Let's post some more Mental Ray screens

[alphatron]

Here's a higher res version:

[svenip]

looks nice to me :)

can you post the way how to use hdri images with the MI in maya please ?

[-wT-]

Svenip and alpha, here:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9365&highlight=mental

I have tons of test images, and a description on how to use HDRI

[alphatron]

Yup, I used a similar method. But I don't seem to have any graininess and the render time for the above images was only a couple of minutes.

[svenip]

-wt- upps, i missed that thread :) nice description

alphatron can you post your way too ??

[alphatron]

Hi Svenip,

I used the techniques based on this post from HighEnd3D.com

http://www.highend3d.com/boards/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=mayarender&Number=108212&Search=true&Forum=mayarender&Words=hdri&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=1&Limit=25&Old=allposts&Main=108212

Did A LOT of tweaking and such, but this is the basic formula.

[-wT-]

Yeah I know I had some settings all screwed up, after all, I invented it myself from the start ;) (Yup, definietly made it before this "vik3d" guy)

But heya Alphatron, could you post the FG settings you used in that scene? And how big the scene was (Like, was chromeball how big in Maya units)?

I did try the HDRI with big min/max FG radius values, but that just caused the shadows to be utterly blurry (The smaller HDRI images of the Viper), and then I got pissed and just dropped the radius from 1 to something like 0.01 and upped the samples abit too... and boy did it last long :)

Edit: Actually, Alpha, I seem to have real problems understanding the correct ways to set up my FG (Like my avatar-picture took me almost an hour (No the resolution wans't 60*60 :p, it was 1024*768)), so could you send that scene of yours so I could just go on and render it out and have a look at the settings. I now can acquire good images with FG, but still it takes ages...

[alphatron]

Hi WT :)

That Vik3D guy probably saw your original post on the subject ;)

I use about 900 FG rays, and a 0 min and max. I find having a 0 min and max gives the best overall quality with an acceptable render time. I got some really good quality using negative min and max values but the render times were much longer.. but in the end I usually stick with 0 and 0. I have about 5 refleciton/refraction rays with 10 for ray depth. I almost always turn scanline off. Depth map shadows are also off. I also create a point light with 0 intensity to turn off Maya's default light.

I don't use any GI or other lights. My sampling quality is about .05 for RGBA with a 0/2 min max samples and a mitchell filter with 4.5/4.5.

I converted the St. Peter's .hdr to a .map and also made a panoramic conversion to the HDR to a square latitude/longitude dimension.

I made a zip of the scene with the .map,.mb, and an example .jpg. You can download it from: http://www.flicker-free.com/mental.zip

Hope this is helpful!

[alphatron]

Same scene and settings, different HDR image:

[stunndman]

a test rendering - this needs more tweaking, but you asked for it ;)

[-wT-]

Originally posted by alphatron
Hi WT :)

That Vik3D guy probably saw your original post on the subject ;)

I use about 900 FG rays, and a 0 min and max. I find having a 0 min and max gives the best overall quality with an acceptable render time. I got some really good quality using negative min and max values but the render times were much longer.. but in the end I usually stick with 0 and 0. I have about 5 refleciton/refraction rays with 10 for ray depth. I almost always turn scanline off. Depth map shadows are also off. I also create a point light with 0 intensity to turn off Maya's default light.

I don't use any GI or other lights. My sampling quality is about .05 for RGBA with a 0/2 min max samples and a mitchell filter with 4.5/4.5.

I converted the St. Peter's .hdr to a .map and also made a panoramic conversion to the HDR to a square latitude/longitude dimension.

I made a zip of the scene with the .map,.mb, and an example .jpg. You can download it from: http://www.flicker-free.com/mental.zip

Hope this is helpful!

Ah you used the auto setting for the min and max, well aren't you clever! :scream: :thumbsup:
And 900 FG rays? Whoa! The most I've used is around 200, and get acceptable results (With my "min/max"es ofcourse...)
Btw, why everyone always creates one light with 0 intensity? I'm not 100% sure, but I haven't needed that myself ever.

Gotta wait for the download to finish so I can see the settings more clearly.

PS. You shouldn't have attached the .map file to the zip, I could've used my own one... but it's ok, just slightly longer downloading time now :)

Edit: Ok got the file now... strange, as I was quite sure it tells you which settings it has chosen for the min/max, in the Output Window, if you put 0 in the settings, but apparently not.
But the rendering was indeed quite fast, and I think one of my problems has been a too small ray count, with too small radius count, making the render times jump skyhigh.
Gotta make more tests...

[InnerVortex]

great think u give your tests to the masses:)
i did a little test with a model of mine, an d it was very fast indeed, i tryed before setuping in mr but always get messy
(im trying attach file.. not sure it will work..)

[InnerVortex]

another crappy render.. this time with textures.. tooked much more time, but acceptable i think, i didnt try to make it look good.. just.. test it:p

[alphatron]

Hey Vik, glad I helped, at least a bit ;)

Innervortex, thanks for posting those screens, they look great! I haven't tried putting any of my models into the scene becuase I don't think Mental Ray will like the geometry and textures, it's so picky!

But your scenes look great! How long did it take to render without the textures?

I find what takes longest is the actual conversion of the Maya file to the MI file.. that rendering itselfs is usually pretty quick.

MR for Maya has some great features.. but the funcitonality and work flow, as well as its integraiotn do not justify its insane price.

Post more!

[InnerVortex]

i dont know the way to see the render time with mr.. but it was less than 10 mnts.

[-wT-]

Maya file to MI takes long... what the heck? :surprised
With normal scenes, no matter how many polygons and such I make by just smoothing out stuff ridiculously, it always starts the photon/FG/normal rendering almost immediately after I press render, and only time when it takes some time before the FG calculation starts, is when there is a HDRI (Which is normally 20-50mb big) map assigned to something, then it loads it for like 2-3s, and then starts the FG calculations.
I'd like to know what ppl concider "long time" to turn the scene into a MI file?

(Oh and InnerVortex, to get more information about the current render, go to MR globals, then Translation and then select something higher than "Warning messages". I use "Progress messages" all the time)

Edit: Almost forgot, I did some experiments with MR, and it seems that the 0/0 min/max isn't too good for you.
With the Alphatron's scene, I rerendered (Look at that word! :D) with it with first 1/1, and it came out with a bit more blurry than the original one, then did a 0.1/0.1, and it came out much sharper, but those very small highlights started to pop out everywhere, so I'd say the 0/0 setting ment with that scene, something around 0.6-0,7 min/max.
Well, as we can see, the InnerVortex scenes have quite lousy shadow casted by the character, that because the scene is too blurred by too big min/max value, if you want Inner, try setting the min/max to 0.01, and FG rays to 200-300 and rerender it (Warning! It will take muchmuch longer!), the shadow should be much more crispy and realistic.
Though I'm not 100% sure if you need even smaller min/max values when using HDRI lighting, as the Viper pictures turned out to be very spotty, while normal sky -like images I've rendered (Like the avatar one, here: http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/temppeliparas.jpg) always come out sharp and unspotty.

Oh and why do you say Alphatron that MR wouldn't like textures and/or geometry? :)
If you ment is as a half-joke, I'd say that if anything, it would be tested by the plugin coders with exactly geometry and textures, so I'd say those aren't the ones MR is picky about ;)

[InnerVortex]

thanks alot for the tips wt:) that helped alot, your pic really looks much sweeter, im gonna play alot with mr now:D
greets

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