Hay where to find tutorials on MR?

[alphatron]

Unfortuneatly, they are as few as they are far. The closest you'll get is http://www.edharris.com .. but the catch is that they are for Softimage. Some are still applicable though. Let's hope that mr 1.5 for Maya 4.5 will come with some decent tutorials.

[-wT-]

With this little info on MR for Maya, I'd say the best ways to learn it is just that www.edharriss.com site (Helped me alot!), and then by just testing stuff... testing testing testing, and after you finished your tests, continue testing some other features of it! :thumbsup:

[Farhez]

Dmitry,

There are some basics in the online documentation: Using
mental ray for Maya (see: Help->mental ray for Maya).

I did a search on the web and there are sites out there that
have existing mental ray tutorials. The concepts and steps
should be almost indentical - that you can apply them in mental
ray for Maya.

However, if there are specific areas that need more elaboration
or if you would like us to provide tutorials on specific areas
or workflows, please send in your requests and we'll do our best.

[Chappo]

[off-topic]

Cool to see a genuine aliaswavefront guy scoping the place out and giving advice as well :thumbsup:

And to be really off-topic i have a question for the aliaswavefront guy - tell us about maya 5 ! :) when will it be out dude !!!


[/off-topic]

[-wT-]

Ok, may I ask a question from AW itself now? :)
Oh I can? Great!

Regarding MR, is the displacement mapping really supported yet? I've now played around with MR for Maya, and I think I can get everything else to work, except those damn displacement maps, I try to assign the shader a BW map to the displacement slot, then assign some of those aproximation settings (Or what was the name), but everytime it tells me somethign about finding a displacement with 0 as the max, in the output window.
So, is it just broken, or have I missed something crucial?

[Farhez]

Chappo - unfortunately I'm not at liberty to talk about future
unannounced versions of Maya. But have you heard about our
recent announcement of Maya 4.5? Hopefully the new fluids
features will quench your thirst for the next while! :)

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/products/maya/whatsnew/v4.5/index.shtml

-wT- - displacement is supported in mental ray for Maya.

Are you applying a surface approximation or a displacement
approximation or both?

What happens if you don't apply an approximation at all -
do you see any displacement?

If you're stuck, you can always call Tech Support. If you feel you
have a genuine bug - you can send me a file and we'll investigate.

[-wT-]

Ok, I just tried the different settings out to make sure, and no matter what I put into the displacement (Or subdivision, first tried with ony displacement aprox, and then with both) aproximation options, it doesn't have any effect on the rendering itself.
Strange thing though, I tested with a polygon plane, with checker as the displacement map, and when I subdivide the plane by hand, all of a sudden I can see displacement, but isn't MR supposed to do it's own subdividing? Like Entropy or PRMan?
Nevertheless, subdiving the object manually doesn't seem to always have any effect, as I remember when I once tested the displacements with a sphere (And sphere has alot of polys, right) but nothing came up.

Could you just tell me some guidelines of what to put as the aproximation settings, just some numbers so I can get atleast something to come up in the rendering, I think I can test my way out from there then :) (Like I've done with GI/FG/Caustics)

Edit: Oh and one thing, I always get this error printed in the Output Window, every single time I try to do something with displacements:
"displacement mapped object with max_displace = 0 encountered"

[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.