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View Full Version : maya 8 MR area light??

ZippZopp
08-23-2006, 02:48 AM
in maya 7 i could create a spot light, go to its attributes and under mental ray i could choose area light and it would create a rectangle area light where my light is and i could scale that to suit my needs. in maya 8, i do the same but when I check the box for area light it doesn't actually create the rectangle at the light location....what gives??
djx
08-23-2006, 03:25 AM
In maya8 you should use the maya area light. There is a new mentalray tab in there.
ZippZopp
08-23-2006, 05:16 AM
so create a regular area light and then in the attributes turn on the MR area light?
cpan
08-23-2006, 06:41 AM
yes.
just use the maya arealight and play with the settings from the mentalray section...

PS RTFM :D
delarge
08-23-2006, 07:37 AM
zippzopp:
In Maya 8 I do the same thing as before in 7 to create MR Arealights. Create Spotlight, goto MR attributes, check AreaLight, choose shape and - bingo - have you arealight visible in viewport...
this does not work for you?

also try this:

updateAE yourSpotLight;

in the scripteditor to make the arealightshape visible.


cheers
rob
djx
08-23-2006, 12:38 PM
delarge, does your method have any advantages over the quick and easy maya area light? Or is just because you are used to doing it that way?

thanks
David
ZippZopp
08-23-2006, 04:57 PM
zippzopp:
In Maya 8 I do the same thing as before in 7 to create MR Arealights. Create Spotlight, goto MR attributes, check AreaLight, choose shape and - bingo - have you arealight visible in viewport...
this does not work for you?

also try this:

updateAE yourSpotLight;

in the scripteditor to make the arealightshape visible.


cheers
rob

tried that and it didn't work....i'll just use the regular area light, i just thought it was odd that it didn't show up when I clicked area light...
delarge
08-24-2006, 07:55 AM
delarge, does your method have any advantages over the quick and easy maya area light? Or is just because you are used to doing it that way?

thanks
David

no, not really. I guess it doesn't matter what kind of lightshape you use as a 'container' for the MR-lightshader. when you turn on the arealight attribute in the lightshape mentalray calls the apropriate lightshader to build the phenomenon before rendertime. I attached some pics where you can see, that besides the cone falloff there's no difference in the shadows.

left image is the maya arealight, right is a spotlight with MR-arealights turned on...

cheers
rob
bkircher
08-24-2006, 09:42 AM
I experienced also some difficulties.
( Including sometimes only the LightShape remains accessible of a light, not the attributes anymore.)

Apparently, the AEtemplate of pointlights from the 7 still works in Maya 8, so I will stick with this one.
ftaswin
08-26-2006, 11:41 AM
Worked fine here...

I dunno if it will help or not but I have been having wierd Maya behaviour after I installed vray demo for Maya. Even after I turn the plugin off it still mess with most of my object's attribute editor.

So if you have vray installed, move the vray folder away from your C:\....\MayaX.X folder. It fixed all my problems.

I'll check back later to see if it fix the problem.


Ft
Lamster
08-28-2006, 03:22 AM
Ah I was wondering why so many attributes were screwed up all of a sudden. The V-Ray Beta causing problems seems likely as when I first encountered the messed attributes problem, I uninstalled and re-installed maya, and still faced the same problem. I noticed that V-Ray was always giving a script error everytime I opened my attribute editor, and it was pissing me off, so I uninstalled the Beta, and everything came back. I don't know what that was all about, but if it is due to the installation directory problem, and moving it to some other directory won't trigger the same problem, I might install it again.

Terence
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08-28-2006, 03:22 AM
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