Maya Mental Ray: Glass/Caustics/Photons

[kanooshka]

Here's a good website with direction on lighting glass in real life. Try to apply these same principles in your image.

http://www.lowel.com/edu/lesson_lighting_glass.html

As for what shader to use and how to do it in mental ray, it all depends on what you like best. I'd try searching the forum for other posts about rendering glass, there's been quite a few questions about it in the past.

[tharrell]

My friend asked me to do a rendering of a glass bottle with his logo on it in a simple turntable animation. I would like this to be production/commercial quality. With this being said I realized how much I don't know about creating a Glass Material or rendering accurate Caustics/Photon Mapping through Mental Ray

I was wondering if anyone knows of good literature/video on creating/rendering realistic glass whether it be thick/thin/frosted etc.

I have tried to work with the Mia_x material but found that maybe the dialetric material works better.

Any help would be GREAT!

Mia_x material will be usually be quite a bit faster than dielectric to render, in my experience, and mia_x is way more flexible in terms of tuning your reflection samples and the like. In addition, if you feel like fighting with Maya's render pass system, mia_x_passes sorta kinda gives you pass renders, but only on Tuesdays, and they might not add up to your beauty render if Maya's in a bad mood.

Mia_x has good glass presets, and it's got checkboxes to set your object for solid, thin walled, etc.

A fundamental truth about shiny stuff: Good looking glass shaders (and also metal) are only as good as what's reflecting off of them (this includes your lights).

To get good caustics, there's a few pretty good tutorials in Maya Help of all places... just pull up help and do a search. You'll need to learn how to work with photons and such. I'd also recommend reading the entire doc on the architectural materials (also within Maya help). You'll get a primer on stuff like bokeh and exposure controls in there.

[DontBlinkx182x]

Thanks a lot guys I really appreciate it! I have been actually trying to use 3ds Max's Archetectural & Design material that is pretty much like the Mia material but I find I get better results in Max for some reason.

Ive read through the help docs in maya for caustics and photons but actually feel 3ds Max's help docs are more helpful. I think I will switch over from Maya to Max and see what it does for me.

Thanks again guys I really appreciate it!

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