Help with lightmaps for misss shaders?

[e'lan]

Here's a question for all you mental ray experts out there. I've been trying some simple tests with the misss shaders (both misss_fast_simple_maya and misss_fast_skin_maya) without success. I've been following some tutorials and I'm pretty sure that I've got the sss shaders and lightmap nodes connected correctly: the problem seems to lie with the lightmap file itself. I can't seem to make it create or recognize one at all. Local paths, global paths, file extensions, no file extensions, pre-existing file or empty folder, it makes no difference. I even tried simply typing in a file name in the hope that it would create the file at the top of my project directory: no such luck.

I've heard that this is a very common problem for beginners when using the misss shaders, but I haven't been able to find any information on how to overcome it. It seems like a pretty silly problem to be stuck with, and yet here I am. I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!

For reference, this is the error thrown when trying to render:

// Error: (Mayatomr.Output) : file error: {TEXS}/sourceimages/lightmap.iff //
// Error: (mental ray) : {TEXS}/sourceimages/lightmap.iff: registry entry {TEXS} not found //


trying saving as .map instead of .iff

[MasterZap]

Here's a question for all you mental ray experts out there. I've been trying some simple tests with the misss shaders (both misss_fast_simple_maya and misss_fast_skin_maya) without success. I've been following some tutorials and I'm pretty sure that I've got the sss shaders and lightmap nodes connected correctly: the problem seems to lie with the lightmap file itself. I can't seem to make it create or recognize one at all. Local paths, global paths, file extensions, no file extensions, pre-existing file or empty folder, it makes no difference. I even tried simply typing in a file name in the hope that it would create the file at the top of my project directory: no such luck.

I've heard that this is a very common problem for beginners when using the misss shaders, but I haven't been able to find any information on how to overcome it. It seems like a pretty silly problem to be stuck with, and yet here I am. I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!

For reference, this is the error thrown when trying to render:

// Error: (Mayatomr.Output) : file error: {TEXS}/sourceimages/lightmap.iff //
// Error: (mental ray) : {TEXS}/sourceimages/lightmap.iff: registry entry {TEXS} not found //


Stuff within curly braces in mental ray is registry entry expansions. I don't really understand how the "{TEXS}" thing got into your filename, any ideas??

/Z

[NineTailDemonFoX]

Please try to follow this steps:
add miss lightmap to your hypershade working space;
then in its attributes click the checker board in Lightmap Write -> Lightmap this will create mentalrayTexture;
now click on the mentalrayTexture to edit its attributes;
In the Image Name field specify !EXTENSIONLESS! file name in a directory you have access to (problems may occur with Documents and Settings so if its in your path change the folder!)
So for example type in "C:\temp\lightmap" (again NO ExTENSION);
Check Writeable, Specify File Size Width/Height equal to your scene width
Set File Size depth to 32bits.
This works for me.

Best regards, ^__^
9tailDemonFox

[gabrielyeager]

I found the solution in the misss test thread: it does work either if I leave it blank (so it writes to memory) or if I just use \filename. I have no idea why the registry stuff was showing up, but anyway doesn't seem to be a problem now. Thanks for responding!

[Ohlda]

I found the solution in the misss test thread: it does work either if I leave it blank (so it writes to memory) or if I just use \filename. I have no idea why the registry stuff was showing up, but anyway doesn't seem to be a problem now. Thanks for responding!

I had the same problem just five minutes ago and as this thread díd end up without any obvoius solution I want to add the following:

If I type in the correct path and a file name without extension and hit enter, windows or maya or whoever automatically removes the path or parts of it.
I got around this problem by typing in the path and the filename without extension and not hitting enter afterwards but selectiong another node or so; the result is that the path stays complete.

maybe this could help anyone out there to get rid of that problem a little faster than me.

regards,

m°

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