the render:
http://www.jeffpatton.net/Max7/images/Glacier.jpg

Jeff

Aldarion

12-25-2004, 11:26 AM

Hey Jeff, thanks again..
Mario

Mariano

12-26-2004, 02:30 AM

Hi , thank you Jeff ill try that for the fire , and yes , i also think to use glare for add an extra glow around the fire.

as far as i know , ( cos i test it like u said, with all the objects in the scene), but recently i read a doc from Lume, and they say that u can pick a specific object (or some) by label.

thanks

great iceberg BTW

JeffPatton

12-26-2004, 03:35 AM

but recently i read a doc from Lume, and they say that u can pick a specific object (or some) by label.

Yeah, it says that in the MR docs, but I've not had any luck getting MR to figure out those labels. It was discussed in this thread somewhere a while back (....I think). So if anyone has figured it out, please feel free to share the info! :)

Lordrych

12-27-2004, 06:54 AM

This is awesome thread i had posted a skin once before, this is so much help, but i parused this thread just because of all the information, but sorry if it has been asked before has anyone tried silk yet? like a shiny silk kinda like the sheets on a bed or a shirt?

Rych

JeffPatton

12-27-2004, 07:00 AM

Rych - Neil Blevins has some info on satin materials here:
http://neilblevins.com/cg_education/satin/satin.htm

EDIT: I just noticed it uses a Brazil Advance material....sorry. Maybe we can convert it using the standard anisotropic material?

Lordrych

12-27-2004, 03:42 PM

Yeah i was thinking of using one of the car paint materials that is in the mr collection and seeing if i can get it to look that way, silk is so much shinnier, you find that Neil blevens is a brazil user, most of his stuf as far as definitions is amazing though.

Rych

BrianHarbauer

12-28-2004, 05:30 AM

Mhyrdin, thanks a million man! i'll check this out tomorrow.... after i get some sleep!

-Brian H.

Merry Christmas Y'all!

giacob

12-28-2004, 05:13 PM

a message for the great patton

im using the ocean shaders u provided us with( file : oceantest.3dmax) im noticing that it behave strangely under the light.. it semes not to lighten up when water surface is hit by the light and not darken enough when shadows are cast...what does it depend on: im making something wrong or i have to adjust some settings
(im using these shaders whitout gi ( gi would take to long time in my scene))
thanks in advance

JeffPatton

12-28-2004, 06:19 PM

I had to do some digging for that file (one of the older ones eh?). Anywho, that was a test file for mainly the waves I think, I didn't spend too much time on the textures so it's probably not a good candidate for use as an ocean shader.

There's an ocean shader in the .mat file that would probably suit you better. Or maybe check this thread out too:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=165311&highlight=ocean

:thumbsup:

JasonCamp

12-29-2004, 04:14 PM

hey everybody ! im back .. well for now anyways , on leave for the holidays and cant wait to get down to some serious mr shading ... :) been working on a perfict glass texture for a while just cant get it perfected i think i have with this latest bout , but unfortunatly i happen to add a bit to much camera fog so i couldnt make out what i was doing with the glass heh anyways ill have to do some searchin on this forum because i know i seen somebody make the edge color of glass a differnt color like you would see on thick glass maybe even a differnt ior .. ill do that after i see how jeff's site has been doin cuz that iceberg texture whoa... gota love defuse.. makes me want to make a snoman for some reason lol, tiz the season

titopte

12-29-2004, 07:39 PM

Hi, I´ve reading breathless this thread (in fact i´m on page 41 now).
And I can´t be no less than thankful for everyone´s apport.

Ok, here´s my question. I´ve been with trouble rendering with the glare shader. Taking as model the light-me file from f9, i´ve was succesfull to reproduce it and the shader worked nice. But i have no idea on how to make the background glare. On f9´s file the blue sky seen trough the windows produces glare, as the light zones inside the room. Should I apply any shader to the skylight or the enviroment?
I am confused cause i don´t see any other shader applied, and i don´t think the bluesky has a brighter value than other areas lit indoors.
Hope i´ve been clear. If not, i would be able to post an image in a couple of postings ( just new in CGtalk)
Thanks in advance for any response.

depleteD

12-29-2004, 07:42 PM

hey im gonna try and get those hidden shaders working.
Ray marcher is a shader that is commonly used for particles.
If u know what afterburn is, then u know what ray marcher is.
Puffy CLouds

Mariano

12-29-2004, 09:54 PM

Hi Jeff, i´ve been trying to get glare work on a single object but i can't.... any ideas?.. i don't understand how lume says the shader can do something that actually can't..

cheers.

Mariano

JeffPatton

12-29-2004, 11:02 PM

See post #1805 above.

"i don't understand how lume says the shader can do something that actually can't.."
I doubt the problem lies with Lume. I bet the lume shader works fine with the stand alone version of MR or XSI/Maya, etc. I figure the problem is just trying to convert all the proper information to make this shader work within the 3dsmax environment....which is probably why this shader is hidden by default in the first place...it's not 100% compatible right now.

Mariano

12-30-2004, 05:30 AM

i see... well i supose i must fake the candle glow with another thing. :sad:

Thnaks as usual for the reply Jeff.

cheers

Mariano

JeffPatton

12-30-2004, 05:59 AM

Or render it out in a separate pass as I mentioned before.

BrianHarbauer

12-30-2004, 06:56 AM

Hey Mariano, this is a book by Pete Draper that's helped me alot so i thought i'd pass it along. It's got a GREAT tutorial for candle flames and such. Can't beat the price either. Anywho, here's a link to Pete Draper's hope page that has some pics from his book and a shot of his candle that is in the tutorial. (Every step is explained very well.) Hope this helps.

http://www.xenomorphic.co.uk/gallery_dte.htm

-Brian H.

Mariano

12-30-2004, 02:44 PM

Thanks Brian, that´s great!. It seems to be a great book. Id like to purchase it ass soon as i know the shipping cost (probably twice the cost of the book) :)

Thanks for the help!

ps: one more question, is there a shader for render only the shadow of an object or am i dreaming? - o estoy crazy macaya?-

Mariano

sorry for my english..

BrianHarbauer

12-30-2004, 11:52 PM

Hey Mariano, if you live in the great US of A, buy the book thru amazon.com you get free S&H. As far as shadow only on an object, i think you use the max material called, matte/shadow. Use it as your base material. Good luck man! I don't think there's a MR shader for this... but i'm still learning. As always.

-Brian H.

BrianHarbauer

12-30-2004, 11:53 PM

Oh hey sorry, it would'nt let me see where you are from till i posted... Argentina, i'd still check amazon.com and see what the quote is for shipping. Goodluck man!

-Brian H.

Druid_Ctba

12-31-2004, 03:02 AM

Hi :)

I'm not receive answers for two posts above, but I'll try one next question!

I donwload from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mrclasses/ one shaders for MR, but I not get it install, one error occurs in open 3dsmax 6.

Anyone yet install this shader for 3dsmax 6 or fixed this one?

Thanks,

Druid®

BrianHarbauer

01-01-2005, 07:24 PM

Hey Druid_Ctba, they look like shaders ripped from pixars renderman... is that legal? Just curious myself? I have a friend who works for auto desk, and when i mentioned that some shader files had been ported from maya, he gave a look of disgust... not sure if it's because i mentioned maya tho:shrug:

-Brian H.

BrianHarbauer

01-01-2005, 08:07 PM

Hey, just took a look at it, it seems it's for Maya, not max. The materials show up in my material browser, but when i goto render, is says: PHEN 0.2 error 051011: shader "gg_fakefur" not found

I'm assuming this is because there's no .dll file for it to look at.

Lymmen

01-02-2005, 12:26 PM

Correct, cuz http://sourceforge.net/projects/mrclasses/ is just the source code you will need a compiled version of it which you will find here http://cgtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1818751&postcount=17

Cheers

Druid_Ctba

01-02-2005, 01:58 PM

Oh, fien thanks my friend Lymmen :) !

I go there now and I'll try it!

Fine thanks,

Druid®

Druid_Ctba

01-02-2005, 02:01 PM

Hi friend :)

I'm yet need one help for used this shader, because scene in url is to XSI :D

Hi friend :)

Merry Christmas for all :thumbsup:

So, I need one tutorial for use this beatifull shader for MR: http://home.broadpark.no/~rslettli/lob_glass.html

I don't get it to used in MAX 6, please I need one help :rolleyes:

Fine thanks for all attention,

Druid®

neutronic

01-02-2005, 02:38 PM

they look like shaders ripped from pixars renderman... is that legal? Just curious myself? I have a friend who works for auto desk, and when i mentioned that some shader files had been ported from maya, he gave a look of disgust...(--edited by mods --Play nice, and no name calling ) -- the mr_classes.. are a set of functions and classes that pushes mentalray devs..they're for shaders developers and the part regarding prman.. is made to facilitate those prman shaders writers that are getting on mentalray... not last the riSpec.. are specifications that anyone can match to better integrate code between renderers.. they are made also for this.

the l_glass, it is the same as the dielettric shader

/n

JeffPatton

01-02-2005, 05:27 PM

I've added another scene to the Max7 files on my server. It's a fake dispersion shader, here's the render:
http://www.jeffpatton.net/Max7/images/Dispersion-fake.jpg

Jeff

Druid_Ctba

01-02-2005, 10:21 PM

Hi friend neutronic :)

I'm a newbie user from MR Shaders, can you help me with l-glass shader in to 3dsmax6, please?

Fine Thanks!

Druid®

P.S. I need one (scene equal to scene xsi) to 3dsmax for study!

JeffPatton

01-02-2005, 10:48 PM

Druid - Just out of curiosity, why do you need to use that particular shader over all the other glass shaders? :shrug:

At any rate, I've edited the l_glass.mi file so it will load in 3dsmax. Just copy and paste this and it should load in Max.

#:Original file from (http://home.broadpark.no/~rslettli/lob_glass.html)
#:Mail: plob at broadpark.no
#:Modified for use in 3dsmax7 by Jeff Patton on 11/12/04

declare shader
color "l_glass"
(
color "filtercolor", #: default 0.990 0.990 0.995
color "filtercolor_outside", #: default 1.0 1.0 1.0
color "diffuse", #: default 0.5 0.5 0.5
color "diffuse_back", #: default 0.5 0.5 0.5
color "diffuse_irradiance", #: default 1.0 1.0 1.0
scalar "transparency", #: default 0.0 min 0
scalar "specular_intensity", #: default 1.0 min 0 softmax 2
scalar "specular_decay", #: default 80 min 1 softmax 300
scalar "ior_inside", #: default 1.5 min 1 max 3.5
scalar "ior_outside", #: default 1.0 min 1 max 3.5
scalar "attenuation_inside", #: default 5 min 1 softmax 100
scalar "attenuation_outside", #: default 1 min 1 softmax 100
scalar "caustic_irradiance", #: default 1 min 0 max 1
boolean "enable_outside", #: default 0
integer "RR_depth", #: default 4 min 1 softmin 2 softmax 16
boolean "invert_alpha", #: default 0
boolean "diffuse_illumination", #: default 1
boolean "fast_fg", #: default 0
integer "mode", #: default 0 min 0 max 2
array light "lights"
)
version 1
apply material
#: nodeid 11971

gui "l_glass" {
control "Global" "Global" (
"uiName" "l_glass",
"category" "l_glass shader"
)

control "filtercolor" "color" (
"uiName" "filtercolor",
"value" 0.990 0.990 0.995
)
control "filtercolor_outside" "color" (
"uiName" "filtercolor_outside",
"value" 1.0 1.0 1.0
)
control "diffuse" "color" (
"uiName" "diffuse",
"value" 0.5 0.5 0.5
)
control "diffuse_back" "color" (
"uiName" "diffuse_back",
"value" 0.5 0.5 0.5
)
control "diffuse_irradiance" "color" (
"uiName" "diffuse_irradiance",
"value" 1.0 1.0 1.0
)
control "transparency" "scalar" (
"uiName" "transparency",
"value" 0.0,
"range" 0.0 100.0
)
control "specular_intensity" "scalar" (
"uiName" "specular_intensity",
"value" 1.0,
"range" 0.0 2.0
)
control "specular_decay" "scalar" (
"uiName" "specular_decay",
"value" 80.0,
"range" 1.0 300.0
)
control "ior_inside" "scalar" (
"uiName" "ior_inside",
"value" 1.5,
"range" 1.0 3.5
)
control "ior_outside" "scalar" (
"uiName" "ior_outside",
"value" 1.0,
"range" 1.0 3.5
)
control "attenuation_inside" "scalar" (
"uiName" "attenuation_inside",
"value" 5.0,
"range" 1.0 100.0
)
control "attenuation_outside" "scalar" (
"uiName" "attenuation_outside",
"value" 1.0,
"range" 1.0 100.0
)
control "caustic_irradiance" "scalar" (
"uiName" "caustic_irradiance",
"value" 1.0,
"range" 0.0 1.0
)
control "enable_outside" "boolean" (
"uiName" "enable_outside?"
)
control "RR_depth" "integer" (
"uiName" "RR_depth",
"value" 4.0,
"range" 1.0 16.0
)
control "invert_alpha" "boolean" (
"uiName" "invert_alpha?"
)
control "diffuse_illumination" "boolean" (
"uiName" "diffuse_illumination?"
)
control "fast_fg" "boolean" (
"uiName" "fast_fg?"
)
control "mode" "integer" (
"uiName" "mode",
"value" 0.0,
"range" 0.0 2.0
)
control "lights" "array light" (
"uiName" "Lights",
# "hidden",
"nonConnectable"
)
}

end declare

giacob

01-02-2005, 11:36 PM

sorry for the trivial question but can 3dmax dsplacement shader work in multi subobject material?
it seems to me it cant
in case i am right how to solve the problem? that is how to make displacement in multu suboject material?

BrianHarbauer

01-03-2005, 04:44 AM

Hey, thanks for the clear up on the shaders neutronic!:thumbsup:

Lymmen, thanks for the link. Awesome y'all!:scream:

-Brian H.

santhoshajay

01-03-2005, 11:13 AM

Hai guys...
the last 15 days was great learning experience in my life...the discusiion abt mental ray is really cool...so much i learned abt the shader...i guesss i will post some of my scenes... which i will work along Mr....
once again great job guys....:applause:

titopte

01-03-2005, 02:53 PM

Jeff,
thanks for all the time and material you are providing to all of us.
Just a quick question on the glare shader.
On the original light-me file: how did you make the sky outside, seen trought the windows, to glare? I can manage the overall effect, but thats the only thing I can´t reproduce. Is there any shader on the sky or enviroment?
Thanks in advance. :thumbsup:

JeffPatton

01-03-2005, 03:01 PM

oatz

01-03-2005, 05:30 PM

Since MR doesn't support the advanced material override material, I was wondering what the equivalent would be, or what setting to adjust to prevent a material from bleeding too much.

Thanks,

Khye

Reverender

01-04-2005, 12:50 AM

Just a quick question...I haven't quite read all the thread yet, and I'm sure there's an answer in there somewhere, however, I'll pose my question first.

I rendered a yoyo in MR with two different shaders, one render (glacier shader) taking about 2.45 hours, the next (electric blue shader) taking 9.14 hours. Here are the two images.

Yoyo Glacier Shader (http://www.metnal.com/images/3dimages/yoyo_blueshine.jpg)
Yoyo Electric Blue Shader (http://www.metnal.com/images/3dimages/yoyo_electric.jpg)

Just wondering if there was a way I could decrease the render time...info below:

I have Final Gather on, Samples: 1000, Max Radius: 2.0, Min Radius: 0.5
Using a single skylight on the scene.

Also, when rendering, it appears to take 12 "passes" when it renders. Is there a way I can avoid this, and just have it render the image the way MR normally does, with the bucket flying around everywhere?

Thanks in advance :) And super thread...great stuff in here...

JeffPatton

01-04-2005, 01:00 AM

Just wondering if there was a way I could decrease the render time...info below:

I have Final Gather on, Samples: 1000, Max Radius: 2.0, Min Radius: 0.5
Using a single skylight on the scene.

Also, when rendering, it appears to take 12 "passes" when it renders. Is there a way I can avoid this, and just have it render the image the way MR normally does, with the bucket flying around everywhere?

The 12 passes sounds like you have DOF enabled on a camera (Max standard DOF at that), turn it off and it will render one pass.

As far as speed goes, try reducing the FG samples to 20 and the min radius to .01, and the max radius to .1

Reverender

01-04-2005, 01:05 AM

Amazing. Thanks a snap.

Druid_Ctba

01-04-2005, 02:46 AM

Hi Jeff :)

Because I love it this shader :thumbsup:

Hi Lymmen :)

No running compilated shaders (is it the same that I have...) :sad:

Fine thanks,

Druid®

titopte

01-04-2005, 01:38 PM

titopte - Nothing special was used for the sky. I think the reason the sky looks the way it does is due to the glare around the window opening. If you turn off the glare and render the scene again, you'll see what I mean.Thanks Jeff for the response, i´ll check it out. but i wonder if there´s something more. Take for example the image lightme2.jpg on your site: the window on the right does have the glare effect but it doesn´t look like its borders are in light....it looks more like the sky is glaring..
I´ve been reading a little, but still don´t know if the glare post procesing takes in consideration a wider range of information than visible light..
thank you again.
breathtaking thread!:beer:

BrianHarbauer

01-04-2005, 06:32 PM

Hey titopte, from how i understand the glare shader works is it glows anything that's over a certain brightness, say if an object clips and is 100% brightness or greater, then it applies the glare effect... I haven't played with the options enough to see if this can be changed, it just works the way i like it so i use it:) But put an object in a scene, don't use any lights, and set self illumination to white add the glare shader and see if it glares, if it does, i would assume it uses brightness to calculate, after all, MR is supposed to be physically accurate right?

-Brian H.

ToddD

01-04-2005, 10:50 PM

About the glare shader, I believe even a "hot" specular highlight will receive a bit of glare. I made a glowing pumpkin a while back, and I seem to remember glare affecting the bright speculars, so it stands to reason that it may be brightness related.

micco

01-05-2005, 11:02 AM

Does anyone know how this gg_fakefur work? And what should the result look like? Should it be like some sort of bump or displacement shader?

BrianHarbauer

01-06-2005, 12:08 AM

Yeah, i checked the documentation for gg_fur and the others and all it seems to mention is maya and how to get it to work with maya, no mention of max... so i assum it only works with maya and needs to be ported to max somehow. I maybe missing something as i am no genius when it comes to figuring out how MR shaders work. Maybe i'll look up the email on their website and ask if they have a version for max? I don't know how to port shaders plus, from what i read they asked for the files not to be changed and tampered and stuff, so, i'll respect that. I guess that means i'll fire off an email to them and ask them to support max?

-Brian H.

Lordrych

01-06-2005, 02:59 AM

ok guys i said i was gonna try and get a satin shader this is where i am so far, I took the velvet shader from the free library and tweaked it a bit and got this........... The only thing i can't seem to work in is the transparency, I will tweak it a bit more and see what i can come up with!

http://www.myzoo2u.com/Baron/satin.gif

ILS

01-06-2005, 07:03 AM

looks nice how are the render times?

JeffPatton

01-06-2005, 09:21 AM

Here's my first stab at the satin shader:
http://www.jeffpatton.net/cg-post/mr-satin.jpg

It's using the fast skin SSS shader..however I need to adjust the settings further before I'm happy with the shader.

Lordrych - I think you're heading in the right direction. I like the specular highlights but the material looks a bit rubbery or thick? Maybe it has to do with the transparancy issue you mentioned? My current test material isn't transparant either, that's what I hope to fix as well.

Lordrych

01-06-2005, 10:51 AM

yeah I think we both have the same problem i am thinking the transparency bit will fix it, maybe give it more of a suttle feel, but jeff your's looks pretty good, as far as rendering time, bout 30 seconds...........not bad at all

Rych

InuxMedia

01-06-2005, 11:11 AM

Hmm, does anyone know how to get soft raytrace shadows? All of mine are sharp and that's not what I need.

Thanks.

Lordrych

01-06-2005, 12:13 PM

OK, so I was playing around with it and found out i had a falloff map in my transparency slot............lol that is why i couldn't get the transparency to work!

after all the effort this is what i got! I will do a beauty render later just thought i would plop down this image

http://www.myzoo2u.com/Baron/satin2.gif

InuxMedia - i have always found if i want soft shadows i used shadow map shadows, then i put raytraced shadows on a light with less Intensity to get a soft sharp shadow, has always worked pretty well for me

titopte

01-06-2005, 01:45 PM

Thanks Jeff, avkid85 and tbonz816 for your suggestions.
Just trying with the glare and I suppose it affects the sky balancing the background color and the overall illumination on the scene. I tryed brighter skies and MR glared them.
Thanks again for all the information in the thread. I am beggining with MR and hope to contribute in any way soon.

:)

JeffPatton

01-06-2005, 10:10 PM

Lordrych - That's looking great!

InuxMedia - You can enable the area light option of a mental ray light for soft shadows.

panrok

01-07-2005, 01:58 PM

hi ! my name is oliver and i am an photonoholic .

i spend the last few days reading this thread and trying things out, thanks to jeff and all the guys spending their time and sharing their knowledge . during the design process for architectural renderings i usually lighten scenes with fakiosity/lightdome techniques . since max 6 i'm trying to render with mental ray (sometimes i'm lucky with that, sometimes not) . my question is ... does someone have experience with huge outdoor / mental ray scenes with thousends of polygons ? sun & skylight with gi and final gather takes pretty too much time with not so good results ...

here are some images of the scene ...

http://www.panrok.com/CGTalk/cgtalk_001.jpg

http://www.panrok.com/CGTalk/cgtalk_002.jpg

in this case i tried the new? ambient/reflective occlusion shader with no lights at all. is the dirtmap shader better ? or faster ?

any hints are welcome,

thanks, oliver

joske

01-07-2005, 03:48 PM

my question is ... does someone have experience with huge outdoor / mental ray scenes with thousends of polygons ? sun & skylight with gi and final gather takes pretty too much time with not so good results ...
any hints are welcome,

thanks, oliver
yes,
but because this thread is for shaders and not lightsetup, and we are already reaching post 1856 (http://www.cgtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1869384&postcount=1856) and have 124 pages it would be better to try and have this subject in another thread... :rolleyes: :curious:

LarsSon

01-08-2005, 07:43 AM

How to avoid this?

http://www.imagevenue.com/loc69/_cgtalk_disp.jpg

I'm using max smoke map in displacement slot. I think that the problem is quite simpple. If i'm using bw map (8 bit), i can have only 256 different displacement values. Correct? But how can i use 24 bit colour map? How can i have more "levels"?

Was this shader related? Not sure... Thanks anyway!

panrok

01-08-2005, 10:27 AM

@ joske : sorry, my shader related question was beneath the images ...

where i wanted to know the difference between the ambient/reflective occlusion shader and the dirtmap shader ?

have a nice weekend, oliver

JeffPatton

01-09-2005, 05:53 PM

Beautiful models panrok. IMO I think Max7's ambient occlusion shader is slightly faster than the dirtmap shader.

OT:
Another idea on creating an occlusion pass, put a skylight in your scene (white in color of course). Then adjust the FG falloff amounts to something like 0.0 and 5.0 (these numbers will vary depending on the scale of your scene). Use the radius settings too (small numbers again like .1 and .01), and a small amount of FG samples (like 20 or so).

Eugenio

01-10-2005, 01:50 PM

After having a hard time trying to find a way to achieve real anisotropic reflections, I finally got it! :)

Using the Deriver shader with the ReflectionUtility shader, we can do real anisotropic reflections with Mental Ray, and with a very good flexibility, in fact, they seem to be done one for another.

For this to work we need to put in the surface slot of the material the Deriver shader, the mode must be 2 and in it's passtrough parameter we put the ReflectionUtility, course we need to blur our reflection and increase the BlurredTraceDepth parameter to something more than zero, a value of 3 at least is enough, and down the shader there is the controls for the anisotropic effect. ReflectionUtility has it's own passtrough shader just to create derivatives of the surfaces but it doesn't work, then I was reading about deriver and it creates derivatives for poligonal objects, this is why it works.

Another thing that is very good is that we can to control the north pole with the Deriver shader and even we can to wire this parameter with the position of an object, what give us a really good control over the shader.

Sorry but I have no host to post images, but anyone interested can write an email to geniun@gmx.net that I can to send the shaders with a max file. And I will put this at the Discreet webboard and attach the files, then people can go there too...If you search for Deriver and ReflectionUtility in this thread you will find the shaders already converted to max, though...

Regards,

Jr.

ILS

01-12-2005, 12:58 AM

i thought Deriver was only compatible with XSI, how did you get it to work with max.

Eugenio

01-12-2005, 01:48 AM

Hi ILS!

If you search this thread you will find deriver converted to Max...it's just a matter of creating a .mi file, the .dll can be the same as the XSI version...this means that we can probably convert all the XSI shader for max... :)

Regards,

Jr.

ILS

01-12-2005, 02:36 AM

thanks

you can post your image using this free site.

http://www.imageshack.us/

psv

01-12-2005, 07:05 AM

eugenio , the mi file of the deriver shader ported to max by jan sandstorm at page 56 give`s an max error, but,,,,incredible it works... :applause:
i`m wondering if you got a mi file wich doesn`t give an error.....
everything goes fine with deriver +reflection utility, except a slight curvature in reflection.....any workaround for that?

Eugenio

01-12-2005, 12:21 PM

Thanks a lot for the link ILS!!! very usefull indeed...

PSV, mail me at geniun@gmx.net that I will send the shaders to you, they work fine to me and I've made some modifications to the reflectionUtility to make the default values to be none zero, what gives a better starting point...About the curvature in reflection, I never have notice this, but it may be the north position in the deriver shader or something...

Finally I can show some images... :)

http://img139.exs.cx/img139/6493/file7vp.jpg

Regards,

Jr.

ILS

01-12-2005, 01:07 PM

this is the .mi file i used and i had no errors

http://www.cgtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-104578-p-4.html

posted by Pixero

i still have trouble finding the reflectionutility shader for max.

can you post some parameters that you have used for those.

Eugenio

01-12-2005, 01:41 PM

Yes, Pixero really was a nice guy converting not only deriver but other shaders too...

If you are having any problems, send an email to geniun@gmx.net that I'll send you the shaders and the max files, I think this is the easiest way...

Regards,

Jr.

mengy

01-12-2005, 08:12 PM

I've read through most of the thread. Great thread! I'm working on a project involving carbon fiber. I'm confused on the Shelic mat used. Is it a Standard mat with raytrace+falloff on reflection or what? The carbon fiber mat that was included in the collection file didn't work for me.

amir elhossiny

01-13-2005, 01:01 AM

Eugenio, thank you for the shaders
but please

3ds max7 >>>mental ray directory include 4 folders
1)..dev
2)..shaders 3rd-party
3)..shaders autoload
4)..shaders standard

okay...now all those folders have a folder called ((include))
i need to know where to put the dll file and the mi as well

and about the (( l glass )) ...jeff said copy and past
i think i will convert the text file to>>> mi file am i right???
then about the DLL file what dll maya or xsi for use with max7
then where to put it ...im sory ...im a beginner :)

rlph.

01-13-2005, 07:51 AM

Both shaders (deriver and reflectionutility) can be found at support.discreet.com's mental ray section.

nudelsalat

01-13-2005, 05:21 PM

Reverender

01-13-2005, 08:39 PM

Hello, a few moths ago I saw that some users tried to generate caustics with reflexions. I remember, someone could do it with Maya but not with 3ds max. Is it possible, to do it in 3ds max7? I need this effect for a physic presentation. :)

Quite possible.

Indirect illumination: caustics

Enhances realism by simulating light reflection and refraction
Creates the effects of light cast onto an object via reflection off or refraction through another object
Achieves challenging effects such as light bending through glass, or light bouncing off a pool of water and against a wall
Discreet's MR page is here (http://www4.discreet.com/3dsmax/3dsmax.php?id=400). Tech specs for Mental Ray (http://www4.discreet.com/files/3dsmax/mentalray_techspec.pdf).

JeffPatton

01-14-2005, 07:52 AM

Nice find Eugenio! I think that works pretty darn well. Thanks for the tip!
http://www.jeffpatton.net/cg-post/mr-anisotropic.jpg

ILS

01-15-2005, 06:58 AM

micco

01-15-2005, 11:24 AM

Excuse my stupidity but where do you put that Deriver shader?

ILS

01-16-2005, 09:43 AM

Using the Deriver shader with the ReflectionUtility shader.

For this to work we need to put in the surface slot of the material the Deriver shader, the mode must be 2 and in it's passtrough parameter we put the ReflectionUtility, course we need to blur our reflection and increase the BlurredTraceDepth parameter to something more than zero, a value of 3 at least is enough, and down the shader there is the controls for the anisotropic effect. ReflectionUtility has it's own passtrough shader just to create derivatives of the surfaces but it doesn't work, then I was reading about deriver and it creates derivatives for poligonal objects, this is why it works.
Jr.

this is pretty much all you need to know

micco

01-16-2005, 10:10 AM

Aargh... I forgot that reflectionUtility. No wonder it didn't work.. :banghead:

giacob

01-16-2005, 01:57 PM

i have tried applying to the sub-materials of a multi sub object material the simple contour and mr displacement shader in mr extention slots of the submaterial but it seems not to work...why?
in case these shaders dont work with standard multi sub object materials is there an alternative to the standard multi sub object material in mr that allow applying the beforementioned shaders ?

stefan

01-17-2005, 02:23 PM

Multi mater and Multi Displ.
U need to cheat a little bit. Create Your multimatter with all Your maps. Then create empty mental ray matterial and into the surface slot put "material to shader" conection. Into this put Your multimat.
Into displ slot /of mental ray mat/ put "3d Displacement" and U woud think that into this shoud go MultiMat but WRONG. Into 3dDispl U must put some map /Output,Noise,etc./ Into this U must put "material to shader" and then U can use multi material but with displacement maps in difuse slots of MultiMat childs. It is strange but it works. U must be cerfull becouse U coud easy lost Yourself in material editor.

MikeBracken

01-17-2005, 11:18 PM

I dont think this is the correct thread to post lighting questions....any suggestions on mental ray lighting threads?I have learned so much from reading this thread so i thought id ask.Thanks....MmikeE

MikeBracken

01-18-2005, 12:22 AM

Whats a good lighting thread for mental ray and studio max? Sorry for posting here, but wasnt sure where to ask.Thanks.

btw....I love this thread.....so many great tips.....thanks!

Druid_Ctba

01-18-2005, 03:41 AM

Hi Jeff :)

Fine thanks for l-glass.mi, but my problem are: how to used this shader, because I don't know to used with map shader?

Fine thanks for your attention,

Druid®

P.S. Can you cloned scene from original sample in XSI to MAX?

jason-slab

01-18-2005, 07:43 AM

ummm hmm maybe i'm reading to quickly but where can i find the deriver shader?thx
|jason

_XenO_

01-18-2005, 10:50 AM

I saw in another thread about this problem and have replied here

http://www.cgtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1901168&postcount=21

since it related to mental ray you guys may find it useful or have solved it already and its not an issue anymore..coolo

Jeff im sure all gi renderers produce flickering if the seetings arent quite right, and theres probably various ways to zap it in each one too so its not an issue.

yeha

Xen0

mangolight

01-18-2005, 02:30 PM

Hello my dear friends!, i have some troubles here, i don´t know how to control de photon emition from the woodboards floor(image below), i think the entire room becomes too orange.

http://userpics.hi5.com/userpics/5/9288395.img.jpg
I actually use the architectural materials, and one MR aera spotlight (GI+FG), but i don´t feel satisfied with the render, i would like to have more contrast between the object and its shadow. I try to use the shaders(photon basic shader in the photon slot) but the room becomes even more orange.....í don´t know anymore what to do!!!, i´m becomin´crazy! oh,Jeff Patton! help me!

Victor from Perú
sorry for my bad bad english

jophus14

01-18-2005, 11:23 PM

CoreyJAvitar

01-20-2005, 09:01 PM

Moderaters: How come this thread isn't sticky????

What exactly do you mean by triangles?

rlph.

01-20-2005, 09:10 PM

I just starting to use MR. I have a question for everyone and i do appreciate everyones help on this forum, but what does it mean and how can i fix my image when the shadows are coming out as triangles? Thanks.......................Jophus

shadowmap resolution is too low? Btw, lets try to keep this thread about shaders. Start a new thread if that shadowmap size doesnt fix your problem.

CoreyJAvitar

01-20-2005, 09:42 PM

I'm looking for a clay shader. one that gives me a result that looks like these images:
http://www.boring3d.com/daily_archive.htm
I know it can be gotten using Subsurface scattering, but I don't know how to adjust values and such to get there.
Any input would rock!
Thanks.

jophus14

01-20-2005, 11:40 PM

That persons work is unbelievable. I love the ideas, lighting, textures, etc. That has to be hard to think of something short yet clever and get those results daily.

stefan

01-21-2005, 02:35 AM

Is there A way to use SSS shader with opacity?

ILS

01-21-2005, 02:46 AM

it could just be done with light tracer+skylight with common renderer - that sometimes makes it look claylike. maybe increase it to one bounce and play with angle a bit.

CoreyJAvitar

01-21-2005, 03:12 AM

Thanks for the tips Markus. Indeed there are some issues I cant seem to get around. For example, once the material is placed into the surface slot, how do you adjust the specular, gloss or reflections?

Another render:
http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/athena3.jpg

Jeff patton, you are amazing!
does anyone know how to get this kind of waxy feel?
I have MR_SSS, I just don't know how to use it! a screenshot maybe?
I was thinking if that I could just make this material a bit more opaque in order to get a clay like feeling.
thanks in advance.
Murphy

Geonome

01-21-2005, 02:42 PM

Wow, This thread is awesome.
I have learnt a ton by just reading
through it all and starting to playt
with MR shader combinations.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned
and am sure will be useful to quite a
few is how to produce the effect given
by Max's matte/shadow material.
Obviously MR doesn't play with this
shader (as i have just learn't playing
around and updating one of my older
scenes) So anyone have any ideas
how to produce the same effect?

Regards
Geonome

CoreyJAvitar

01-21-2005, 11:55 PM

Here is the Halyava model with some of the AWESOME materials from this thread applied.
Lit with 1 skylight and 1 direct light.
Thanks for the sweet materials guys!
http://www.3d-hub.com/Halyava_CGTALK.jpg
..:: Murphy ::..

whtnoise

01-22-2005, 09:38 PM

sorry to bring this one up again - i'm wondering if there's anyone who could post a scene using the deriver+reflection utility method, i'm having a hard time getting this one to work right, everything seems fine - except for the anistropic setting, absolutely no difference in renders between values of 0 and 1, i'm stumped... in light of that, what i'm trying to accomplish here is shading an aluminum can, coke can or whatever else, with proper anistropic reflections on the top and bottom of the can. any help would be GREATLY appreciated :D

thanks!

JeffPatton

01-22-2005, 09:49 PM

Use a number higher than 1 for the anisotropic effect. If it won't let you use a higher number than 1.0 then it's locked at that amount in the .mi file. Simply edit the reflectionutility.mi file (just open it in wordpad) and change it from 0 to 1 to 0 to 100....easy to fix.

I used 25.0 in my example image posted earlier.

whtnoise

01-22-2005, 10:03 PM

jeff...

...dude...

you rock.

JeffPatton

01-22-2005, 10:42 PM

i'm not sure if i'm doing anything wrong but to my understanding deriver shader calculated the north location with respect to the world coordinates not the object - and suppose that one would want to animate an object with an anisotropic reflection it would be rather cumbersome - since the north stays still and the object moves. I too found that the reflection starts to bend a warp when i try to achieve long but crisp reflections. i think it is mainly because these shaders can only perform reflections where the grain has a circular pattern. i'm not sure if i'm correct but i would like to hear some of your responces on this.
I think your findings are spot on. I found the same results with warping. Would be great if the shader had the option of object level control of the coordinates.

@CoreyJAvitar - If your looking to make clay, maybe this thread will help:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=185718&highlight=sculpy

CoreyJAvitar

01-23-2005, 01:29 AM

Hey thanks for the link!
I want something like the SSS skin shader, but in max 6. (lacking the budget for Max 7).
thanks!

JasonCamp

01-23-2005, 11:43 PM

well ive been tring to create a perfict glass texture for the past month and sofar i had it going well with glass lume but then i realised what if i wanted to do a form of overlay to create a soap scum, waterspot or dust like feel.. uhg anyways i messed around with a normal raytrace and parti volume and i got the same type effect in like a day <-shoots self :scream: anyways looks like everybods having a great time with max7 while im still bumbling around in 6 ... im tring to get mr_subscatter to work because ive had plenty of while rendering time to surf the various forums here and seen a mov showing off the power of mr subscatter... just found jeffs post saying he fixed it in the mi file... gonna try that later tonight if i get a chance.. while messing around with parti volume i got to lookin and was thinking if i set it right whats the diffence anyways? can anybody tell ? i mean it seams to be scattering the same way mr_subscatter was from how i could tell and diffusion also ,, hmmh maybe its just me ... also i think i bumbled on how to get caustic volume with hdri as well.. ill find out in a hour cuz im on my damn laptop at work lol sorta slow ... take this file home and it renders in like 1 1/2 mins uhg .. er how are you guys doing a bump map for your diffusion and mr_subscatters and such other shaders ... with a shellac ? or something ...

minimi13

01-24-2005, 06:45 PM

Hello,

I have a problem with the SSS Skin Material when I use it with a Multi/Sub-Object Material. I don't know if someone here in this thread can help me with this, but here is my problem:

I'm currently starting to texture a character and already did the UVs. I divided the the Editable Poly in 5 Material IDs (head, body, arms...), so i can paint a hi-res texture for for each Material ID.

My Problem here is, that I want to use the Mental Ray SSS Fast Skin Material for every Material ID.
So I made a Multi/Sub-Object Material with 5 SubMaterials and assigned the Mental Ray SSS Skin Material to each SubMaterial (1-5).

I didn't use any textures yet and when I rendered the object it seems that the SSS Shader is not working as it should. Because when I assign one SSS Shader to the whole object it works just perfect.

Here is a small test scene I created and the rendered image (ON THE RIGHT THERE IS JUST ONE MATERIAL ASSIGNED AND ON THE LEFT THE OBJECT HAS A MULTI/SUB-OBJECT MATERIAL WITH 2 MATERIAL IDs)

Am I doing something totally wrong or what ?
I hope that someone can help me to get this working as it should.
Thank you very much in advance.

Mental Ray SSS Skin Shader Multi/Sub-Object Material Test File (http://hometown.aol.de/TrompaP/CG/MentalRaySSS-Test.max)

http://hometown.aol.de/TrompaP/CG/Mental+Ray+SSS+Skin+Shader+Multi-Sub-Object+Material+Test.jpg

loran

01-25-2005, 09:41 AM

Yo people!
Anyone see the beautifull Maxwell renders? can we do the same using MR gi??
http://www.richardrosenman.com/maxwell.htm

LETS CHALLENGE THIS!!!

a plug in is used to achieve this geometry complexity in one clic. grab this here:
http://www.maxplugins.de/r6_files/hudson/Greeble6.zip

JeffPatton

01-25-2005, 12:42 PM

Loran - That's moreso a lighting challenge and not really textures right? Therefore, you should probably start a new thread on that out in the general section. Besides, I'm sure people with Brazil, Vray, and Final Render would want to try that as well. :thumbsup:

Also these type questions have the possiblity to turn into a render flame war....I'd hate to see that happen within this thread.

loran

01-25-2005, 02:29 PM

I just want to know if MR can render real exterior GI. and how to do that!!
I try and try to achiev a real GI and always fail. .. The MAXWELL example using !greeble is a fine choice , because many example for MR use a teapot or a poor geometry on an infinite plane, and this is the easyer to achiev.
I need help to setting this kind of render in MR.
Thanks!

JeffPatton

01-25-2005, 02:42 PM

Loran, I posted this a few days back (might be a good start):
My Skydome Tutorial (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=202955)

I made that after looking at Richard Rosenman's site (amazing renders at his site eh?)...His tests totally inspired me to try and re-create that Maxwell style lighting. I'm keeping a close eye on that Maxwell....I love it's "look".

loran

01-25-2005, 04:59 PM

this doesn't answer the question. the question is Real Gi with far light bounces.
your geometry is always facing a light emitter (your sky).

here is my test
http://forumel.free.fr/mentalray/greeble03-1.jpg
9min52sec on a dual 2.8Ghz Xeon

the MR problem is that I can't boost secondary bounce without having light bug on the geometry. So the bounce create a "hard" lightning, contrary to other Renderer like this one

http://www.richardrosenman.com/maxwell.htm

AFL_Han

01-25-2005, 07:08 PM

Best thing would be if Maxell and Mental images would become allies and combine these 2 renders :love::deal: lol
Anyway is there a way to achieve real dispersion with mentalray ??
I know we had this earlier in th thread .... but i didnt really find anything that could help me. or am i just plain stupid lol.
I heard of real dispersion in Maya but in dont know how that could help me cause im a nub :scream:

francescaluce

01-25-2005, 07:23 PM

this doesn't answer the question. the question is Real Gi with far light bounces. then use GI. you can't obtain that look (light bounces in penumbra areas) with only finalgathering for the moment (you can ofcourse simulate it with some well placed lights..), because fg has only one bounce.. the upcoming mr3.4 release will have 'finally' multiple bounces. if you are wondering to use no fictious lights.. until mentalray support arbitrary geometries as area lights.. you could make a dome sphere emitting photons... but you'll need some hacks on the mi scene file to achive this from 3dsmax scenes.

ciao
francesca

JeffPatton

01-25-2005, 08:18 PM

this doesn't answer the question. the question is Real Gi with far light bounces.
your geometry is always facing a light emitter (your sky).
I'm not sure I totally understand your point (I should enclose the mesh more?). I did use photons (GI) in addition to FG. But I'll render a mesh similar to yours with some openings in the top but mostly enclosed. However I'm going to post it in that thread I put a link to earlier (skydome thread). Because I don't feel this is the proper thread for these lighting tests. Please don't take this wrong, I am totally interested in learning ways to recreate the Maxwell Render look (just as you are) and I look forward to having your feedback in that thread. :thumbsup:

Francesca - COOL! thanks for the news about the MR3.4. That'll be great if they add an easy GI bounce option!

ToddD

01-25-2005, 08:24 PM

I am interested as well, I am going to check that lighting thread out right away.

francescaluce, could you post your source for that bounces info in the lighting thread I'd like to read more about that.

Anyway, back on topic---SHADERS! ;)

Todd

loran

01-26-2005, 07:49 AM

Originally Posted by francescaluce
then use GI. you can't obtain that look (light bounces in penumbra areas) with only finalgathering for the moment
Do really think I use only Fg to render this??http://forumel.free.fr/mentalray/greeble03-1.jpg
This is a mental ray render, one light and one sky light, GI+fg.

Originally Posted by francescaluce
you could make a dome sphere emitting photons
Ah!! that would be my next wish! We cant use an lone skylight to do GI because Skylight doesn't emitt photons. If we could emit photon from autoluiminescent object taht could be great. Any solutions??

Originally Posted by Patton
I don't feel this is the proper thread for these lighting tests
eh?? Am I wrong or are we on a Mental Ray Thread?? I m looking for good settings in MR that all.

Originally Posted by Patton
I am totally interested in learning ways to recreate the Maxwell Render look
I dont want to mimic MAXWELL in particular! I want A REAL GI with Mental ray !!

I think it's a priority to have possibility of a good interior and outdoor realistic render with highend Renderer because the real use of that renderer are principally Architectural preview and FX. Caustics for example are use for real in ...0.005% of CGI work in the world .

loran

01-26-2005, 09:05 AM

here is a new testabout GI in MR. The aim is Real GI. I mean indirect illumination produce by only light bounce.

first image: one skylight and one spot- Global illumination+Final gatherhttp://forumel.free.fr/mentalray/scupltur01.jpg

one skylight and one spot- Final gather alonehttp://forumel.free.fr/mentalray/scupltur02.jpg

one skylight and one spot-no Indirect Illumnation
http://forumel.free.fr/mentalray/scupltur03.jpg

JeffPatton

01-26-2005, 01:28 PM

eh?? Am I wrong or are we on a Mental Ray Thread?? I m looking for good settings in MR that all.

Well, Yes...in this issue you're half wrong. The title of this thread clearly states "Mental Ray Shader Discussion"...Let me also quote Equinoxx, the Moderator who set this thread up (you can find this on page 1...very first paragraph.)
"Note from moderator
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, Equinoxx"

EDIT: I removed my extra comments. The quote above should suffice.

Kiko Buyo

01-26-2005, 04:54 PM

Is there a way where I can render to texture on a MR object. I mean Im trying it out and the results are not comming out. its just black is there a setting I can do?

JeffPatton

01-26-2005, 09:49 PM

Kiko - I don't have anything to offer regarding texture baking with MR. I haven't tried that. Hopefully someone will come along and give you some advice.

Bronze shader:
I've been working on a bronze shader. It uses the ambient occlusion shader as a mask (think dirtmap), between shiney and dull materials. Any tips to improve it?
http://www.jeffpatton.net/cg-post/mr-bronze.jpg

jophus14

01-26-2005, 10:42 PM

Jeff: You and your work are unbelievable. I'm not that good at working with MR, but i visited your site and seem to learn a little each time i visit. Keep up the great work and thanks for helping out noobs like myself.

AFL_Han

01-27-2005, 09:30 AM

Great work on that bronze shader as always :applause: but is it just me or are the dark areas maybe a bit too dark ?? could be the lighting tho :shrug:

jason-slab

01-27-2005, 12:40 PM

vERY cool jeff, great idea!! are u comping it in photoshop? or is that a straight render

|jason

AdrianWilliams

01-27-2005, 12:45 PM

nice work jeff! but i think the transition between the two colores is a bit sharp the greener color is a but to much if you can try a bit more of the browny bronze

-just my opinion-

maxFX

01-27-2005, 12:47 PM

Jeff : I N C R E D I B L E !!!

Very nice implementation!!! I really like the glossiness of the old metal.....so nice blended with dirt and oldness! Now, dont be shy and share your shader with everyone else! :)

keep up the good work!

JeffPatton

01-27-2005, 01:21 PM

vERY cool jeff, great idea!! are u comping it in photoshop? or is that a straight render
|jason
That's how it renders, no comping.

dont be shy and share your shader with everyone else! I will add it to the .mat file once I'm satisfied with the shader.

i think the transition between the two colores is a bit sharp the greener color is a but to much if you can try a bit more of the browny bronze
I agree. I've seen some with the green though. I think it might be best for me to make two versions. A green version and a brown version.

jophus14 - Thank you, glad the info helps out. :thumbsup:

dtkubina

01-28-2005, 01:35 AM

great thread kids, just wish my brain was more adept at absorbing everything:thumbsup:

Ive got the same question as Kiko, seems render to texture in max 6 doesn't work with MR, is there any other way to render a MR dirtmap to a mapped texture file?
DK

Vinny74

01-28-2005, 12:36 PM

Is there another shader (apart from ReflectionUtility) that can be placed in the passthrough slot on the Deriver shader?
I want to create a material in Max 7 that reflects maybe 80% light sources, and 20% environment.
I have a brushed metal gas hob that reflects all the lights in my kitchen VERY well, but BARELY reflects cooking pans placed directly onto it.
The combination of Deriver and ReflectionUtility may work well for standard brushed metal surfaces but will not work in this instance.
PLEASE HELP

loran

01-28-2005, 02:58 PM

okok... I appologize about the light tests I shared before on this MATERIAL thread...

Everyone see that commercial rendered with MR :
http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/1443/

the SSS skin shader is so nice!!!
There is a real lack of tutorial about that great shader in 3dsmax7... anyone could show some tips? ore scene??
Thanks

PS: for Jeff Patton : Grrrrrrr....
;)

JeffPatton

01-28-2005, 03:08 PM

Skin shader tips: http://www.lamrug.org/resources/skintips.html

InuxMedia

01-29-2005, 08:01 PM

Anyone know how to make something glow? Or maybe it looks like it's glowing when light hits it? Seems like something simple but hey, I'm an idiot.

ToddD

01-29-2005, 09:38 PM

InuxMedia, you have a couple of options.
Glow lume in the lumination slot
Self illuminated materials with output maps

Hope that helps, good luck!

Todd

InuxMedia

01-29-2005, 10:31 PM

Still no glow. I've never used Lume shaders before and I'm very new to Mental Ray... A detailed breakdown would be great haha.

ToddD

01-29-2005, 10:58 PM

You need to enable final gather, that is probably what is missing from the mix ;)

BrianHarbauer

01-30-2005, 01:33 AM

Hey Jeff, Awesome work with Bronze Shader, i honestly like the green, it seems more weathered and corroded. Green version, maybe the most corroded parts could turn white? I maybe thinking with copper in my mind.... speaking of copper, maybe just a couple tweaks and you'd have a nice oxidized copper shader.

I hold your work in high regard
-Brian H.

InuxMedia

01-30-2005, 02:48 AM

You need to enable final gather, that is probably what is missing from the mix ;)

Still nothing.

Although, the final gathering calculations sure did take a long time, what does it actually do?

Perfect example of the glow I'm trying to get:
http://bois.nicolas.free.fr/canti1.jpg <-- Made by Haddes

The screen on the head of Kanti is the glow I'm trying to get. I'd also like to get the glow from the light bouncing off of it. Hard to see, but it's somewhat clear on the left shoulder behind the dark blue background.

ILS

01-30-2005, 07:34 AM

ILS

01-30-2005, 07:42 AM

as for the bounced light same thing. in your deffuse slot apply falloff with light /shade option and into the light apply your output materila and into the shadow apply your regular texture. same as before use logorithmic exposery control to get the desired effect.

no need for final gather for any of the 2 examples

ToddD

01-30-2005, 03:55 PM

Sorry InuxMedia (member.php?u=116180) I thought initially you wanted glow like output or light---misread :/

ILS gave a good solution, again I read that quick sorry for the confusion.

Todd

JasonCamp

01-30-2005, 04:51 PM

hey guys , i was messing around with the transmat photon and parti volume and stumbled on a glow type effect... ill have to bring my laptop in to work tomarrow and post the file to show you what it is ... also i made some other strange efx , one happened to look like a black light effect... crazy stuff.. ehh sucks when your not tring to do it but still good incase i ever need that hehh, damn i knew i should have brought my laptop to work today... ah well

InuxMedia

01-30-2005, 05:42 PM

this works for me the best in the renderer tab assign glare to the output. and in the metal ray put output into the surface slot increase the output amount to about 1.5 and for glare shader use quality 3 or 4 otherwise there is no glow. and use a logorithmic exposer control to make it as smooth or as bright as you want.

Wait wait, I'm lost at the beginning haha. Under the Renderer tab, I see the output thing. When I click on it though, there is no glare available.

JeffPatton

01-30-2005, 05:49 PM

glow & glare have been covered many, many times in this thread (and others out in the main 3ds forum). You might want to go through this thread from beginning to end, or use the search function to narrow your results:
http://www.jeffpatton.net/CG-post/searchbutton.jpg

InuxMedia

01-30-2005, 05:57 PM

Sorry Jeff.

Nice bronze material by the way.

JeffPatton

01-30-2005, 06:02 PM

No need to appologize man, this thread's a beast to search through. It might be easier for you to just grab some of the sample scenes from my website and deconstruct them to find out why your not getting the results you want.

I have instructions on unlocking the glare shader on my site too. Link to my site is in my sig at the bottom and on the first post in this thread.

ILS

01-30-2005, 07:28 PM

we need a table of contents for this thread.

whtnoise

01-31-2005, 04:16 AM

i agree on the table of contents deal, would make things soooo much easier...

anyways - on another note - i did this test up real quick today, thought i would try out jeff's amb occ as a mask trick - while it doesn't really show up great here, i can see where it would come in handy, integrating into your shading tree could eliminate alot of texture seaming issues, etc - as well as the need to run seperate passes... dgs base, amb occ diffuse mask, landscape (lume) for the texture.

just a little bit'o pretzely goodness :)

http://www.bloomindustrie.com/tmp/pretzelRender_02.jpg

JeffPatton

01-31-2005, 04:19 PM

I've added a small table of contents to the first post. Hope that makes life somewhat easier for people just finding this thread.

JasonCamp

01-31-2005, 05:21 PM

btw whtnoise- awesome pretzel it makes me want to go out and get some heh

hey everybody dont ask how i did this because im still tring to find out myself heh , i was tring to just add volume to my button lens lol and i forgot what i was doing but it accually worked well .. heh i didnt think it was possable to do glow or glare withought it being a shader or something but it seams that its doing it here... also i made some other crazy neon blacklite thing like i was saying yesterday , heh oh yea ill post the max file here in a bit when i find a cd , heh i think i nailed my glass i was going for on try 30 but heh im still working on it for some reason.. er anybody know why the mr upload site is down ? or is it my connection .. anyways ill just post them here

JasonCamp

01-31-2005, 06:07 PM

did i mention how much i hate floppy drives and there limited capacity ?http://www.cgtalk.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

also there is a 97 k limit on zip files here... so i guess i wont be uploading it here .. if the frodo mr upload site comes back up or if anybody has a file storage place they know of then ill upload it there sorry guys

JasonCamp

01-31-2005, 06:33 PM

well by doing a "search" i found that deetee downed his server because ppl were posting porn on it , wich pisses me off too because i also had a lot of stuff i still wanted to get from it that i haddent got the chance to test out ..
well here is the closest glass that i have been able to do .. its almost perfict i just need to lessen the glass volume a bit wich i think i know how to do.. er maybe not lol

loran

02-01-2005, 09:52 AM

YOOOOOOOO!
here my latest Skin test. I m inpired by the following commercial MR rendered.
I like their skin shader so much! But I can t achieve a transparent skin as they do. Transluscent is ok but NO layered transparency. See What I mean? Any help? thanks for comments .

http://forumel.free.fr/mentalray/wormy.jpg

dynamic duotone

02-01-2005, 02:45 PM

Yuck, you sick little monkey! LOL

But the SSS looks great! - did you use one of the misss Mental Ray shaders to do that? Would you mind giving some pointers on your lighting setup? did you use an HDRI, FG, GI, spotlights, point lights?

DD

loran

02-01-2005, 02:54 PM

U like my crappy nob head ? :)
it s max7 sss fast skin material (+displass mi)
3 standarts spot light casting raytrace shadows and a standart omni
no FG, no Hrdi, no GI.

JasonCamp

02-01-2005, 04:48 PM

loran that is the most discusting skin shader ive seen... i love it !, looks like the perfict amount of scattering , maybe a little bit less on the white parts .. but it could be that there is the 3 spot lights ... and its just really bright ... probably what it is /// lol the model looks like it is even discusted lol

JAF

02-01-2005, 08:29 PM

This thread is very nice but some of you speaking about to share some shaders to the community and... nothing. Could you open a paypal link or something so? Showing us nice shaders and nothing more is so frustrating. Sharing a shader test has a lot of chance to receive news settings and improvements. Just my stupid opinion.
Jeff Patton did an incredible work here, and his shared website is showing us the real power of the sharing work to the community. He should receive, i agree, some cash for that, or an award, just for his RARE & GREAT mentality.
I'm a noob in 3D but i read you, and when i'll be able to share something interesting to cgtalk members, i'll do it. I just think the real sharing man in this thread is Jeff, due to the Deetee's server death... Union is power and don't forget the noobs strangers plz, i paid my mentalray licence too...

Just try to understand my bad english and you'll understand my problem ;)
Sry for this post and "keep it up"

JasonCamp

02-01-2005, 08:57 PM

hey jaf , dont missunderstand me i would like to share my shader, hell even the models in the scene with everybody to show what ive been working on for the past 2 months , it was an accident but i stumbled onto something cool, i have shared some stuff too like how to do a glare shader with streaking ... wich accually doesnt work as well as this new way but it was a hell of a lot faster render wise , it was all on deetee's server.. and when i went yesterday to put my scene on there i couldnt get in ... and searched to see why not sence i am in the navy and am gone so much i miss out on a lot "A LOT" when i found out why it made me mad too because there was a lot of good research that a lot of people in here have done , i did suggest if anybody wanted the sence to tell me a server i could upload it too... i dont have the internet at home anymore because in 3 months ill be geting out of the navy "thank god" and going to school... so the only way access the internet is at work ... and government computers ... well there very limited on what you have access to do.. heh im supprised i can even access a forum lol.. anyways if anybody wants it leme know where to upload too

CoreyJAvitar

02-01-2005, 09:29 PM

If you send my the file, I can try to put it up.
No promises though! (I don't know if my server will wig out or not)
animatedCopper@yahoo.com

JAF

02-01-2005, 09:29 PM

don't take my stupid post for you ;) I read you had problems... and you don't have to share anything or work without money or compensation!
i'm just hoping to a real sharing work (just a scene with a sphere, or a .mat), knowlege, because i want to share something to you too!!! I'm learning with you all...
But i need to understand, with text, with examples, and like you can see, i'm one of these ******* frenches ;)
Forget my STUPID post, i'll share you a good work one day. You're doing an amazing job and i don't want to be the stupid guy stopping that fantastic thread.
I'm just crying when i can't understand yours settings (i'm french ;))
My dream is to build a CG helping humans to understand they're killing all life on earth... for real... any shader? ;)
My tip: forget me, i'm really stupid, and thank you all ;)

JasonCamp

02-01-2005, 09:47 PM

i have a zip file that is 2 megs tho with the scene and the texture files and hdr file you really dont need all of that thought just the max file that is 100+k i think yahoo only allows 1meg uploads sence the textures are just there for looks really i was consentrating on the glass type look ill send you the max file and the hdr tho , just remove the textures on the walls and on the other end of the glass thing... and also on the other hdr i was messing with also change the render path heh.. like i said before id upload them here but its a 97k limit and the zip file with even only the 2 files is 200+k

JasonCamp

02-01-2005, 09:56 PM

wow i didnt know it but yahoo has a 10meg limit ! :shrug: well i sent just those 2 files today because im on my way home and ill send the rest tomarrow if you want them

CoreyJAvitar

02-02-2005, 06:21 AM

Here is the link! Have fun with it!
http://www.3d-hub.com/cgtalk/button_v24.zip

CoreyJAvitar

02-02-2005, 06:25 AM

Ok, I have a challenge if anyone wants it:
I want a shader that creates geometry inside an object.
well, not so much geometry, but something that looks like it.
Here is the reason:
I want to do some hair (Mane and tail). I want to simulate it as a couple of boxes fixed at one end that wave around. Then, instead of just mapping the faces with a hair tex and transp. map, I want to map the volume like that, if that makes any sense. So when I render I will get more than 1 level of depth.
Is this possible?
thanks

Vinny74

02-02-2005, 08:39 AM

Is there any way to increase the intensity of just the highlights when using the DERIVER / REFLECTIONUTILITY shader combination. I want a material that mainly reflects light sources rather than the environment, but the standard anisotropic highlights in MAX are not very good.

stefan

02-02-2005, 12:20 PM

Has anybody an idea how to recreate shader of spider's back on this XSI forum ? there is some postproduction. but how to do the basic? Of corse in max and MR.

http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=16808

Vinny74

02-02-2005, 01:16 PM

Finally figured out how to do it!!!
If anyone is interested then let me know and I will post instructions.

http://img104.exs.cx/img104/5917/anisotropichob7wl.jpg

ILS

02-02-2005, 01:46 PM

i don't know if its just me - but it looks like standard anisotropic highlights to me. what did you do?

Vinny74

02-02-2005, 02:02 PM

If anyone can get this result with standard anisotropic highlights, I'd really like to know how.

This is the closest I came with standard anisotropic highlights and as you can see they just don't look right.
I couldn't reproduce the 'christmas tree' bauble effect around the 4 raised areas in the middle.

http://img158.exs.cx/img158/818/anisotropichobwrong7fx.jpg

trthing

02-02-2005, 02:59 PM

Finally figured out how to do it!!!
If anyone is interested then let me know and I will post instructions.

I am interested: please show us how (sample scene would be a must):thumbsup:

JasonCamp

02-02-2005, 05:39 PM

about the spider , it looks just like a sss effect to me like a volumed sphere with a light behind it ... and inside the sphere (spiders rear) they put some sort of non volumed object .. so the light behind the spiders rear goes past the rear hits the surface and is cut down by the sss efx (probably some form of fast sss like mr_subscatter wich i cant even get to work , but use just a good old parti_volume shader) then with ray traced shadows on hits the non sss object creating a shadow on the other side of the spiders rear... ehh i hope that makes sence... also he said that it was taking to long so he just touched it up in photoshop or something to that extent ... eh

JasonCamp

02-02-2005, 05:50 PM

hey about your hair problem
just a thought why dont you spline out some really low-poly hair strands shade them with mental ray with a volume shader or something and then use the scatter object in the create roll out to scatter a bunch of the low polly hairs on the base of where the mane wout be , you might have to make like a few differnt layers of source hair like 1 long 2 medium , and 3 to short ... depending on how detailed you want it i guess,, and then scatter the long ones in the center area of the polys on the neck then move out with the rest of the hair samples until you get to the rim of the neck where you want to have the short hairs... then you could really get all crazy and before you do all this rig up the hairs so you can place them in directions you want or animation stuff.. at least this way they would accually connect to the object instead of a floaty like shader that had volume that sort of hoved over its neck
dunno tho never tried to make hair yet... im still bumbling around with sss glass lmao

ILS

02-02-2005, 06:56 PM

just use Ornatrix for the hair and render out a separate path since its not compatible with mental ray . i had some ok results with it and its free.

JasonCamp

02-03-2005, 07:09 PM

wow i cant believe how much time ive been rendering with final gather on to see sss :( had i only known it was the transmat shader on a plane that was doing the effect lol well this saves a lot of time , i think im geting good with it now tho, like the ray depth under the render tab controls just the raytraced elements like reflections and stuff and the ray depth under indirect ilum and final gather are i guess for sss stuff/// that way you can speed up renders with no sss ... and it speeds up a lot too heh
was working with a glass type texture for testing purposes like seen on the tutorial on 3dluver , wich helped a lot ... heh turned it into a sss skin almost .. i like this because now i can work up a slimey sss shader that still has a texture too.. with diffusion and i dont know about mr subscatter cuz i cant get it to interface i cant put a texture maping to it .. without having to do a type of shellac and render time go way to long and also it looks odd.. heh altho it is quite easy compared to having to manualy define it hhe... should see some good shaders coming from me now..

CoreyJAvitar

02-03-2005, 09:22 PM

My problem with ornatrix is that the dynamics arents near robust enough.
(I have never actually gotten any good results with it) (Any tuts)?

So there is no such thing as a volume shader that can do strands and such?

Vinny74

02-04-2005, 12:15 PM

Does anyone else find that Max 6 scenes using global illumination, when opened into Max 7 are far too bright.
I spent a long time getting the GI in one large Max 6 scene just right. Please tell me that I'm not going to have to do it all again.
Can anyone shed any light on this?

highgrade74

02-04-2005, 01:56 PM

Hi everybody...... thanks for this informative thread
I'm working on an interior with marble floors and i just don't seem to get the marble material right, and the search option wasn't much of a help :-(
What i'm looking for is some sub-surface-scattering and an translucent effect.
So if anybody has some idea's/thoughts how this may be done......
Please let me know...

ToddD

02-04-2005, 02:54 PM

Vinny, max 7 handles photon emmision differently, I think Jeff may have covered this in this thread, or on his site. Try searching the thread first using the search thread feature. At any rate yes I believe the scene will look different.
MAX 6
Previously, photon distribution was spread uniformly, and photon
energy was adjusted based on the light intensity in that particular
direction. In the above example, a photometric light with a custom
web distribution shows how photon energy is lower near the
and how the photons are evenly distributed on the surface.
Max 7
Now photons have the same energy, but their density changes based
on the light intensity. More photons are emitted where the light is
more intense. This new approach gives better results by improving
the photons’ effectiveness where it’s needed most.

debashish

02-04-2005, 06:09 PM

hey, cool man...
since long time im searching mental ray things, tried requesting in various forums, friends, tired of searching documantation for mental ray...
then suddenly miracle happens....
a gr8 chap give me this link..... i wondered im registered to this forums long back, but never search it here..... ehhh me!

now i got a good resources and greatchaps to talk with.

Debashish
[ LET THE MESSAGE RUN FREE ]

BrianHarbauer

02-04-2005, 06:40 PM

Yes, actually even if it's not on this thread, in your "New Features" booklett, it explains the difference between photons in max6 and max7.

-Brian H.

CupOWonton

02-04-2005, 07:31 PM

Ok, Ive got a question about using Ambient Occlusion in rendering to bring out the edges and shadows of rooms and objects.

I have a scene with reflective wood flooring, and a table, carpet, windows, ... prety much a dining room.

So, I render with the occlusion and overlay that on an ambient+outside light render (no photons), it looks OK except for the fact the glass doesnt look right because durring the occ render the glass was solid white with black for the shadows.

So, to remedy this I thought rendering it all together would work. So i put the ambient occlusion on a directional light set to ambient, and then lit up the room with that ambience and used a raytrace shadow casting Photometric Sun.

What I ended up with was glass but with dark shadows inside and under it, also, anything INSIDE the glass turned black because of the occlusion.

Anyone know how to fix this using compositing?

JAF

02-06-2005, 04:46 PM

Ok, just an error... :(
And one more time, amazing Job Jeff!

JeffPatton

02-06-2005, 05:03 PM

Looks to me as if most (if not all) of those shaders came directly from the .mat file we've created here......I mean even the shader names are the same. :banghead:

I don't speak Russian, so I'm not sure if he mentioned they came from this thread or if he created them.

JAF

02-06-2005, 05:10 PM

i was thinking the same thing... so i think i will delete the link...

Damn i'm really wrong Jeff. So sorry.

JeffPatton

02-06-2005, 06:00 PM

No need to appolgize man. You were just posting a link that you thought might help people! There's nothing wrong with that at all.

I wouldn't have removed those links because it's always good to have additional mirrors to the files. Also, maybe he created some of those himself? It's not like we are selling that .mat file....it's freely available to anybody that wants to download it.

JAF

02-06-2005, 06:09 PM

Thanks to you. So like this thread is yours and i'm so happy to learn with you, post it again if you think this can help the community ;)
I don't want to disturb anything in this fantastic thread, i'm just following my shaders master :)
See you later! and thanks again for this amazing sharing knowledge.

CupOWonton

02-06-2005, 07:42 PM

ILS

02-07-2005, 05:27 AM

murphy's law.

i recently watched finding nemo for the first time and i just want to know if there is a way of making those floating specks suspended in the water. i'm sure it some kind of a particle cloud emitter but what about the material?

also has anyone figured out how to make specks of dust on a surface for an upclose shot.

JasonCamp

02-08-2005, 06:09 AM

well i finnaly after 1 month of test rendering perfected glass , i am not going to lie... i was drunk the other night and i got to staring at my green tinted "hornsby apple cider" bottle and realised what it was saying ... so sence i didnt bring my laptop again because i was jumping up and down all day and forgot... ill post more info when i get a chance perhaps explain how to set it up when i fully understand myself.. but parti volume is the best .. prob, you guys have realised this for a long time heh but im so behind...
anyways now i have resumed work on the scene and back to modeling sence i know that i have done the hardest part of it ... making sss glass lol... ive made volume fog also a difficult part in this scene , still tring to work with hdr in general , and combined with volume .. but i dont see a problem except the extended render

eks

02-09-2005, 04:01 AM

anyone still have the velvet shader that was on Deetee´s (http://frodo.hiof.no/%7Edeetee/mrupload/index.php) server?

isn´t there any mirror to that server? is it ever coming back up?

i am desperately after this shader, and it isn´t in the CGtalkmr.zip. if anyone have this shader, could you care send it to me? or point to some place where i can find it? my email is ekso [AT] ig.com.br.

thanks a lot!!

eks

JasonCamp

02-09-2005, 04:50 AM

hey , deetee had to down his server because ppl was posting porn , and the mat files are on his on lord patons web site [ jeff id thought id save you from pulling your hair out lol ]
ala a link ! http://www.pixelperfectgraphics.biz/cg_files/CGtalk-mr.zip

JeffPatton

02-09-2005, 01:10 PM

As eks already mentioned, it's not in the .mat file. I checked on my hdd's for a velvet MR scene and found nothing, so I don't have it either. That's the bad side about posting stuff to someone else's server...you have no control over it. And that's not a jab at Deetee at all, he had to close that public server because of....well the public (how ironic eh?)

Deetee, if you still have those MR files then let me know and we'll figure out how to host them. I'll be increasing my website space, bandwidth, and functionality in the near future, so I'll have space to host them if need be.

cpan

02-09-2005, 01:47 PM

for a velvet shader see the Fredrik Brannbacka's madVelvet shader on h3d/maya/shaders.
Oh here's the link to the page. Give a search for it there.
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/shaders/?group=mayashaders&section=&sort=dt_modified+desc

cheers.

Pufferfish

02-09-2005, 04:28 PM

Posted this to general 3ds max forum but it did not get much attention there so thought I should try my luck here :)... if this is a wrong thread for my question, don't worry I can easily get this removed ;) It is anyhow mentalray and shader related.

Issue: Sometimes adding bump map causes very odd and rough shadow edges on surfaces. It kinda feels like random bug which is not happening everytime. I really don't know what is causing this. I can make it less visible making more dense mesh but that doesn't really solve anything, because the issue is still there. Been tweaking different lights/shadow settings.. nothing seems to help. Only removing bump helps. When it happends it mostly happends with noise bumps.

I made a little example image of the issue. In bw image you can see more clearly what is happening.

http://www.jsaarinen.com/question/odd_bump.jpg

-pfish

JeffPatton

02-09-2005, 04:55 PM

I can't seem to reproduce that problem (but I've seen it before...don't remember what caused it though). Can you post that scene so I can have a look? If not, what about posting this info:
Max6 or Max7?
Type of light(s) used:
Light settings (shadow types, energy, etc)
Types of materials (mental ray or standard)
Any sub maps? (besides the noise for the bump)
Was the noise bump map added in the MR connection, or the standard mat bump map?
GI - On or off?
FG - On or off?

AdamantiumKnot

02-10-2005, 04:56 AM

Hey, I'm a student and trying to learn stuff above and beyond what's tought in class. I can run the scene's posted and render them without a problem. The original scene rendered in just over 14 minutes on my dual athlon mp 2100+ w/1gb ddr pc2100 and gf6 6800gt. I was wondering if there was a tutorial that walks you through how to create some of these on your own, so that I could gain a better knowledge of how all of this works. I understand an ample amount of the discussion but I feel like I'm missing something.

Thanks,
Joe

BrianHarbauer

02-10-2005, 05:47 AM

Issue: Sometimes adding bump map causes very odd and rough shadow edges on surfaces. It kinda feels like random bug which is not happening everytime. I really don't know what is causing this. I can make it less visible making more dense mesh but that doesn't really solve anything, because the issue is still there. Been tweaking different lights/shadow settings.. nothing seems to help. Only removing bump helps. When it happends it mostly happends with noise bumps.

What if you change your light from a MR Spot light to a max Photometrix Area Light? Does that change anything? It did for me with SSS. I had that wacky looking shadow edge, but only when i used spot lights. Both ways with raytraced shadows. The photometric just looks better I think.

-Brian H.

BrianHarbauer

02-10-2005, 06:07 AM

Here are 2 stills that I rendered with the two different lights. I changed the samples from 5-30 but still no difference. The area light for the MR Spot was set to exactly the same size as the photometric. Both have raytraced shadows. (Sorry for the low quality model in the examples)

-Brian H.

Mariano

02-10-2005, 02:38 PM

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/shaders/?group=mayashaders&section=&sort=dt_modified+desc

Plush / velvet shader , is there a way to take a maya shader into max, i mean reproducing taking reference from the maya´s one?

animet

02-10-2005, 03:32 PM

hi all.........
its amazing how usefull this threat is thanks to all...im watching and im trying everything from the beggining and im so happy about this.....but maybe my question is stupid but i cannot understand were to put this cgtalk.mat file cause its not working for me.......thanks again..

BrianHarbauer

02-10-2005, 06:05 PM

Welcome anime_t, actually, it doesn't matter where you drop the .mat file, just open it with the material editor. (Open the Material/Map Browser, Then on the top left, pick Mtl Library then down below that, click Open.) Find that file and you'll be all set.

Usually the .mat files are located in c:\3dsmax6\matlibs

-Brian H.

animet

02-10-2005, 06:55 PM

cooooooool thanx a lot.....ill be back with some experiments........:thumbsup:

eks

02-10-2005, 08:35 PM

mariano:

yes, you can use the madVelvet shader (http://www.highend3d.com/files/dl.3d?group=mayashaders&file_loc=madVelvet-v1.0-.zip&file_id=3012) with max. just follow this instructions from post 233:

"You simply must put the .mi files into "include" and the .dll files into "shaders". That's all. All the other stuff is for Maya or XSI."

i have tryed it, but did not got good results. (actually, it seemed to show something in material editor but rendered something different). i´m over other things now, will post about these madVelvet problems im having later.

eks

PS: open the .mi file of the madvelvet, there are some default values to start playing with that come pretty handy.