Paint FX w/ Mentalray

[annaleah]

Software only unless you have provide3ds plugin at cost.
You can convert most PA brushes to polys but you really have to work with the brushes to keep poly counts down but quality high...
Hope this is helpful.

[danielvan]

So, I need to convert it to polys. How can I do this?

Selecting Mesh in my Brush Type?

[danielvan]

Already found it.

Modify -> Convert -> Paint FX to Polygons

For me, that's ok by now.

But, if someone knows another solution for this case, please post it here.

[Karlfucious]

What I do is just render my PFX in Maya software and comp them into my final render. All you need to do is just assign a use background shader to all your geometry so it properly mattes it out in the alpha channel. You may or may not want to turn off shadow mask in your use background shader depending on what you need.

The reason Why I dont like converting my PFX to Polys is because when they are converted your poly counts will grow really fast. It isnt uncommon for each tree to be over 100,000 faces so if you have a few trees and some grass your scene will be VERRY heavy.

Another option is to create each tree that you need in a seperate scene and save each one. Now you can just use instanced particles for your Trees and they will only be calculated at rendertime.

[mustique]

You can also leave PFX as they are and use the render layers. (Maya 7)
You can add a background shader to the whole environment in that layer than and still get
shadows etc. if you need.

Don't know how stable the new render layers are though in their first incarnation.

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