Physical Sky in Max 9,any chance porting to Maya ?

jupiterjazz · 2007-02-13 04:51:43 UTC

Some related infos on gamma in mental ray:

mental ray applies gamma (color^gamma) correction to NON floating point OUTPUT images, gamma can be disabled in the rendering options of course.
mental ray applies REVERSE gamma [color^(1/gamma)] to all NON floating point INPUT textures.
It is obviously preferable to use always fp input/output and do gamma correction only in comp keeping the image data in linear color space for post-processing

cheers,

p

paolo berto
/jupiter jazz/ visual research

avinashlobo · 2007-02-14 22:39:30 UTC

Hi everyone.

I’m having trouble with the alpha that mia_material generates. It shows up as transparent (black) except for parts on the object that are showing reflections.

Is this its normal behaviour? If it is, how do I set it to the normal Opacity Gain for the matte?

wurp · 2007-02-15 05:33:21 UTC

may I ask how you added the clouds in there, perhaps you could show us the textures you used and where you plugged them in?

majorbludd · 2007-02-16 14:10:32 UTC

avinashlobo,
In “render settings/mental ray” expand the “custom entities” tab and click the “Pass custom alpha channel” check box.

MasterZap · 2007-02-17 00:01:49 UTC

Go to my mentalraytips blog for that answer.

/Z

wat2k · 2007-02-17 07:45:03 UTC

This tip is really great MasterZap. But I have some issue around the model. Don’t know why. Could you help? (sorry for low quality image)

MasterZap · 2007-02-18 00:04:53 UTC

Don’t know… what is your filter settings? One of Mitchell or Lancsoz? Is your “lower” sampling less than 1 sample per pixel? If so, this could be due to a (recently fixed) filtering bug. If not… I dunno. :shrug:

/Z

wurp · 2007-02-19 05:07:40 UTC

thank you for that

and sorry to bug you but did you see this question? http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=461941

victor · 2007-02-19 09:21:16 UTC

Do you have something plugged into the night color. That doesn’t seem to work as expected (or even crashes) unless you use a solid color or MR texture. If you use a Maya file texture, it only seems to render around the edges of objects like in your image.

victor · 2007-02-19 09:27:16 UTC

Do you have something plugged into the night color. That doesn’t seem to work as expected (or even crashes) unless you use a solid color or MR environment texture. If you use a Maya file texture, it only seems to render around the edges of objects like in your image.

I’d really love it if I could get Maya textures to work there so I can make a nice rotating night sky.

wat2k · 2007-02-19 12:25:23 UTC

MasterZap,Victor : Thank you very much for that. It was my fault using maya envSphere. After using mib_lookup_spherical the problem gone. Thanks. (sorry for my bad English)

Hans-CC · 2007-02-19 16:19:08 UTC

How is the connection made to use mib_lookup_spherical ? can you post a screenshot ?

thks

posmaker · 2007-02-20 00:51:00 UTC

I ´ve been following this thread since the begining and I have learnt a lot! Thank you all for posting
Here is my question; the reflection utility node has two cool features that are, being able to control the saturation of the reflection and to bump map the reflection. Any idea on how to pipe this to things into the mia?

Thanks a lot

Edu

wat2k · 2007-02-20 08:37:21 UTC

I 'm not sure if it’s a right way. Hope you understand how it work.

sixbysixx · 2007-02-20 18:54:15 UTC

yashu:

 ummm, having just the sun + custom environment?
 then just turn the ibl type to file and browse for your own image.
 
 or physicalsky + custom environment blended up? 
 disconnect the physicalsky from ibl.texture and then plug a mixing utility into the ibl.texture and then the physicalsky + the other texture into the mix layers (though disconnecting the sky will end up in not being allowed to open the edit phys env window).
 
 or just add some clouds to the sky?
 use the background option of the physicalsky (take a look in the online docs posted by dagon, or directly [this pdf](http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/3dsmax_ref_vol2.pdf) for more help. Also in the max forums there a nice thread dedicated to these shaders)
 
 cheers! :)

Probably I’m a bit green on all of this, but I simply don’t understand:sad:

I’m trying to figure out a way to have an Environment Sphere with an HDR image just for reflection, with no contribution to FG, but still use the mia_physicalsky for Final gathering and lighting.

If I use the mib_lookup_spherical for this, is there a way that I can see it in the viewport, like if it was an IBL Sphere?

Into what attribute of the mia_physicalsky do I need to plugin the mib_lookup_spherical in order to see it in reflections instead of the default sky? Ground I guess, but for the sky?

Or is there a much easier way? (or is it way more complicated?

Thanks so much for your help!

Christoph

cpan · 2007-02-20 22:43:53 UTC

for that you should use a ray switcher shader, as ctrl_rays.

go to your camera’s AE and disconnect the mia_physicalsky from mentalray>environment shader and instead plug the ctrl_rays into that slot. Now on the eye ray of the ctrl_rays plug the previous mia_physicalsky. Ok, to override the reflections, enable refl on ctr_rays and plug your own HDR image into it (if the HDR image is in latlong format you should use the mib_lookup_spherical instead of the maya file node), and thats it

btw ignore that quoted post ehe, for that purpose Zap explains a much better way in his blogs

sixbysixx · 2007-02-21 05:57:50 UTC

Nice, sounds good, it’s just - weell - I’m on OSX and there is no ctrl_rays for OSX I think:rolleyes:
Next week I’m getting a windows workstation with XP 64, but I’ve read the ctrl_rays don’t work on XP64 either:twisted:

Any other ways of doing this?

Thanks a lot!

sixbysixx · 2007-02-26 14:51:06 UTC

Alright - so I got Maya to work with Bootcamp now and tried the ctrl-rays

I broke the connection of mia_physicalsky to the camera, plugged the ctrl-rays in there instead and plugged the out of the mia_physicalsky into the Eye-ray of the ctrl_rays.

Then I plugged the mib_lookup_spherical into reflection and refraction of the ctrl_rays and enabled them.

As a result I’m getting a reflection on dielectric materials, but not on mia, Blinn, mi_carpaint, and no refraction on all these materials.

Any idea where my mistake might be?

Thanks a lot!

Ctrl_RaysNetwork.jpg

sixbysixx · 2007-02-26 16:58:44 UTC

Ok - I’m a little bit further: can’t figure it out with ctrRays, but it works with RayType - there you have an Environment plug that works.

Now the next thing: I can’t figure out how to rotate the mib_spherical_lookup, and also I can’t make it visible in the viewport.

I tried to use an IBL-Sphere instead, but can’t figure out what output to plug into the RayType node from there…:shrug:

Any suggestions?

sixbysixx · 2007-03-06 08:16:15 UTC

I dumped the idea of using an spherical_lookup and am using and EnvSphere instead.
I still don’t get visual feedback in the viewport, but that might be down to dodgy graphics drivers using bootcamp and a Geforce card? I dodn’t know how this works…

Anyway - I thought it would be great if the mia_physicalsky had a slot for a custom HDR environment just for reflection built-in. I love the quality of the light the physical sky gives. Also the controls are great, but I always need to work with reflections of Spherical HDRIs and I hate the Mental Ray IBL node - slow and very dodgy…

At the moment I inly can get it to work with Horvatth’s RayType, but that’s not available on OSX and not on XP64, which are the two systems I’m working with. Puppet said he’s gonna add an environment slot in the next version of his p_ray_type, (which he usually compiles for all platforms:applause:), but until then I don’t know how to do this.

I’m still a proper Greenhorn when it comes to 3D stuff, so if I’m not seeing the bleeding obvious - pleeeaase tell me!!!

Cheers:)