CGTalk - Layered Shader is really slow; what's the problem?

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brianemsu2

08-27-2003, 05:07 AM

Hi,
I am having a problem with my layered shader tree. It is taking a lot more time to render than I would imagine it's supposed to. (about 10 minutes)
-When I disconnect the three images from the layered shader, it only takes a few seconds to render...
Is this a common attribute of the layered shader?
--here is the shader tree:
http://www2.msstate.edu/~bee2/pics/ShaderTree.jpg
Please help, this one of my small experimental projects to learn the program and I am stumped here on the layered shader.

pyromania

08-27-2003, 05:20 AM

You have 3 textures feeding into 3 materials. So maya is calculating lighting info for all 3. All you really need is a layered texture node. Then you can combine all 3 files into one texture, and then apply that to your main material. Since there are no material nodes in the pipeline it should render alot faster.

brianemsu2

08-27-2003, 08:29 AM

Yeah, I hear what your saying but I had a problem with that method as well. - I can't remember if I had added the alpha layer to the files when I was using the layered texture...I am about to go test that out again.
Anyway, when I would connect all of the files together into a layered shader, the default colors of the space not taken by the file on my bottle would increase so that you could not add or multiply or use any of the methods supported by Mental Ray or Maya software layered textures to see the glass shader layer -I hope that makes sense (I'm still pretty new to texturing). Hopefully that's the alpha channel I'm missing?
-Brian

johs

08-27-2003, 12:03 PM

You could switch the layered shader node with a layered texture node. I think they render faster.
And then you could bake the textures so that your shading tree is as simpel as possible.

How big are your textures?

brianemsu2

08-27-2003, 04:08 PM

My textures aren't that big (398 x 503)... just labels I scanned off of a real bottle and saved as regular jpegs out of photoshop.
This really isn't a detailed project, just one to learn how to texture.

-If I baked the textures, wouldn't I lose quality in the images (maybe not at the size they're at but if they were bigger)?

johs

08-27-2003, 11:45 PM

I dont think you wil lose quality by baking the textures, you can set the resulution by yourself, so just make it 1024 and you should be safe.

brianemsu2

08-29-2003, 12:25 AM

I tried to render it with the Maya software renderer and it only takes 23 seconds to finish...
When I switch it back to mental ray, it takes so long, I have to press escape... upwards of 10 to 15 minutes
-So it's definitely mental ray that is causing the problem.

johs

08-29-2003, 07:11 AM

AH, I didn't know you were using mental ray. I have no experience at all with that, so I'm sorry I can't help you with that.

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