I agree … very friendly for quick stuff, I love that I can show to client on the fly if they like this color, how much reflection, etc
work wonders
Absolutely right mate. That’s exactly what i use it.
@Kakkoi,
Holy S*** !! Right now i’m not in front of my workstation.
But it would be just awesome to have Iray enabled with the IPR.
Thanks for the heads up mate. Gotta check it tomorrow!
Umm, possible bad news. In 2012 I believe AD changed something in the way it asks for data and when I try to tumble or interact in IPR with Progressive or iRay, it crashes or halts.
They aren’t using (or ever have been really) the correct API. So that’s just my current experience. (Also make sure your framebuffer settings aren’t set to cache)
Bunkspeed however, does this correctly.
I have no idea why AD has dropped the ball, sat on it, crushed, ran over, and set fire to mental ray integration. 
(However, product differentiation could mean you should buy both Maya and Max. . .ugh. Greedy.)
Hey David,
glad you dropped in here.
So did you test it on your workstation?
I gotta check it now and see how far i get.
Can you confirm that it runs on your workstation?
Would be cool to have a 100% statement here.
Tried at work and it would crash. Quadro 4000
I have an old GPU at home (Quadro 1700) where my CPUs are actually faster . :rolleyes:
Yeah, iRay itself works fairly fine in 2012. I'm saying this from a fair amount of personal testing.
But moving things around in IPR, it seems to be very picky with how the scene is setup. I havn't figured out what the specific issue is, but I have one scene that works with IPR. If I create a new scene and try it, Maya will crash when moving things in IPR.
[http://www.mediafire.com/?t42fgtp23rq8t2i](http://www.mediafire.com/?t42fgtp23rq8t2i)
So, people could probably use this scene I guess if they want, just delete the objects and stuff to make an empty scene to use that IPRs fine.
[b]Edit:[/b]
Alright, did some comparing of my scenes, and it seems the "Export State Shader" setting is what causes IPR to piss itself the most when trying to change things.
Make sure it's unchecked under Render Settings>Options>Customization.
Also uncheck:
Export Custom Colors, Data, Vectors, and Maya Options.
Uncheck “Enable Default Light” in your Common tab, under Render options at the bottom.
Edit:
Made a simple script to do all the necessary options quickly.
setAttr "defaultRenderGlobals.enableDefaultLight" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportParticles" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportParticleInstances" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportFluids" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportPostEffects" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.useLegacyShaders" 1;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportStateShader" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportMayaOptions" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportCustomColors" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportCustomData" 0;
setAttr "mentalrayGlobals.exportCustomVectors" 0;
Col stuff you posting here.
Thanks mate.
But still i have a main problem…
When i run the script and activate Iray.
What shall i do next?
Iray Devices = ??
Iray Max Path Length = ??
Iray Threads = 0
Iray Mode = GPU
The first two parameters are blank, what should i insert there?
And if i press the render button i get this error
Cannot use data of type no type in a scalar operation.
And then, the render settings window is totally blank, I have to restart maya.
I just can’t believe it.
It’s working! Kakkoii you are da man!
Actually your scene is working.
I gotta find out why my scene is not working right.
Maybe the string options you have added helped.
That’s awesome.
Still i have the feeling, with your very simple scene that it’s slow.
Can you confirm that?
Or should i reduce the quality? Iray Max Path Length?
Thanks a bunch for your help mate.
cheers
So when the IPR is rendering, it’s very hard to change some stuff
because Maya is not reacting very fast anymore. Is there any option to change that?
Can you also confirm that behaviour Kakkoii?
Still, Iray seems very glitchy. Got here and there crashes, where i have to kill
Maya from the task manager.
Also, it seems that only sun&sky light is available with Iray.
If that is true, then this is a massive downside and therefore not
useable for me.
VrayRT seems way ahead when i see this… that’s a pity…
From Steve’s post on the mental ray and iray thread on the mental images forum it seems like other lights should work as well:
Common Light Sources (ambient, directional, point, spot)
[ul]
[li]Maya light sources with high intensity values[/li][li]Maya light sources with custom light shader physical_light[/li][/ul]
Area (Shape) Lights
[ul]
[li]Maya Area Light with mental ray Use Light Shape enabled, all shapes supported except user[/li][/ul]
Environment Lighting
[ul]
[li]use Maya camera Environment / Background Color[/li][li]use environment shader on Maya camera mental ray Environment slot[/li][li]for IBL from HDR image, use mib_lookup_sperical[/li][li]for Sky Light, use mia_physicalsky[/li][/ul]
Light Emitting Objects
[ul]
[li]mia_material_x with additional color on any shape[/li][li]mia_light_surface on any shape[/li][/ul]
However, I’m curious if the portal light is supposed to work with iray in 2012. Can anyone confirm or deny this? I tried to get it working last night but got horrible results. But in all honesty my horrible results could be because at this point in time i have no clue what the hell i’m doing with iray. 
I’m getting some strange results with iray. Can anyone shed any light? These two images are the exact same scene. One rendered with mental ray, one rendered with iray. But they look totally different. I tried to keep the scene as simple as possible. The plane and sphere both use the exact same mia_material_x shader. Lighting is from mental ray sun and sky with mia_exposure_simple. That’s really all there is to this scene.
I’ve used the enjoyMentalRayStringOptions script to help set the iray settings.
progressive and iray booleans have both been turned on. I used a max time of 10 seconds for progressive and left all iray settings at default.
I’m running IRay in GPU mode via “k-script” and dll’s from MAX, but I can’t find the place to switch to CPU mode…
¿anyone knows where can I switch betwen GPU or CPU mode?
Thanks!
In string options add:
Name: iray mode
Value: cpu
Type: string
That is the syntax the enjoyMentalRayStringOptions GUI uses.
Hope that helps.
-Justin
Did you plug a physical_light into the light shader slot of the Area light?
Edit: Oops… Looks like I misread your post and thought you were talking about area lights… Brainfart. Looks like Bitter gave you a good answer though.
I’ve not tried the portal light. In theory it becomes unnecessary for a path tracer. However, iRay is not currently a bi-directional path tracer so interiors lit indirectly through small openings will be more difficult to light.
iRay converts your materials to a BSDF version of the mia_material (one also exists for mental ray rendering.) This simplifies your setup. But I do not know off-hand the cause of the different renders with the sphere on a plane.
@Bitter: Thanks much for the help. Since you said iray is converting my mia_material into a bsdf shader behind the scenes, I decided to try iray with one of the bsdf shaders directly. I learned how to do that from your extremely informative thread over on the mental images forum by the way. Best info I’ve seen on how to actually use those shaders. Turns out it works perfectly with the bsdf shaders! Now that’s pretty cool, but every time i try and use iray with the mia_material_x shader, I get a totally black image except for the reflection of my light source. I’ve tried both the mia_physical sun and sky set up as well as a regular old area light with some high values. Have you ever had any issues with iray translating the mia_material? Because it kind of seems like that is my problem. I made sure to uncheck ‘multiple outputs’ since it was recommended on the mental images site. I also went into the shading group and turned on suppress all maya shaders and turned off export shading group since that was recommended as well. Those are the only things I can think of that might cause me problems based on the limited info i have on this subject. Any more ideas would be awesome!
Thanks,
Justin
That’s interesting, I actually wasn’t sure it would translate the BSDF shaders.
For the mia_x did you remember to uncheck “multiple outputs”? (Edit: duh you said yes.)
Replace it with the mia_material (legacy, the old one)
There are a few helpful iRay additions that may help you render more quickly in Maya.
The one that may be of most use (you still get an accurate production render at some bias) is the Firefly filter.
In the miDefaultOptions:
String: iray firefly filter
Value: on
Type: boolean
Attached is a very simple example of the filter on and off. The effect is subtle and may eliminate desired caustics, but in some cases that effect is subtle and you might be able to live without. (using mia_x, dunno why it fails for Redsand) 500 passes for both images.
It seems there may be a good reason why iray is unsupported inside maya. Iray is working predictably for me now, but it has been a bit of an adventure to get there. So initially iray would render anything with my mia_material_x as totally black minus the reflection of the light source or a reflection from the environment. It did not matter if i had multiple outputs checked or unchecked, ditto for the settings in the shading group. Then I applied the bsdf lambert shader and magically iray worked. I got an error in the output window when i tried the bsdf architectural saying it was unsupported in iray and a default grey shader would be used instead…or something like that. But at least iray worked. Then i decided to try the mia_material_x again, so assigned that shader to my objects from the hypershade and broke the connections from the bsdf shader. It appeared that some magical gnomes ran around and made some secret connections because all of a sudden my mia_material_x was working! I did a few renders changing some glossines and reflectivity setting in the mia to make sure those showed up predictably in the render, they did. Then i started a new scene and tried all over again with the mia_material_x. This time the mia_material_x worked perfectly the first time. It did not matter if I had multiple outputs checked or unchecked, it still worked. So then I restarted Maya just in case some crazy connections happened behind the scenes and they were persisting from scene to scene inside the same maya session. I created the same scene from scratch, applied the mia, and it worked again. I tried checking and unchecking multiple outputs and the 2 flags in the shading group. Did not matter, still worked. So then I tried the bsdf lambert shader again. Now all of a sudden this shader rendered totally black! I tried the other bsdf shaders. All totally black as well! So then I tried the mia and it still worked perfectly.
Weird, huh? I have no clue what the magical gnomes did behind the scenes, but whatever they did for some reason iray is working now. It appears to me the magic happened when I assigned the bsdf shader for the first time. After that assignment was made, iray starting doing different things than I had seen from it before…like actually work. On Monday when I get into work I’m going to go through the same process there and see what happens because before I left on friday i was still getting black renders from iray. It will be a good test case to try this all over again and see if i can nail down exactly where the magical gnomes did their dirty work.
Thanks for all the help!
Also, thanks for the tip on the firefly string option. I’ll be giving that a try now since I can actually get a normal render now!
-Justin