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?
Physical Sky in Max 9,any chance porting to Maya ?
avinashlobo,
In “render settings/mental ray” expand the “custom entities” tab and click the “Pass custom alpha channel” check box.
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)

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
thank you for that
and sorry to bug you but did you see this question? http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=461941
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.
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.
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)
How is the connection made to use mib_lookup_spherical ? can you post a screenshot ?
thks
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
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
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
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!
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!
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?
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:)
Hi guys. Im getting my self into this wonderfull plug-in for MaYa 7 and works fine, but where i can check the Shodows on?
The first time i creat the node, some how but i dont know where i cant find it, the shadows worked ok for the first time, but i made some changes and now the shadows doesnt work (appear) anymore.
Sorry for the newbie question.
Thank you very much guys.
Here a test with put shadows :sad: :shrug:

And this one with shadows :shrug:
Im making the shaders sooooo please dont take a look on that.

it looks to me like you disabled somehow the directionalLight + mia_sun combo.
- did you delete/hide the sun directionalLight?
- did you scale the directional light into the viewport? (use the locator scale setting instead)
it might be smth else though, this is all i can think of now…
