I’ve been diving into Max 9 mr Arch+Design material and love them!
However there is an effect that I have been unable to achieve even using the help file (which in my opinion is very good).
The effect is of an aluminum metal that overall has a gold look to it but at certain angles has a redish ‘luster’ to it.
Attached is an example photo of the type of material I am trying to achieve.
Regards
Hey Loran…
I made a test too…
i think that the HDRI is the solution for your scene man…and more caustics photons.
but i used dialetric shader in this test…if you want the scene…tell me…i don´t have more space to upload this now…so i can send an email.
i used photoshop…for color correction, grain and blur edges.
I’ve started using the blog function here at CGtalk to post some mental ray tips/info: http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/
I know it’s a bit out of the mainstream, but it serves it’s purpose until I can find the time to revamp my own website.
EDIT: I also added links to these useful sites on the first page of the thread here:
http://www.mymentalray.com/index.html
http://www.mentalboutmax.com/
http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/
i think that the HDRI is the solution for your scene man…and more caustics photons.
Thanks but I don’t want to use HDRI. My test was about MR physical ability … And I m not very convince about.
A friend of me made a vray test in minutes which is very correct.
Hi all!
I’ve got some problem with fast sss skin. Is there any way to have fast sss to work under reflectivity coat. I mean when i put sss in blend or shelac i loose sss scatering… simply i want to have control on sss fast skin reflection. Couse built in reflectivity in sss fast skin works strange, when its mirror reflections its ok but when add some blur it blurs it as anisotrofic reflection 
max8 max 9 same problem.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Ahhh jsut figured out searching whole 2 hours… lightmap thing
Hi,
I’ve been tinkering with the AD material (particularly the edges chamfer effect) and wondered if anything like that exists as a map.
It seems like it would be very useful as a mask for chipped paint, but I haven’t found anything which will do that (apart from f-edge which doesn’t work in MR)
http://www.stephendgreen.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/robot.jpg (ignore the wafty background)
The blending between non-welded meshes is great, but it would be fantastic to have a shader that could do a map on the sharp edges. Does one exist?
Thanks,
Steve
HI ALL i have been watching this thread for a long time,and starting from a carpant from here,i have done this,nothing special,but i want to do a a paint specially for the use of hdri only!the problem is that even if we can use hdri to light a scene it doesnt make highlights,like a normal light!i want to get those nice flakes without using a omni light or anything else like that,because its hard to match the light from the omni[or spot] with the one from the hdri,it is noticeable with the reflections!I hope i dont bore you guys with this,anyways this thread helped me alot already.if you can improve this or understand my “problem” post anything!
the image is rendered with MR in 20 mins,only skylight & HDRI [1000 sples,2 bounces]
as you can see the paint doesnt look too good on the car ;i have too change the color,lighter or something[this one rendered in 20 mins also,bu with lower settings]
i have got my hands on the MR carpaint shader,i love it… it solves my problem
heres some with my wip car:
some comments or suggestions would be appreciated!
I’ve tried your grass shader, but with no success. My grass is not enough fine as yours, could you please upload somewhere that plane with your shader. I think there’s problem with units used in max… I’m working in milimeters.
Thank you.
OK, this is driving me nuts.
I have been trying to render in passes.
Using the max Render Elements: certain mental ray shaders just render black, such as the lume and SS shaders, and it also needs to spend time rendering each pass seperately so it is time consuming
Using p_MegaTK: You have to use the p_MegaTK shaders on each object, which is rather limiting, from what I experimented with so far, plus the rollouts for the Max version are a bit confusing as some of the dropdown choices are only numbered choices, unlike other App’s implementation (things like choosing a file format, compresssion, etc.) and I haven’t found anything showing what number choice relates to what. I have done a little trial and error for the file formats, but often wind up with errors when I try to open them, presumebly because I can’t set the compression or something correctly.
Using ctrl_buffers: this seems the most promising, as I can place whatever shader on an object I want. However, the Max implementation is also rather confusing in terms of the UI, and I also have not found any write up describing how/where to place the shaders.
Right now I am trying something similar to the other ctrl_shaders, such as creating a mrShader object in the scene to hold the buffer_api shader, and putting a buffer_write shader in the Camera’s output. This isn’t working yet, although it could be the settings.
I suspect I am not placing them correctly.
Can anyone give me a basic HowTo for setting up the ctrl_buffers shaders?
besides the “buffer_api” and the “buffer_write”, there is also a “buffer_store”, but that doesn’t come up as an option for the mrGeometryShader object or for the Camera Output.
Any help or good word at all would be much appreciated.
hi luckymutt,
this is what I have experienced too. In the post no. 3577 and the following, there is a test file you can try out. But as I wrote, there is no solution implemented. I believe the ctrl_buffer shader and the belonging ctrl_write and ctrl_store have to be customize to 3ds max. Unfortunately it seems that francescaluce has stoped contributing to this community (the latest post is from the 10-25-2006). So, I think there is no other way than using the render elements to get the passes of choice.:shrug:
Yeah, i saw that test scene, but Max 8 can’t open it. I also tried merging it into a new scene, but no luck.
Can you send me a quick “what shader goes where” message?
I’d at least like to play around with it, compare the screenies from Maya and XSI and try and figure out what goes where.
Besides the added time to using Max’s Render Elements, several of mr Shaders only render black, like the lume shaders. (which really bothers me that not only has autodesk not made it work yet, but I didn’t see anything forthcoming in the user reference about it)
thanks.
Hi all -
I’ve finally read through this entire thread - thank you very much to everyone who has contributed to this fantastic resource. I’d love my first post to be a contribution instead of a question, but I’m brand new to Max, MR, and 3D in general so I don’t have much to toss in at this point.
I’m having some trouble with the “shader list” shader in MR. I’m using it to mix a couple of bump maps together and I keep finding that for some reason it’s replicating the bump maps I have added to it. I can’t seem to figure out why. In the shader list mat I’ve added two Max Bump map shaders, one with a cellular map, one with a noise map. Every once in a while I go back in to the shader list (which is in the bump slot of a MR material) and I find it’s replicated one or more of those maps, so I end up with 4-6 shaders in there - which craps out my render.
Has anyone had this problem, or know how to fix it? Someone posted a question about this quite a while ago on another thread, but no one really answered.
Thanks in advance,
Brett
Hi luckymutt,
I´ve created a max 8 version of that file. At least it spits out 5 black images and a zdepth file. There are also 2 warnings and an error msg in the MR console window. This is only quick and dirty adoption of the settings in the max 9 version. I´ve to check if it´s possible to get at least some passes out, like the max 9 version does. I hope this can help you and I think it´s a good idea to compare this with the setups in Maya and Xsi. Good luck and keep us informed if you have any success.
greets, gulio
Thanks gulio.
It will prolly be a few days before I can dig into it.
I fI have any success or ideas to make it work I’ll be sure to post.
BlackFire86, I need the same file I send, same point of view, your test is different from mine because your light is maybe 4 x4 meters I don’t know…
My problem is that Hightlights with Mr seams to be anything but realistic and you have to tweak a lot to achieve a “correct” result.
