Forests in maya mental ray.

[Hamburger]

mitchell filter is better on still images because of it’s “sharpening” tendencies, the more “blurry” filters are better on animations.

[mehran]

correctamundo!!!

we never use michell in animations here at where I work, and I think i was using gauss in my renders.
still no clue as to how to fix the flickering…

[HellstormDe]

I wouldn’t even recommend mitchell for all still renders. I also use a lot gauss 2x2 for stills. Sometimes Mitchell is ways too sharp. On some images this adds a lot of unnatural cg flavor (instead of “photoreal” style)

[visua]

Actually it happened to me that Mitchell filter enhanced aliasing in animation. It were a bunch of high-frequency procedural textures, not grass. But somehow that case could be similar, since you are thinking that Contrast Threshold could help: grass is geometry, so sampling should be a solution, not Threshold. But in fact, if you consider grass like a whole object, I guess that Threshold, that is referred to color variation, could be the way to go.

Well yes grass is geometry, but I am talking of sampling spatial contrast (threshold), trust me, it keeps small details and thin lines from flickering in animation.

[arkanoid]

Well yes grass is geometry, but I am talking of sampling spatial contrast (threshold), trust me, it keeps small details and thin lines from flickering in animation.

Yes I trust you. Till the camera is facing the “grassy carpet”* from high so there’s no silhouette. When then it comes the outline, I think one have to deal with actual sampling.

• (bad trad.)

[cgbeige]

i’m made this request on wishlist on the area some days ago

[i]“Dynamically polycount control for Paint effects converted to poly for not increase the viewport”

[/i]I think that it’s on maya 2011 or fututre release, some script writer able to get a LOD script at distance.Quote for God bless Paint effects

ya, Maxwell for Maya has an awesome customizable LOD pointcloud preview for instances and Realflow meshes. That post just made me think that you could use a distance dimension parented to the camera to control the LOD:

http://www.3eige.com/cgtalk/mxinstancelod.mov

Thanks for the idea

[InfernalDarkness]

ya, Maxwell for Maya has an awesome customizable LOD pointcloud preview for instances and Realflow meshes. That post just made me think that you could use a distance dimension parented to the camera to control the LOD:

Looks like you missed the topic title again, here.

[Hamburger]

Heh, that’s a pretty cool vid though. There definitely needs to be some default feature like this for proxies in view-ports - it is a great idea.

[HellstormDe]

Hey, I also tried to produce some good forest.
Im still working on the landscape but ok so far.
There are 15,000 proxies totalling around 15,000,000,000 polys.
I’ve used 5 different Onxy Broadleaf Trees with 2 different leaf shaders for each tree type.

However, I’m pretty new to mip_binaryproxy so I was wondering if I can store more shading group information in the .mi file. When I set up the proxy mental ray uses the shading group/material of the low res proxy for rendering, so I’m bound to two proxies per tree type (wood material and leaf material).
Is there a way so I can use a single proxy for both (material)parts of my trees? This would also increase the maximum amount of trees in my scene.

[tostao_wayne]

Hey, I also tried to produce some good forest.
Im still working on the landscape but ok so far.
There are 15,000 proxies totalling around 15,000,000,000 polys.
I’ve used 5 different Onxy Broadleaf Trees with 2 different leaf shaders for each tree type.

However, I’m pretty new to mip_binaryproxy so I was wondering if I can store more shading group information in the .mi file. When I set up the proxy mental ray uses the shading group/material of the low res proxy for rendering, so I’m bound to two proxies per tree type (wood material and leaf material).
Is there a way so I can use a single proxy for both (material)parts of my trees? This would also increase the maximum amount of trees in my scene.

You must to combine the tree into only one mesh
take in mind the shaders order that maya assign to these new mesh
Create the mip_binaryproxy

Assign the 1st shader to the whole binary mesh as object
Assign the second shader to one face of the mesh
Assign the third shader to other face of the mesh
and so on.

now you have a mip_binaryproxy with more than one shader

[tostao_wayne]

at last, Maya 2011 has phototropism for the PFX

here you can read something about it at the end of the page

http://www.motionmedia.com/blog/autodesk®-maya®-2011-announced/

[Hamburger]

at last, Maya 2011 has phototropism for the PFX

here you can read something about it at the end of the page

http://www.motionmedia.com/blog/autodesk%C2%AE-maya%C2%AE-2011-announced/

Maybe that came from Alessandro’s request to Duncan after Miss Van Der Rohe renders!

[Redsand1080]

It appears that link is now down…or my internet is acting up. I went to read about it and it says that post does not exist.

Phototropism conspiracy maybe??

Too good to be true?

[gnjili]

sorry to be bumping this after ages, but could some one compose tut or something to get a good leaf shader, still a newb in the shading sector and need some kind of advise around that area.

[pix3lm0nk]

sorry to be bumping this after ages, but could some one compose tut or something to get a good leaf shader, still a newb in the shading sector and need some kind of advise around that area.

I guess you haven’t read this whole thread? It’s talked about here.

[ytsejam1976]

Leaf at sun is a request from Marlas yes. But we don’t know if before marlas come other request in this way.

[onetime]

I know the spPaint3d script has been pretty popular in this thread and I’m curious if there’s a trick to make it work for 2011. Any ideas?

Also, I’ve played with the Leaf Face Sun phototropic attribute for paint effects and so far I like what I see, but I wonder what you guys think about it. I’m also wondering what the best way would be to drive the Sun Direction attribute using the rotation of a physical sun.

[surreal-reality]

First of all, I want to thank everyone in this thread for contributing, all the advice, and words of wisdom are much appreciated!

My question is ever so slightly off topic, but i figured if anyone knew the answer, one of you might…

With paint effects tree’s as the number of leaves grow, eventually, it seems maya hits a leaf limit per stroke, or tree, and the branches, and twigs start to poke out and show through with out leafs on them.

I’ve posted a thread on it here, with a picture if it helps to visualize it.

Thanks in advance, Love all the sweet renders and work flows!

[Duncan]

Maybe that came from Alessandro’s request to Duncan after Miss Van Der Rohe renders!

Yep, that’s why I put the sun following feature in 2011. Basically one has a sun direction and a degree to which leaves twist towards it and flowers turn toward it( the flower stalk gradually twists to the light direction, while the leaf attribute is a simpler “twirl” kind of twist ).

Duncan

[InfernalDarkness]

Yep, that’s why I put the sun following feature in 2011. Basically one has a sun direction and a degree to which leaves twist towards it and flowers turn toward it( the flower stalk gradually twists to the light direction, while the leaf attribute is a simpler “twirl” kind of twist ).

Duncan

Good to know you’ve added features to PFX, Duncan! I look forward to using it; you seem to be really in-tune with our general needs here and we really appreciate it.