Mental Ray has potential

[enforcer2k]

Mental Ray will not do a lot of stuff supported by Maya's basic renderer so it's good to take a not of this before you begin...

All post process effects (Glows, Pfx),
Trims in Nurbs surfaces... Limited
SubDs
Anistropic Shaders (WTH???)
Particle instanced geometry


..... But be creative besides... and remember... you can always composite!

[enforcer2k]

Sorry I forgot to mention my pc is an AMD 1300Mhz.
I know I mentioned I wasn't for comparisons, but comparisons between MR and Maya's standard renderer can be made. I just dislike post that get lost in a cycle of my renderer is better than yours posts, thanks.

[Darrell Croswell]

<snipped> <no warez talk please>.

your renders show potential...especially if the raytraced shadows and anti aliasing are better than the ones that come default with maya.

i am shopping for a better render engine, but dont know really what to do. how can i find one that will not **** up my .mb scenes etc.

thanks

[enforcer2k]

Wish I could help man, but the forces that be have demanded we pay for such luxuries :P. Will be making another post before the night is done though so stay tuned...

[enforcer2k]

http://www.taimedia.com/_Lightwaving/images/Raytrace.jpg

This took about an hour to render, I liked the glass though. Would like to do something nicer. And get a grasp on Final Gather...

[-wT-]

It really has potential, just look at this (actually quite old already ;)) HDR lighted WIP Viper I once was doing:

http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/VaipperiParas.jpg


Here's the rest of the stuff, mostly just tests:

http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/3palloa.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/3palloa_normal.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/3palloa_normal_area.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/3palloa_normal_area_FG.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/3palloa_normal_area_FG_GI.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/3palloa_normal_area_GI.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/CausticTest.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/Featuretest.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/GItest.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/Tank.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/ViperGI.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/ViperGI2.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/pyramid_normal.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/pyramid_normal_area.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/pyramid_normal_area_FG.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/pyramid_normal_area_GI.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/pyramid_normal_area_GI_FG.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/ViiperHDR1.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/ViiperHDR2.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/ViiperHDR3.jpg
http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/ViiperHDR4.jpg

[Aegis]

im new. where did you get MR?

[wedge]

EDIT: Oh yeah.... no bashing Mental Ray. ;)

[Aegis]

what do you mean Mental Ray ****s wgeddes?

;) j/k

[wedge]

well, my original post said that i'm an thus far unimpressed by Mental Ray's capabilities, based on it's price and render times. I'm more than satisfied with GI_Joe, which is much more... well... free. It's also faster for GI. As far as Raytracing, I'm not a big fan of the look of the MR pics above, with the exception of the car windows on the HDRI WIP Viper.

[-wT-]

But can GI_Joe do this (For an example): http://device.dyndns.org/wt/pictures/3palloa.jpg

;)

Yeah I know MR is overpriced for us Mayanists, but it sure is one helluva renderer if you look at the features and the settings (The lack of proper settings in i.e. GI in Entropy made me to change to MR).
And just want to know, what's wrong with the images wgeddes? Can I see images that look better than MR ones?

[enforcer2k]

Hello everyone!

Good going wT :) love your picks, seems you're an investigative CGI user like myself. A suggestion to reduce the Gi grainyness would be to
1) Increase the number of photons your light is emitting, in the Mental Ray portion of you light settings (Faster than suggestion 2)
2) Use Final gather

A gripe I have with MR is the lack of a rendertimer!!!? Seems you have to calculate the time it takes to render yourself which is just silly. I hope Maya integrates more of Maya's unique attributes into MR in time, Mental ray is definately faster than Maya at raytracing... But let's see, as we go along.

------------------

Nice to have you onboard wgeddes, yes I did say no bashing. The problem is few people have really explorered what MR can do in Maya, and that is the point of this post. I'm no expert and if you have looked around the net like I have you'd have seen a lot of bad things written about it. I think however that people have missed out on what it can do and that is what we're trying to discover here. MR is very powerful, and 2nd to Pixar in Movie industry use (Fight Club, Jurrasic Park 3, The grinch, etc) ... The pitfalls of Maya while they seem large, and only slightly than Pixar's integration of RenderMan in Maya. In both post process effects are nil, but Pixar admittedly has better geometry support. Anyway I'm hopeful that we will find some new insights into the power MR offers, understanding that all rendering implementation naturally have their pitfalls.

Thanks again guys, let's render on :)

[enforcer2k]

Mental Ray can be purchased from ...AliasWavefront (http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Tmpl/Maya/html/index.jhtml?page=/en/Community/Discover/product_news/mental_ray/mental_ray_m.html&style=normal) ... Someone asked

[enforcer2k]

I know it can do it but what settings do I need to make to get this effect with raytraced shadows...? All I get right now are raytraced shadows without any color...

This is from the Maya mental ray site....
http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Community/Discover/product_news/mental_ray/img/mr09_window.jpg

[wmaher2]

I cant get a basic shader with a 2d file texture for colour and bump to render properly with MR. it renders parts of the face grey and othe parts like it should. It is a carpeted floor for a room. May renders it fine I dont get it. I know it it has limitations but basic file textures. I mean come on!!!! I have used Phongs lamberts still nothing works properly....

[flamedevil]

I don't think that it's shadows .
Is it caustics ??? no ?
I'm not sure but to made it , i think you have to add text in custon text editor or atrribute editor but i don't know what can we put in them ( ??????? ! ) .

...I don't think it had answered to your question :)

[enforcer2k]

Hard to answer a question you don't know the answer to Flamedevil :P No sweat.

[kyphur]

Whoa, MR is a real nice peice of work. I would suggest learning something like BMRT before you start with MR. If you have access to BMRT (it's free after all) or it's bigger brother Pixar Renderman then learn those first. That way you'll be able to have some clue as to how to write your own shaders for MR also.

GI_Joe is not a Global Illuminator. It's just a dome with a 3D texture assigned to it with a bunch of directional lights. Big whoop.

If you want to see what MR can really do check out these sights:

This is all CG and rendered with MR by the way:
http://www.mentalimages.com/images/BUFclub_schuss_teil1_out.1.jpg
http://www.mentalimages.com/images/BUFclub_girlgross_w882_out.1.jpg
http://www.mentalimages.com/images/BUFclub_kesselaufherd_kuecheganz_out.1.jpg
http://www.mentalimages.com/images/BUFcell_Horse_out.1.jpg
http://www.mentalimages.com/images/BUFclub_explo_total_explo_ofen_out.1.jpg

You might wanna check out BUF's site btw.
www.buf.com

I render in MR all the time, in fact I rendered my final compositing piece in MR and the CG element looked more realistic than my filmed stuff. You just have to know how to cut your image in order to get the best render times. An hour is a bit excessive for what you're rendering unless you're on a PII or old AMD K6.


Kyph

[wmaher2]

Thanx for all your help thus far Flamedevil. I did manage to get it working properly, for some reason it didnt like the geometry.....I simply deleted a few faceces and rebuilt them it turned out fine. it was smthing to do with polyface extrude. I thought there migth have been to faces in the same spot but there werent it was weird.....But thanx so much for all your help with getting me started with mental ray for maya...........By the way it is an awsome engine. If thet can intergrated further like XSI for example Maya will be the ultimate 3d app without much contest. Except from MAYBE XSI. Getting past post effect limitations would be incredible.

[wedge]

wow, i really like the image with the stained glass!

i think maybe i've just not seen all MR has to offer.

Enforcer2K: i think went a little overboard on those first two images ;)

here's the best i could come up with using only Maya

[enforcer2k]

Does the name of the renderer imply anything as to your state of mind when done tweaking the variables??? Things Maya has to address about MR and Mental Images too... The manual are half English 3/4 Greek! More consistency, less bugs. Arrrgghh. Sorry, long hours in front of the CRT :P

http://www.taimedia.com/_Lightwaving/images/RoomGI.jpg

Not too happy with it... Shadows appear a bit washed behind the pipes.

[-wT-]

Originally posted by enforcer2k
Hello everyone!

Good going wT :) love your picks, seems you're an investigative CGI user like myself. A suggestion to reduce the Gi grainyness would be to
1) Increase the number of photons your light is emitting, in the Mental Ray portion of you light settings (Faster than suggestion 2)
2) Use Final gather

A gripe I have with MR is the lack of a rendertimer!!!? Seems you have to calculate the time it takes to render yourself which is just silly. I hope Maya integrates more of Maya's unique attributes into MR in time, Mental ray is definately faster than Maya at raytracing... But let's see, as we go along.
...

Actually all the grainy images were using only final gathering as the method, and the final Viper HDR lighted image had quite extreme settings assigned, but it still was very grainy (Ok I have to admit, I used Photoshop to smudge and blur out some of the grainyness), and took ages to render (Three days with TB 1000MHz). I think I now know how to get clear images with FG, as I've always used the FG radius as min < max, though this (http://www.umlaut.fr/XSI/FinalGathering.html) shows pictures rendered with FG radius as min = max, and I think this is the problem I'm having, I'll be making the min and max radius egual from now on.
The images that had GI enabled, weren't really grainy at all, but it's too bad you can't for an example use photons if you use HDRI lighting :hmm:. Or domelight-like lighting (Quite same situation as with HDRI, though there's not dome with color map, but just camera enviroment bumped up from black)...
But thanks for the suggestions anyways :thumbsup:

And about that glass picture you sent enforcer, I think those are caustics. I think you can make that effect by either making all the different color glass pieces as own objects, and changing the reflected color to the appropriet color, or maybe assigning a colormap to the reflected color attribute... Gotta try someday.
And that last picture of your's looks nice... but where are the shadows i.e. from the poles? :surprised


The only thing I miss in the MR for Maya beta, is that there isn't (ir)radiance setting in the materials!! Biiiiiiiiig mistake AW! (Well... it's a beta afterall)
I wonder if you could do that with the custom text editor (Or whatever it was)

Edit: I just looked abit more closly the umlaut.fr site, and noticed that not all of the renderings were done with FG radius min and max being the same value, and still no grains... I'm pretty sure my problem lies in the incompatibility with scene units between XSI and Maya. I've had to put 1 to the photon energy setting numerous times to get acceptable and not overblown images when using GI in some situations, although it should be somewhere between 100-1000 normally.

[kfc]

-wT- : what is the way that u make HDR work in maya? i've use references from XSI tut and trying to make it work in maya. but unfortunately there is a missing node in maya which suppose to make it work. did u put the HDR in ur renderings by manually editing the .mr files?
hope u can share this with us.
thanks.

[-wT-]

Glad you asked (;)). It's not too simple task, and as it's not a feature in MR/MR for Maya, it's a bit hard to make, but I'll explain it to you:

1. First you have to get your hands on to some HDRI. http://www.debevec.org is good place to get HDRI related stuff.

2. Now you should have some sphere shaped HDRI images, well the next step is to convert them to .hdr with HDRI shop (Found at www.debevec.org), if not already.

3. Then comes the somewhat tricky part, as MR doesn't accept any other HDRI imagetypes than it's own .ct, you have to download this small progie named "hdrtoxsi" (http://www.xsiturkiye.com/temp/hdrtoxsi.exe). To make it work, just copy your .hdr image and hdrtoxsi.exe to i.e. C:\, and then type this into your command prompt:
hdrtoxsi whateveryourhdriimagenameis.hdr thenameyouwantthenewfiletobe.ct

4. Then Open Maya, make a sphere, assign the new (BIG!) xxx.ct file to the sphere (Maya won't show it, and will report about errors, just ignore it) and reverse the normals.

5. Now place all your stuff inside the sphere, and make a plane as ground. Now turn Final Gathering on, tweak the settings and render at will!

(6. I'm not 100% sure, but you may have to render your final image in floating point tiff -form to make the HDRI lighting to work, but I'm not sure about it. And if you do render in 32bit mode, you can't see the image in your framebuffer, and have to use HDRI Shop to open the image.)


There, mini-tut for HDRI with MR & Maya. Tell me if I missed something, and/or if it doesn't work.

PS. Remember that when rendering HDRI lighted images, it will take LONG! Much longer with the ordinary "sky" lighting achieved with changing the cameras enviroment, and much much longer than just light bouncing by single lights.

[Grooveholmes]

Holy !@#$ !!!

Check this one out...

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9477

:D

[kyphur]

check out the links I posted above if you think that's good.

Kyph

[Grooveholmes]

Yes Kypher all of those links are Fantastic, but the image in homeboys link that I posted was actually created with Mental Ray for maya.

[kyphur]

Those images I posted are created in Mental Ray for Maya by BUf. His images look well done too.

Kyph

[DWIEMER]

Here are some tests of mine. All just some early quick developments

gr. dwiemer

http://www.dwiemer.com/render_1.jpg


http://www.dwiemer.com/render_2.jpg


http://www.dwiemer.com/render_3.jpg

[Dave Hackett]

As a new Maya user from Softimage, I can tell you how good MR really is. I always enjoyed using it. I have yet to get or use it for Maya, so I don't know how limited it is for Maya as in comparison to Softimage. But Softimage had MR built in for a long time. Maybe Maya will get tighter with MR and things will improve.
Dave

[-wT-]

Heya Dave, could you tell me how you can control the amount of photon/FG reflection shader by shader basis? I have access to XSI 2.0 manuals, and I think I've found some shader option named "radiance" or "irradiance", but can't find it anymore, and this is one thing MR for Maya is lacking... or is there this kind of a option anyways? (I'm pretty sure I saw that kind of a option in the XSI manuals once)

Or is i.e. the color bleeding related to the diffuse value of the shader? Or related to the shader type itself?

[svenip]

i guess maybe the value of the color from the surface is controlling the amount of the reflected photons.

[Grooveholmes]

Heres are a couple tests i did using MR... pretty simple cheese.. crashes every time I make a scene anymore complicated.. :annoyed: This renderer definately does have potential, just need to get some technical issues worked out...

[-wT-]

Originally posted by enforcer2k
Mental Ray will not do a lot of stuff supported by Maya's basic renderer so it's good to take a not of this before you begin...

All post process effects (Glows, Pfx),
Trims in Nurbs surfaces... Limited
SubDs
Anistropic Shaders (WTH???)
Particle instanced geometry


..... But be creative besides... and remember... you can always composite!

I just now read your post more carefully, and I must point out that it says clearly in the MR for Maya manuals that anisotropic shaders only support NURBS surfaces currently... so you're half right ;)

[Grooveholmes]

Is it possible to bake you're lighting into a file texture using mental ray for maya?
:shrug:

[-wT-]

It is possible in Mental Ray, but MR for Maya plugin doesn't support it (ofcourse).

But RayTools (http://www.überschmuck.com) support, and in the screenshots you can clearly see an option to bake lighting into textures, too bad the setup of RayTools isn't as easy as A|W's plugin, and it hasn't been tested with MR3 at all, so good luck on getting it running.

[wmaher2]

Can anyone explain to me how to setup up the .rayhost file for a dual cpu machine in laymans terms?????

It is pretty lame how they missed that one out when programing it........It goes to show if they could forget somthing like making it work properly on a dual cpu machine no wonder there are so many bugs......

but dont get me wrong I LOVE IT ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Final Gtaher baby no more damn crazy light slow complicatedlight systems ie GI joe ahhhhh

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