Cities in Maya / mental ray

#9

instancing highres objects with nParticles in Bounding Box mode works quite well I think. With a little bit scripting I can imagine you could place the buildings with a rotation of 0,90,180,360° and with “self collide” they don’t even overlap to each other.

But it’s difficult to obtain a realistic city, I think I would place them by hand and then converting each blocks to proxies if ever. A good looking tree has about 1-2million faces - I don’t think a building would reach that polycount. :surprised

@InfernalDarkness
About the shader assign problem. I hate it too but what I’ll do in this case (a little workaround) is to put the new shader in the “material slot” of the old shader’s shading group. So I don’t have to “select objects with material” and it’s fast. :shrug:

#10

Assemblies vs. Proxies vs. Instances Cities will require multiple shaders assigned to each building, and the ability to vary the shaders somewhat on each as well. From what I’ve gathered so far, only assemblies will allow multiple shaders on proxied geo, but they are by and away the slowest process. I’m still researching, but anyone have any thoughts about this?

If you are using Maya 2012 you can use the User Data shaders to alter the shader assignment parameters on instances, etc from one shader node and a script.

#11

My buildings typically reach 20-50 thousand faces – Also, cities tend to have a bit of foliage themselves :smiley:

#12

Interesting, I’ll have to look into that a bit more. Are there any tutorials / docs out there?

#13

Juuuust out of curiosity, is there a reason not to post any vray/renderman studio specifics in here ?
:slight_smile:

#14

for me, mainly, it’s because I’m poor.

I’m one of those artists who has to make lemonade with the bundled software (which is remarkably affordable – free, in fact for educators).

So I’d prefer to keep this thread focused on mental ray. I’d rather not have it turn into a flamewar between rendering solutions, which seems pretty inevitable whenever they’re allowed the same space.

Still… if you’ve got some links to good vray/renderman resources, feel free to share!

#15

(I’m sure you know this already)
If you’re an educator, or educatee(?), then it’s cheap to purchase for non commercial use.
Anyway, I understand it’s good to use what is bundled.

Actually, have to say your assumption is a teeny bit wrong - we had a discussion recently about many renderers and not one single childish argument broke out AT ALL !!!
:surprised

hehe - seriously…have a look if you’re bored:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=7&t=978743
:thumbsup:

Well, I like your script as mentioned in the other thread, so I’m hoping I can learn and apply something whether it’s MR/VR/RMS for the end result. I know the forests thread went into specifically MR solutions/proxies which was massively useful.

#16

@InfernalDarkness
About the shader assign problem. I hate it too but what I’ll do in this case (a little workaround) is to put the new shader in the “material slot” of the old shader’s shading group. So I don’t have to “select objects with material” and it’s fast. :shrug:

m0z, you just saved me 40 billion hours of waiting! Thanks so much, can’t believe I didn’t try that myself but you’ve saved the day, once again! Ed, we can consider the texturing-replacement issue… well, a non-issue, now. I’m happy for once that I was doing things the longest, wrongest way possible!

#17

Glad this thread’s already helped someone!! Now I just need a solution this fast when re-applying materials to only individual instances. User-Data-Shader-Research, here I come!

#18

True, and I want to start learning vray some time soon. For now, I have access to sixty mental-ray-only workstations. Pretty good incentive to stick with mr for now!!

#19

Thanks for the Script:thumbsup:

#20

What about the poor kids !
Are they stuck with mspaint whilst you render :wink:

Anyway, back on track.
:smiley:

#21

:thumbsup:
glad I could help.

@EdtheHobbit:
http://kiryha.blogspot.com/2011/04/userdata.html
:wink:

#22

mm that data shader is interesting…isnt it kind of replicating the behaviour of a 3 way switch? im sure its more flexible but does MR recognize swicth nodes? just wondering

#23

user data is more native to mental ray and more flexible for data types. With a little python script you can assign it and connect things easily through selection. (I’ve always hated the switch nodes in Maya for some reason, possibly irrational.)

I expect more of these tools will begin floating around soon, it’s not exposed so it takes some time.

#24

Thanks man! I’m going to put together a bit of a test with this soon, and probably make a couple of MEL scripts to go along with it. And switch nodes are a pain in my a$$ – probably just because of the DAG…

#25

The project I’m currently on (my “day” job) is in crunch time right now, so I haven’t had much time to play with this concept.

I have a scene set up for a playground that I’ll be sharing soon, along with the scripts I’m writing. I’m just too swamped!

#26

Crunch time is over (as is my employment, alas), so I’ll be working on this problem again. For now, I’m focusing on creating a viable layout of city blocks that I can use to generate or place structures, roads, etc. according to whatever rules I determine. This is what I have so far, created by deleting interior edges from a higher-polygon primitive:

This layout has 700 blocks, which I figure can accommodate an average of five to seven structures apiece. This would give me a total of about 4,200 structures. Manhattan has about 70,000, but this is a good enough start for me.

At this point, I have no earthly idea what I’m going to do with this, but I’ll figure something out!

#27

Just keepin’ the thread alive. I’m going to be looking at this again soon! I promise!

#28

Interesting idea! and can be VERY powerful! :slight_smile: