The iray cometh

#81

you need the ctrl.ghost, there is an option to active iray
but you need also a maxscript to control the max samples, as the ctrl.ghost is limited to 1000 by default
if you search in the maxscript reference you can find the script for progressive (just modify the max samples and max time from 1000 to 10000 at least)

#82

Couch with emissive lights

#83

Hello all, I am new at using mental ray standalone Just got so i can use iray.

I have Installed all the mental ray hidden options scripts but i still am not rendering from iray can someone write some start to finish instructions that would be great. thanks

Best, J

#84

I was curious to give it a try in max 2011 and I think I kind of could get it to work placing the dlls in max root directory and using the ctrl.ghost.
At first I did as Dagon suggested: a plane, teapot, daylight, photgraphic exposure and arch&design.
I get the message iray is working and rendering but I always get a black screen in max frame buffer and an error about the max gbuffer:


RC   0.3  info : progressive: using iray renderer
IRAY 0.3  info : found 1 CUDA devices
IRAY 0.3  info : defaulting to use all CUDA devices
IRAY 0.5  warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type "max_base_GBuffer_lens"
IRAY 0.5  warn : ignoring unsupported lens shader type "mia_physicalsky"
RC   0.3  info : iray: desired quality reached - stopping
RC   0.3  info : progressive: total rendering time was 0.13 seconds
RC   0.3  info : progressive: average frame time was 0.03 seconds
RC   0.3  info : progressive: sending finished rectangles to disp.
RC   0.3  info : wallclock  0:00:03.53 for rendering
RC   0.3  info : allocated 22 MB, max resident 83 MB
GAPM 0.3  info : triangle count (including retessellation) :        2016
MEM  0.0  info : heap size limit set to 2768 MB
MSG  0.0  info : Total non-render time: 0,5148 s.
MSG  0.0  info : Total geometry translation time: 0,0000 s.
MSG  0.0  info : Total object data translation time: 0,0000 s.
MSG  0.0  info : Total number of entities translated: 0.

I tried saving the image (black as well), unlocking shader to use in max, many combinations but it seems to be some problem with the image output… :banghead:

Any tips for the max users? :beer:

#85

dagon, does this mean that you won’t be supporting maya in the future? :wink:

#86

I would love to know how to get iray to work with max 2011.
I tried the example file someone posted earlier (on my 64 bit) but I just get a black render… any suggestions?

#87

I dont understand this new thing with rendering engines getting thier own frontend. Octane, fry, and now bunkspeed. Seems strange to not directly support widely used apps like maya. I am sure that its not easy but its got to be more profitable.

#88

are you using ctrl.ghost with default setup for progressive (-1, -1, -1)?
i’m getting the gbuffer warning too, but it is working without problems
maybe try with a photometric light

eheh no, i can’t leave my maya :smiley:
but i’m a little bit curious to see how well they’re integrating iray and if there is some enhancement

they’ve just different market
think about rendering for car design, where in 99% you use Alias Studio for modeling and then you export the geometries in another software, just for render (there was the old images studio for that in the past)
anyway i think there will be plugins to export directly inside shot, like you do right now with maxwell or fry…

#89

I’ve started with the default setup for progressive, then tried many different setups and always with no luck. It always seems to be rendering but not outputting to max frame buffer, not even the alpha shows up. I just tried a fresh new scene, a plane and sphere, A&D material and photometric light, nothing shows up… :curious:
Maybe that’s something with my hardware? I’m in a notebook with windows 7 64-bit, max 2011 64-bit, core 2 duo and a 8600GT 512MB, but I don’t know if it makes any difference.
Any tips? Some step by step? Maybe you can share a simple max scene… :beer:

Cheers!

Flávio

#90

here is the mies scene which i’m using for some test :wink:
you need the ctrl.ghost (and the progressive maxscript if you want to control the max sample values over 1000)

cheers

mat

#91

Well Maxwell did it first and the benefit is:

  • You only have one application where rendering is done so writing exporters is easier than rewriting it for every app.
  • If you use Qt or something that’s made to be cross-platform, it’s relatively easy to target multi-platform (3 apps only for 3 platforms, not 60 fully-working plug-ins with integrated renderers). The Octane dev’s Mac test system arrived a few weeks before they had running code - for a product that was in development for a long time. If you wrote an exclusive render plug-in for Max and suddenly realized there is a large Linux or Mac market for your product, you’re not going to risk the exorbitant cost involved in porting from Max to Cinema 4D or something. Maxwell and Octane are both made by tiny companies so standalone apps with contracted plug-ins is a good cheap option.
  • You’re less limited by what the host application can do (I had a 64-bit Maxwell Render before I had a 64-bit Maya, for example) and what it can break.
  • You can add or remove plug-in support for Lightwave, Houdini, modo, etc with a relatively small investment and risk
  • It keeps costs down since you’re not nickel-and-diming customers because of how much it costs to keep everything running smoothly

I’d say that Maxwell’s success is largely due to it being a separate app - you buy one program and have modo, Maya, Cinema 4D, whatever support and there’s only one shader format, and it’s cross-platform. V-Ray’s biggest problem is that it’s been designed around Max and they’re only now getting to the interoperability. Until that’s updated across the board, if you want to release a “V-Ray version” of an asset, you need to make one for Cinema 4D, one for Maya, one for Max, one for Rhino, etc. Meanwhile your competitor has a giant free material library that works everywhere:

http://resources.maxwellrender.com/

Don’t get me wrong, I like V-Ray but there were clearly sacrifices for their in-app approach. Ditto for mental ray - it’s even worse since the shaders are somewhat version-dependent, application dependent and platform-dependent.

#92

There are rather huge sacrifices you also have to make by working outside of the host application. You’re often left to yourself to deal with translation tools and formats. Re-point caching and dealing with large point cache files is not really very fun on large scenes. You also lose some nice integration tricks like using procedural systems built in the host app to drive rendering perameters/shaders (you have to again bake these out and store/deal with them/ re-bake on changes, and that’s if the IO for the app even supports it). You might also see problems dealing with different object types like particles, hair, curves, etc. So you could end up having to write your own tools just to convert/bake/export all of the arbitrary data you need into something the rendering app recognises. And you have to deal with iterations/data management of that stuff as well.

There are definitely problems associated with both directions.

#93

Thanks dagon1978 for you test/scene, but still didnt work. the render was very fast but still in black. these is my screenshot:

[attachment]http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/9782/iraymax2011.jpg[/attachment]

#94

Thanks dagon1978 for you test/scene, but still didnt work. the render was very fast but still in black. these is my screenshot

[attachment]http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/9782/iraymax2011.jpg[/attachment]

#95

ya, I didn’t say it was perfect and I think V-Ray’s makes more sense for animation, which isn’t Maxwell’s strength anyway. I’d say the external renderer makes more sense for turntable and archviz renderers, like Octane.

#96

there is something wrong happening, it’s reaching the final quality without the image, sorry but i can’t help you, maybe there is something wrong with your dlls? do you have the standalone?

#97

[color=dimgray][color=dimgray]
[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]
Thanks anyway, I´ve the standalone and copy the 3 .dlls to max root folder, also I saw that 2 .dlls are already included in max: cudart.dll and libiray.dll but neither worked
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#98

if you have the standalone you can start with a simple mi file to see if it’s working there
i never had any problem to render with iray in standalone, but… to be honest i never had problem to render in max and maya too

#99

here are a couple of tests to see how iray is performing over vray-rt in cpu mode
i hope to see here the funny people who said (judging by a video and a pdf) that iray was slow and vray-rt was fast

iray cpu mode

#100