ctrl_buffers

#681

How can I get SSS pass from ctrl-buffers?
Could anyone post an example of shading network with SSS shader plugged in?

thanks in advance:)

#682

Are these shaders compiled for 64 bits machines?, I can´t manage to render anything with them, I only get errors, so I guess the shader only runs on 32 bits mode…

Anyone?

Thank´s.

#683

Are you there Francesca?, are you able to compile this shader for 64 bits in a near future?, just want to know if this is still alive or not.

Thank´s.

#684

sorry, no 64bit in the very near future. but a v3.0 for the summer, probably.
(francesca is no more here, it will be 5/6 months she’s banned from this site).

max

#685

Francesca is banned?, but you can see her profile…, what a pitty…

I assume version 3 won´t be for 64 bits neither?

#686

banned???
francesca luce banned???
:banghead: :banghead:
great work cgtalk, i haven’t words
:banghead: :banghead:

but, max, francesca is still working for ctrl.studio?

#687

I guess it’s not the first time she’s been banned? I wonder why though…

#688

Well thats not good, a mental ray forum isn’t as usefull without francesca. Does she still make updates on any other forum? (she is a she right?)

I’ve been banned from here as well, theres just a few subjects that are touchy with the admins even if you don’t even get too off the hook on them. I don’t imagine what she did was too horrible.

#689

Out of curiosity I just clicked on “Find all posts by francescaluc” in her profile and found a comment from the last day she posted on CGTalk in this thread http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=421338

She made a comment there spoiling the party and if that is why, in my opinion apparently she was banned for alternative thinking that was wrongly interpreted as arrogance. Pretty sad.

#690

thats really a shame. shes one of the top 3 people that have taught me the most about mental ray. i began from knowing basically nothing to introducing mental ray into our pipeline. shes defanently one of the people that helped me get to that point.

#691

thats true … she helped the community a lot and gave it a lot too
still i was not surprised to hear she got banned, since her comments were/appeared often rude and arrogant towards some people …

still hope she wont loose her interest in staying within the community

and we need 64bit ctrl stuff :slight_smile:

#692

yes, it’s true. someone needs always to appreciate or celebrate
something. the whole culture of the ‘doit’ just starts from that. in that
sense it’s already a dead thing, you see all the epitaphs above ? my
real mentors are all those that say nothing and do what they are able
to do.

Why would she be banned for THIS?

#693

Thats a good question.

She always helped a lot of ppl here, writing the shaders, creating tutorials etc.
If that is not participating in a good way in a forum, then i dont know what would be.

#694

people need to grow some skin. if there is 1 thing i cant stand in this field or the… “arts” is when people are being nice. few people say what they really think and that leaves the “artist” in a dark or deluded. i much rather know/have someone who speaks his/her mind even if it’s harsh or rude at times but actually give valuable information.

#695

With all my respect to CGTalk admins…

Some ppl do post bad comments on CGTalk…
Usually such comments end up deleted by the moderators…
MayB if it’s too rude… the user is banned…

But banning the user and leaving the comment?? that dosen’t really make sense…
Specially when it comes to someone that has contributed that much to the community.

I was wondering y her profile was dead for quite a while??
I’ve had some “Feedback” about Ctrl_Buffers, and even some shading networks that I wanted to share…
I’m suddenly not intrested in “Sharing” any of it for the comming 5/6 months…

With all my respect…
But U Ban some1 who’s writting shaders for free…
U should expect other contributers to reconsider “Sharing” anything at all??
(not that wt I was planning to contribute is of any real value compared to her contribution to the community)

-Mina

#696

Maybe we should confirm whether she did actually get banned. Maybe she just decided to stop posting for her own reasons, and we should respect that.

Many people contribute greatly to these discussions, but francesca luce continuously helped push the envelope. I look forward to the day she returns.

#697

May be but I have a good feeling she is still around helping us. Call it her “shadow” ;).

Except my previous message I’ve never posted in this thread before and rarely in the Rendering forum because this is an area where I don’t feel advanced enough to give a worthy advise, but I had a lot of questions and have been very active browser searching, looking for, and in most cases finding the answers. Francesca’s input has been one of the major contributions helping me in that respect.

Aside from this banning stuff which I’ve never thought before, my major complaint about CGTalk has been the deteriorating search capability of this site which was not the case in the past or the limitations was not that severe. I often limit my search to users like Francesca but in most cases the search results have some kind of time frame limit and I can’t access all user input which in my opinion is the biggest asset of a site like this.

I have complained a few times about this and the admins were able to remove the search limits temporarily after users like me make some noise but after some time quietly the search limitations revert back to its inferior state and I’ve kind of resigned to this.:sad:

#698

maybe she was banned by her WORK for posting too much usefull information. the poster from ctrl studios was very vague about the situation. ive always suspected there was a conspiracy to keep the best mental ray techniques a secret to employees of big studios and perhaps she was considered a leak. i mean just try reading the documents… ZBRUSH which imo is the WORST new user learning curve of any program i have ever used in my entire life, and i’ve been doing 3d professionally for over 10 years so i have used a LOT of different 3d programs in that time, at least makes great effort to include usefull tutorial materials, for example. the mental ray docs seem like they were run through a google translator and never edited… and they were badly organized to start with.

so somebody who is putting out a lot of really usefull professional infos is silenced… its a conspiracy between the big businesses right? i guess we will know if i vanish too…

#699

[rant]
I call it an urban legend that there is not enough information and explanatory material about mental ray. With zbrush you’re learning some user interface - with mental ray you’re learning the backend framework of a complex render engine. That’s a little difference imho.

And mental ray is documented down to it’s core. Definitely overwhelmingly technical for beginners, still it’s documented.

For example, the other day I had a look at the new finalRender beta. The fact that it doesnt contain any sort of SDK, and the fact that I was able to write their whole ‘Render Elements’ (rendering out passes in one go) and even some more stuff on my own in mental ray (i.e. by Puppet’s support I’m able to write all the jazz into one single multichannel OpenEXR image), makes me know that it’s better to go through hell for a little while.
[/rant]

#700

maybe there is nothing wrong with the docs for programmers or people who are already highly knowledgeable about rendering (i can tell you know far more than i do since you mentioned several things i have never even heard of as your example of a simple situation :)) but for a new user who doent even know that final gather or ambocc or caustics or IBL or any of the other features mental ray provides even EXIST, you are totally lost trying to learn it yourself. and i have found they are all simple enough once you find the right online tutorial or cleear posting on a forum, such as many of francescas. you have this moment of oh, its so simple! so maybe its less a lack of info but more a “needle in the hay” problem of finding the relevant info.

for example i just loaded up the docs to check this, at the index level of the doc there is no mention of ambient occlusion, which for my money is the most usefull feature MR provides past standard raytracing! NO MENTION. maybe i had a divine vision where an angel said “you need to learn about a concept called ambient occlusion”, other wise how i would even know it exists… certainly not from the mental ray documents. but so lets ignore the first thing that stopped the average user from finding usefull info with the docs, now if i run a search on the help docs it does come up…

ok so the first result that is even vaguely relevant is in rendereng and render setup… afer several results that have nothing to do with it whatsoever, but if i didnt know better already that was a discouraging waste of time. and its just about concepts, no practical info about how to activate the shader. same thing for the second link. third link is suddenly for a very advanced workflow about 49 steps ahead of where we are and still nothing about how to simply activate the shader and render a normal ambocc pass.

its not till the very last link (20 plus links later) that we actually find simply info about a usefull workflow to activate the shader and use it in your scene in the common way that most everyone uses an ambocc pass. AND ITS PART OF THE MAYA DOCUMENTATION NOT THE MENTAL RAY DOC! so its a good thing i searched “all available docs” by accident just now :slight_smile:

theres some huge disconnect because i think most of the ppl involved with it already know what they are doing at this point, and dont realize just how totally 100% useless the docs are if you are starting from a situation of “i just want to make pretty pictures and dont know anything about rendering.” try to forget that you already know even the definitions of terms and start with the docs trying to find “how do i light a scene”… good luck.