subsurface scattering in mental ray 3.3 and maya6!

[Emmortal1]

It's a little too early to be asking about this as beta testers are still under NDA and Maya 6 hasn't started shipping.

[Powell]

Mental Ray has been able to do SSS for a while now. Its just a matter of writing the algoritm into a shader or using the Raymarcher engine to achive it. As far as there being a SSS node in Maya 6, I highly doubt it. But, if you want one, just download and install a SSS shader for it.

[Emmortal1]

Ya there is no SSS node in maya heh, it has some really cool stuff with IBL that you can do ambiant occlusion with which is nice. No more big domes for your HDRI shots.

[pixel mixer]

apart mark davies subscatter and andy hayes tranvol2.1 i have not seen anything about SSS on the net. and i want to use a mray node not a plugin.

[Dan Wade]

Well, if you head over to the Mental Images website, they give a detailed outline about what MR 3.3 can do. So far, the SSS shaders out there have been external plugins and shaders, but it says that its build into the new MR 3.3 as standard. Not sure if it simply comes in the form of a single shader.

Dan.

[Powell]

The simple answer is NO, a SSS node is not in Maya 6.0. Many, many Mental Ray fetures still dont wok in the UI of Maya 6, so Im sure Alias has a LOT more to implement than an SSS node.

[Emmortal1]

There were a few things in Beta that are different in the shipping version, not a whole lot but minor things that were added. But no SSS node or implementation for mental ray for Maya 6. And ya, there are STILL quite a few features that aren't available, but on the other hand, mental ray for Maya 6 is a HUGE improvement over 5.

[Dan Wade]

Is it now possible to get normal map shaders ro work for maya and Mental Ray? Carnt seem to find any shaders out there that work in Maya/Mental Ray. The onl thing ive seen is for maya software.

There are multiple normal map shaders for XSI, so it just takes someone to convert these over to maya yea? Its basicaly a MR shader, so it shouldn't be too hard, just needs to be recompiled and placed with a UI for inside maya.

It does say in the Maya 6 feature list from the Alias site that there is normal maps in there, but they dont give any details if they are native?

[Powell]

If there are Normal Mapping shaders for XSI then they can be directly used in Maya MR. Do you have some links to any of them? I'de be happy to bring them over.

[Emmortal1]

Normal mapping is built straight into Maya 6 via the Transfer Surface information tool. You can select the high res mesh (source) and then the target mesh (low res) and transfer the high res surface information into a texture map for the low res with this tool. You can also specifiy object or tangent space via the options.

[Dan Wade]

There are quite a few for XSI, but this seems to be one of the best.
http://be3d.republika.pl
If you could transfer this to Maya that would be great Powell.

Emmortal1, does this new native normal map shader work in MR? Is it just for baking maps out, or will Mental Ray also read the normal map for rendering?

Cheers,
Dan.

[Emmortal1]

I don't know the exact process since I don't have Maya 6 (it hasn't even been released yet) so I can't really answer that question. I would imagine it's a pretty intuitive process though and won't be any where near as difficult as doing a normal map in previous versions.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.