enjoyMentalRayStringOptions, a UI to easely use MR string options

#161

I’m never far from MILA. It seems to be a huge enhancement in mental ray. No need to deal with local sampling anymore, just an abstract quality knob. :slight_smile: All the rest is “artistic” controls.

I’ve always have pain to do a correct and easy to maintain phenomena… :frowning:

And all others shaders could became deprecated and have a full BRDF+IS renderer. An Arnold like actually. :smiley:

It could be great if MR team could support few “out of the box” shaders (lens, noise, etc…). :frowning:

Yes, and there is no documentation about many of them. :smiley:

#162

Documentation is up to the integrator so anything not integrated will be without good docs, hopefully I can take care of some of that on the blog.

#163

…Will any of these issues be resolved in 2014? Will I have to use this script, or will we see these features finally added in the render settings? I’m also curious as to now Mental Ray has Unified Sampling and Native IBL which is really nice, will it be a norm in the 2014 workflow or do we still have to unlock these features?

#164

From what I kown, Unified Sampling is exposed but not the rest (need to be confirm).

New feature can’t be exposed and the same time they appear in MR as it always take long time to AD to work on feature integration. That’s why I’ve created this script (but don’t use it in production, you will regret it!). :wink:

#165

Good to hear! I was wondering what the work-flow would be now since I’m really starting to enjoy Native IBL and Unified Sampling as my default. Not only do I not have to worry about Flickering in Animation, I also get really fast speeds that normally would take forever via legacy features.

#166

In the meantime you can default to user_ibl_env, however, some of us feel that the Native IBL Environment light should be integrated.

Autodesk now shares the plug-in with nVidia. It’s a somewhat new arrangement and it’s under Autodesk direction. But we’re hopeful that this new cooperation will see more rapid changes after some time to get used to it.

#167

What difference is it between usr_ibl_env and builtin IBL? usr_ibl_env is more “MR future workflow” compliant? ^^

Very interesting! It’s a good point I think because NVARC will contribute as “rendering expert” and avoid some strange choices AD does.

Any other information about how AD and NVARC work as evolve?

#168

Nothing too specific I can really say. But having all of the users vote on the feedback forum to “give the translator back” may have influenced Autodesk’s decision to get more help. (At least I hope that’s the reasoning. I like to think they are listening now more than ever.)

#169

I hope so. If AD start to seriously listen users, it could be a radical change…

#170

I thought I read somewhere on your blog that using the user_ibl_env wasn’t a good idea? Seems like it takes much more work to setup than having the shading parameter within the render globals tab like the Native IBL environment…Of course you know much more about this than myself.

#171

The only major benefit of user_ibl_env is that it’s guaranteed not to lose energy.

But if the Environment Light (Native IBL) isn’t exposed and it’s not something you want to mess with exposing, then the user_ibl_env is available.

#172

ah…I see, thanks for the heads up! looks like I will do a bit more investigation with it. I do like how you have it exposed via nvidia forums UI script. Seems like common sense for them to add it by default, could you see a reason why they wouldn’t or are there any issues you’ve come across one might beware of? And just for my curiosity do you use any of these newer techniques in production?

#173

We use the Environment Lighting mode in production (Native IBL)

It’s easier to use (more native to Maya workflow) and doesn’t lose a lot of energy by default. You can solve the loss of energy by follow the steps on the blog (increased resolution and/or shader samples)

#174

Thanks David,

Heres hoping for a smoother 2014 with Mental Ray…

#175

Hiya,

First - great script! I have found it very useful, thanks so much for making it. I tried running it with Maya 2014 Win x64 and recieved an error in the script editor:

import enjoyMentalRayStringOptions
enjoyMentalRayStringOptions.Ui().create()
# Error: Item not found: false
# Traceback (most recent call last):
#   File "<maya console>", line 2, in 
#   File "D:\Maya\2014-x64\mentalray\scripts\enjoyMentalRayStringOptions.py", line 952, in create
#	 createdControl = self.createControl( stringOption, localParent )
#   File "D:\Maya\2014-x64\mentalray\scripts\enjoyMentalRayStringOptions.py", line 1079, in createControl
#	 cmds.optionMenuGrp( curOptionMenuGrp, edit=True, value=str(stringOption.value) )
# RuntimeError: Item not found: false #

Not sure if the script is 2014 compatible yet but I saw you had updated it for MR 3.11 and gave it a shot. Thanks!

-Nick

#176

Hi!

This is a very strange problem you’ve got there. :frowning:

I didn’t have Maya 2014 yet so I can’t test, but I will try asap. :smiley:

#177

Thanks for looking into it! Appreciate it. Will check back in, let me know if you need me to do any testing.

-Nick

#178

hi nbreslow, until Narann gets a chance to do a proper update you can comment out the redundant stuff.

I was not too careful, mostly i wanted the IS stuff for object lights. here is what i had ended up with. Maybe Narann can tell you if i missed something

#179

I think AD added a string option with a default value I didn’t deal with (the “false” one).

#180

I’ve just launched my script with Maya 2014 and don’t have any problem. :frowning:

Can someone send me a scene reproducing the problem please? :slight_smile: