VRay-like interior renders with mental ray???

[Domenick]

Hi Mat,

I have been reading this post for the last few hours and I must say it’s a lot to take in but it’s fantasic still to see how far things have come. I was just wondering if you could please give us an update as to when you book will be released and if there will be an english version as previously hinted at?

It would be great to see a thread of a final shot “breakdown” of utilities / nodes from mental ray you have used and how they are connected with the multiple bounces of FG when creating a scene, obviously a lot has progressed troughout this thread. I have just started studying the IES profiles for MR, do you still stand by your previous comment of using a point light and linking through the profile section so you can still achive multiple bounce FG rather than the using the photometric node?

Once again well done, very interested in your response.
-Domenick

Actually the book it’s pretty finished, but it’s in italian, we are planning to translate it in english (i’m not the right guy to do it )
The book will be for Max (sorry, the archviz market here is Max-centric), you can use it with Maya too (you know, it’s just a different “GUI”, nothing more), but if you want you can also send an email to my editor, with a good number of “request” mail, there will be a chance to write a book specifically for Maya

ciau

Mat

[BooMer86]

any idea when will mental ray come with path tracing??
Something like Final gather + path tracing sounds cool bacause both photon + Final gather are biased
Hope atleast some biased+unbiased hybrid in the future with mray

[MasterZap]

any idea when will mental ray come with path tracing??
Something like Final gather + path tracing sounds cool bacause both photon + Final gather are biased
Hope atleast some biased+unbiased hybrid in the future with mray

It’s pretty much already there, in the form of the “exact ambient occlusion” feature. Turn that on (and turn up the occlusion radius to Really Big) and you’ll have basically “brute force path tracing” for the 1st bounce, and FG from there on.

Also, you have the “finalgather force” mode, which is non-interpolated FG, which practially is very similar to path tracing. In Maya you can enable it with a string option:

“finalgather mode” “force”

In Max 2009 you can enable it by setting your “interpolate over num fg points” spinner to 0.

Also, for an unbiased result set your finalgather filter to 0/None

/Z

[Olegr]

any idea when will mental ray come with path tracing??
Something like Final gather + path tracing sounds cool bacause both photon + Final gather are biased
Hope atleast some biased+unbiased hybrid in the future with mray

Path tracing is supported in mental ray. Do some searching and you will find ways of enabling it. In Maya 2008 SP1 there is also a new global illumination technique called irradiance particles. Release notes says that it is in many cases superior to final gather/photon mapping. Not tested it myself yet, so I don’t really know much about it.

[BooMer86]

It’s pretty much already there, in the form of the “exact ambient occlusion” feature. Turn that on (and turn up the occlusion radius to Really Big) and you’ll have basically “brute force path tracing” for the 1st bounce, and FG from there on.

Also, you have the “finalgather force” mode, which is non-interpolated FG, which practially is very similar to path tracing. In Maya you can enable it with a string option:

“finalgather mode” “force”

In Max 2009 you can enable it by setting your “interpolate over num fg points” spinner to 0.

Also, for an unbiased result set your finalgather filter to 0/None

/Z

Thanks master zap! You really the master of mray
I’m using 3dmax08 here…so does that mean the so called exact AO is the one at the arch material?

[MasterZap]

Thanks master zap! You really the master of mray
I’m using 3dmax08 here…so does that mean the so called exact AO is the one at the arch material?

Max 8!?

You are only 2001 versions behind!!!

/Z

[BooMer86]

lol
i mean max2008
sorry for the stupid mistake :banghead: :banghead:

[vectormodeling]

master zap,

in my experience using the new AO method, it cannot sample the environment. for example when using physical sky, an exterior wall with a white material on the shadowed side of a building would not recieve any blue coloration from the sky when using exact AO, where as it would when using FG.

i assume that the sky is at a theoretically infinite distance, and so increasing the distance parameter of the AO, it will still never be able to sample the sky.

is this a limitation or am i using it improperly?

much thanks.

[Bitter]

To my knowledge anytime a ray (FG, reflection, etc) stops before striking something, it can call the environment. Infinite is really just the bounds of your scene.

Not sure about Exact AO or why it wouldn’t call the environment color unless it’s not designed to do so.

[MasterZap]

is this a limitation or am i using it improperly?

You need to use it with FG, not instead of FG. But the FG can be of a low/draft quality (i.e. fast).

/Z

[vectormodeling]

oh. thanks. i was always using it exclusively.

[Hypanimatico]

Hi all!

this is my FG multibounce test…
render 24 m 1920*1080

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6853/86571240dn2.jpg

what do u mean?

[Cuni]

Hi all!

this is my FG multibounce test…
render 24 m 1920*1080

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6853/86571240dn2.jpg

what do u mean?

Nice one!!

Try to increase the samples for your shadows, to get rid of that little noise.

[Cyclic]

What’s all this talk I keep seeing about Maya 2008 P03? What is P03 exactly?

Thanks!

[Bitter]

P03 is patch 3, Maya has patches released to clients for fixes that generally stop production. Eventually these patches and other fixes get rolled into SP1 (Service Pack 1)

For Maya this time there was P03, P04 (64-bit), and P05 and now SP1. Most people generally need SP1 only.

[visua]

This is my take on the good ol´3DTotal Render Engine Challenge.
Rendertime 10 m 41 s on my new Mac Pro 2x3 ghz quad xeon

[sherridge101]

Nice one Visua.

What sort of render settings did you use?

[visua]

Thanx, nothing fancy really:
Physical sun & sky with portals at the windows, FG only, 2 diffuse bounces,
extremly low settings for the fg something like 20 rays if I recall correctly. The portals
did such a good job on the shadows so I didn’t really need much detail from the fg-calculation.

All mia_materials, mia_photographic_exposure with altered white-point.

Cheers

//NIC

Nice one Visua.

What sort of render settings did you use?

[sherridge101]

Cheers Nic. Great image and render time.

I’ll have to give the scene a go.

Steve

[GARGOLO]

hi visua nice work

u can share stand steel material please!