Maya and Rendering like everybody else.

[annaleah]

Final Gathering/Mental Ray

[NitroLiq]

You could also do it with light domes that simulate GI like pixho's GI_Joe script if you don't want to use Mental Ray.

[LordApophis]

Final Gathering/Mental Ray That didn't seem to do it... what in particular besides/inclusive setting a light to emit photons for menal ray and setting final gathering to on in maya, would i be missing?

[annaleah]

That didn't seem to do it... what in particular besides/inclusive setting a light to emit photons for menal ray and setting final gathering to on in maya, would i be missing?
http://www.jozvex.com/tutorials.html

[leuey]

Well, ya know it takes some time to learn. No offense but you don't just click some check boxes. The image you posted looks to me like a spotlight with FG and maybe GI. You could also route an ambient occlusion shader into the diffuse channel to get something like this. Play around - you'll learn what the various settings do. There's plenty of tutorials to look at as well.

-Greg



That didn't seem to do it... what in particular besides/inclusive setting a light to emit photons for menal ray and setting final gathering to on in maya, would i be missing?

[romeu]

do you mean like this?

http://romeu5000.com.sapo.pt/dirtmap.jpg

took me 20sec to render (not much of a model ...)


just use the dirtmap shader for mentalRay pluged into a maya luminance, then pluged into the difuse of your shader (lambert, blinn, phong, etc...)

if you don´t have the dirmap shader, i don´t remember where i found it, but just do a search here on cgtalk you´ll find it realy easy.

[ush]

I got this shader from this link.

http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/MentalRay/DirtmapMayaFiles.htm

I just bookmarked this.:)

[CornFielD]

easiest thing what you can do for getting similar effect is to turn mayas enviromental color to light grey and turn finalgathering on! and also you would like to put somekind of light for shadows!

but environmental color/finalgathering does this finalgathering bulshit, too common way to show your models!

-Juha Saarinen
jp@maissipelto.com

[LordApophis]

http://www.reelchaos.com/fun.jpg

i think it will do, still have to play with the fuzziesnes. thanks to all of you

[Emil3d]

http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/M...apMayaFiles.htm (http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/MentalRay/DirtmapMayaFiles.htm)

Will this work with Maya 6?

[poly-phobic]

this shader is great and pretty fast.

about 29 secs for this TOP image
[*original size 1024]
vs MR final gather image Bottom, about 2.5 min
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v295/vladimirjp/dirtmapTest.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v295/vladimirjp/bertrand_render.jpg

[poly-phobic]

http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/M...apMayaFiles.htm (http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/MentalRay/DirtmapMayaFiles.htm)

Will this work with Maya 6?
yes it will.

[acidosmosis]

just use the dirtmap shader for mentalRay pluged into a maya luminance, then pluged into the difuse of your shader (lambert, blinn, phong, etc...)

When you say use the dirtmap shade for MR plugged into a maya luminance. Which Maya luminance?

[Emil3d]

Unfortunately it didn’t work for me. After the installation, Mental Ray couldn’t work at all and Maya reported that loading Mental Ray failed. I uninstalled all dirt shader files and Mental Ray worked fine again. The only thing I didn’t follow from the installation instructions was this note:

Windows XP does not include a file called MSVCR70.DLL that is needed for this shader to work properly. You can find it in the Maya files and you should put it in the windows/system32 directory. After that the shader will work nicely.

I didn’t do it because I already had this file in that directory and aside from the creation date all properties were identical.

Any suggestions?

[romeu]

acidosmosis:

here´s how to plug it, you´ll lose however the preview of the color in the hypershade window and in the viewport, but it works well.

http://romeu5000.com.sapo.pt/dirtmap_expl.jpg

Emil3d:

wicht maya version are you using?
make sure you have updated the maya.rayrc file otherwise it will give you this kind of errors.

[scottsch]

easiest thing what you can do for getting similar effect is to turn mayas enviromental color to light grey and turn finalgathering on! and also you would like to put somekind of light for shadows!
This person got it.

Step by step:

1. Give the objects a white lambert shader with a high diffuse setting (0.9)

2. Choose the camera and set it's environment color to a gray (dark gray works better imo).

3. Use 1 or 2 directional lights for shadows.

4. Render with final gather preview to get a fast look at what's happening

5. Do a final render with a larger canvas and better FG settings.

It's very simple. The other option is to not use any lights and use a half circle dome over the scene with its Lambert shader illuminance value turned on, and no lights in the scene. Then render with final gather. Final gather evaluates the illuminance of the skydome to produce very soft shadows.

[Emil3d]

acidosmosis:Emil3d:
wicht maya version are you using?
make sure you have updated the maya.rayrc file otherwise it will give you this kind of errors. I’m using 6.0.1. I tried to install the shader for the second time and found out that Mental Ray wouldn’t work at all after I edited the the maya.rayrc file.
// Error: (Mayatomr.Export) : mental ray startup failed with errors //
// Info (Mayatomr): Aborted //
When I put the original maya.rayrc file back, Mental Ray works fine.

I edited the file following the instructions from this link http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/MentalRay/DirtmapMayaFiles.htm

This is the original segment of the file that needs to be edited:

registry "{MRMAYA_START}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/base.{DSO}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/physics.{DSO}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/mayabase.{DSO}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/contour.{DSO}"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/mayabase.mi"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/base.mi"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/physics.mi"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/contour.mi"
echo "mental ray for Maya - startup done"
end registry

and his is the edited segment of the file which causes Mental Ray to fail:

registry "{MRMAYA_START}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/base.{DSO}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/physics.{DSO}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/mayabase.{DSO}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/contour.{DSO}"
link "{MAYABASE}/lib/Dirtmap.{DSO}"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/mayabase.mi"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/base.mi"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/physics.mi"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/contour.mi"
mi "{MAYABASE}/include/Dirtmap.mi"
echo "mental ray for Maya - startup done"
end registry

[romeu]

I edited the file following the instructions from this link http://www.impresszio.hu/szabolcs/MentalRay/DirtmapMayaFiles.htm

this link is for Maya 5 instalation, in maya 6/6.01 you don´t have to update windows with an environmental variable.

seems that this link is missing the dirtmap.dll file when you download the plugin...
did you copy any dirmap.dll (36.864 bytes) in the lib folder of mentalRay?

[Emil3d]

this link is for Maya 5 instalation, in maya 6/6.01 you don´t have to update windows with an environmental variable.
seems that this link is missing the dirtmap.dll file when you download the plugin...
did you copy any dirmap.dll (36.864 bytes) in the lib folder of mentalRay? I didn't update windows since I already have the msvcr70.dll file in the windows/system32 directory and aside form the creation date it is identical to the one supplied with the installation. Its file size is 336 KB (344,064 bytes) and it is the only .dll file that comes with this insallation. I copied that file to the lib folder of mentalRay.
So the answer to your question is, yes I copied the only .dll file named msvcr70.dll to the lib folder of mentalRay but its size (344,064 bytes) is different from the (36.864 bytes) you quoted in your question.
Is anybody using this shader with v 6.0.1 successfully?

[poly-phobic]

This person got it.

Step by step:

1. Give the objects a white lambert shader with a high diffuse setting (0.9)

2. Choose the camera and set it's environment color to a gray (dark gray works better imo).

3. Use 1 or 2 directional lights for shadows.

4. Render with final gather preview to get a fast look at what's happening

5. Do a final render with a larger canvas and better FG settings.

It's very simple. The other option is to not use any lights and use a half circle dome over the scene with its Lambert shader illuminance value turned on, and no lights in the scene. Then render with final gather. Final gather evaluates the illuminance of the skydome to produce very soft shadows. according to the jpeg posted above, the out value of the luminance is plugued to the diffuse....

u dont need final gather to get good results.

also try simply pluging it into your ambient node of your shade and put a smaller diffuse than the default, like .5

works fine for me. :thumbsup:

when its plugged into the diffuse it gives a "sampler info " effect on the surface.

[romeu]

... yes I copied the only .dll file named msvcr70.dll to the lib folder of mentalRay but its size (344,064 bytes) is different from the (36.864 bytes) you quoted in your question. that´s what i thought, the file you sould have copied into the lib folder of mental ray is Dirtmap.dll, not msvcr70.dll.

try this one:

http://romeu5000.com.sapo.pt/Maya.zip

(copy the link and paste)

[Atwooki]

For Maya 6.0, it's a good idea to make sure the 'nodeid' is inserted (highlit in orange) into your 'dirtmap.mi' file:

version 1
#: nodeid 3000
end declare


Atwooki

[romeu]

For Maya 6.0, it's a good idea to make sure the 'nodeid' is inserted (highlit in orange) into your 'dirtmap.mi' file:

version 1
#: nodeid 3000
end declare


Atwooki
oops... sorry, Atwooki your right, i´ve updated the link above with the right file (already corected).

[Emil3d]

Thank you Romeu and Atwooki.

Mental Ray works properly with Romeu’s files and I can play with the shader. Though so far, I don’t seem to be able to make big difference with it comparing renderings with just the default lambert. I wish I can find a documented description of the shader’s attributes.

Romeu can you make me a favor. Could you please if you don’t mind upload a sample scene like the one from your first post. Or if you do mind this at least show another shot of the same scene with the default lambert applied instead of Dirtmap. I’m just curious to see what difference the dirtmap shader makes in your scene.

I greatly appreciate your help

[romeu]

I’m just curious to see what difference the dirtmap shader makes in your scene.
here you go...
http://romeu5000.com.sapo.pt/dirtmap_VS.jpg

here´s the scene:

http://romeu5000.com.sapo.pt/dirtmap_test.zip

by the way, if you do a shearch here on cgtalk, you´ll find lots of good examples how to use Dirtmap :).

[Emil3d]

Thanks a million, Romeu.

[acidosmosis]

http://romeu5000.com.sapo.pt/dirtmap_test.zip

I rendered that and I get a black image as the result.

[romeu]

I rendered that and I get a black image as the result.
make sure you:

1º install Dirmap shader for mentalRay
2º Render with mentalRay Renderer

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