Mental Ray - Shaders

#821

Originally posted by Rich Joyce
[B]you can always render in a preview mode… the wave modifier is a geometry displacement so will show up.

alternatively, get rid of the wave modifier and see what the results are without it [/B]

Preview mode only shows the nurbs. (i only see few lines when i use make preview under animation)

I disabled wave modifier & then rendered first & last frames to see if it’s looping but the frames are not similar. that means not looping. Then decreased the wave speed in both the animation parameters & now, i’ll see after render completion. But it should have looped when there are options to make a loop. There should not be any need of changing wave speed etc.
strange!

rohit

#822

the wave has nothing to do with the shader. the shader will loop over 100 frames - or 250, can’t remember what i last had it set on. that doesnt mean fram 0 to frame 100 it would mean frame 0 to frame 99, otherwise it would be 101 frames. are you sure you did this?

#823

Originally posted by Rich Joyce
the wave has nothing to do with the shader. the shader will loop over 100 frames - or 250, can’t remember what i last had it set on. that doesnt mean fram 0 to frame 100 it would mean frame 0 to frame 99, otherwise it would be 101 frames. are you sure you did this?

ofcourse! i know that frame number ‘0’ is also counted. But even then one frame can’t make much difference & it was showing big difference. The first & last frames were totally different.

regards, rohit

#824

Loop is fine although not perfect. But now the real problem i’m facing is that the movie has started flickering : brightness gradually increases in the next few frames & then it gradually decreases in next few frames.

#825

my first Gi…has a skylight…with the HDRI given at the start of this thread…

#826

the flickering will probably be the final gathering having too low a sample rate. Rohit - this isn’t a thread on how make an animation though, its for development of shaders in mental ray, so unless its finding ways of translating this material so it can be used on different surfaces, for everyone to use, then i suggest you start another post about your animation and we’ll sort out those issues there. when we’ve sorted it we can post the final version of the shader here. lets keep to the mr shader development.

#827

Mental Ray is good Rendering…

#828

A quick heads up here…

SME alpha 0.14 is now available from here

http://www.ibmr.net/sme/download/

There are a lot of improovements in this build with its support for Mental Ray in Max6. There are still some caveats with it i.e. Can’t currently save MR shaders or render them in the Schematic view, but you can now chain together some pretty sophisticated shaders. Anyway, try it out and give us any feeback you have at…

http://www.ibmr.net/sme/forum/

I’ll let Marsel fill you in on the other details…

"Greetings !

I’ve just uploaded the new SME version to our website (http://www.ibmr.net/sme/)
This new version has many things changed and fixed. For an overview of the
changes, read below.

Please give it a try and let us know what you think at out forum
(http://www.ibmr.net/sme/forum/) Though there are still known bugs and issues,
many of the previous ones should be fixed or at least be at some stage of being
fixed.

Chris Thomas has worked the UI and scripted .rdefs for a lot of new materials
and maps, so working with them should be more comfortable and intuitive. Sergio
Muciño and Matt Clementson have also contributed to .rdef creation by helping us
with Mental Ray and finalRender files.

I’ve been trying to debug SME as much as possible. There are still bugs that I
cannot resolve but time will solve them. I’ve also been adding many scripted
interface access functions to allow more customization for both internal and
external parts of SME.

Here are excerpts from my log of progress since the last release in
chronological order:

  • New node design implemented including new node structure and optional
    anti-aliasing filters for wires. (Note: Because of box filtering for aa, the
    refresh speeds could be up to 4x slower)

  • Tweaked some things like icon resizing based on name length

  • Some keyboard layout changed. Check out functionality of -[, =]. and
    left-right keys.

  • New (sme.getholder 0).includePrivateMaps command, which allows the inclusion
    of all maps (hidden and visible) into SME

  • …new file “interface.init”. This file will get called every time a blank
    scene is opened. This way SME always puts up a fresh view when a scene is
    opened. Feel free to add any other commands into this file.

  • Some small GUI fixes. Oh yeah, and no more scrollbars in palettes.

  • Alphabetical ordering in palettes

  • Including hidden maps should be fixed now

  • Minor GUI fixes

  • Fix in loading/saving algorithm (now should load maps in their corresponding
    windows as they were saved)

  • The new tabsetup def file is changed to allow loading from multiple
    directories. There is a comment in the code stating where you can add/remove
    directory names from an array. The whole array is automatically traversed and
    all directories are searched in. If the name contains illegal characters or is a
    special case, the function just above that hadles them.

-SME node refreshing will now be disabled during rendering and then enabled
again after. This ensures that no funny business goes on in SME when the
renderer is updating materials before their evaluation.

  • …when in debug mode, right click on a node and select the dump tab info
    option. This will print out the .def command for every param in the current tab
    containing the type, and all the indices of the child. Should be handy for for
    .def work.

  • Now SME doesn’t crash or give any reeval issues on opening the scene, saving
    it, resetting it, or closing it.

  • …the “Dump tab data” option will now reevaluate the node, and use the
    procedural TabMap to dump the info…

  • …fixed one crash, which was caused by the same material appearing in two
    views…Now only the current (top) view will render the material, and all the
    other views that have the material will cache it and render it only when they
    become active.

  • …added a routine to allow SME display dynamic and static bitmaps in the
    views. Static bitmaps basically mean that they will use the provided image in
    .def file and will never change in SV.

  • I’ve also changed the debug command to have an optional parameter.

  • …fixed the tabsetup file, which had a couple of things wrong with it. Now it
    will search for special cases in all directories without throwing any errors.

  • …fixed the .setIconSize command for the Holder interface.

  • …note this change of format:
    Instead of using “.entryGroup #mat/tex”, we will now use “.entry
    #mat_group/#tex_group”.

  • …changed the clipping rect for the text in palette titles so it fits in
    exactly, and there’s no overlapping of text with the border.

  • …static icons should now appear in asset manager and in SV no matter how the
    node is created in it. I’ve also fixed the nodes so by default they’re one image
    long, and can be expanded to text size using side arrow keys.

  • I’ve cut down the size on the bottom of every palette by 30 pixels, so it now
    should end right where the last item ends.

  • Changed wire display algorithm to make them bend based on the adaptive length
    of in/out vectors.

  • One new change is the inclusion of material/texmap params from paramblock2’s
    into the rollouts.

  • Also the controller nodes are now fully referenced by the anchor and can thus
    be saved/loaded with the rest of the materials. This is just the first step into
    implementing the unique controller nodes.

  • I have added the ability to include/exclute material/map params from
    paramblocks in the rollouts. By default they will always be excluded. Some maps,
    like Material to shader, for example require them as their function depends on
    them.

  • …changed the format for entry optional params

  • …fixed the numerous crashes when using MR renderer.

Thanks a lot for your attention and participation.

Sincerely,

Marsel Khadiyev"

Cheers :wink:

Chris Thomas

#829

What the heck is SME and why do we want to install it and try it?
Got anything to show us?

Zom

#830

Yes. Distain…

Only kidding :wink:

Nope, havent got any screenshots right now, but why not have a look and see what you think anyway. Its a Schematic Material Editor for Max and will be free when its completed.

Cheers

CT

#831

I think this thread is veering off course, please stick to discussing MR shaders, that is what this is supposed to be about.

#832

It may be a little off topic, but not really. SME can be used to build MR shaders, so it has some relavence IMHO. However I would suggest any feedback specific to SME is posted to the SME forum, rather than to this thread. I would hope SME will become the defacto tool for building MR shader networks when it is completed. So MR Specific feedback and wishes would be most appreciated.

Cheers

CT

#833

The SME has been discussed in this thread before and as it is one of the biggest lacks of MAX I for one find this news very valuable.

#834

Im going to put a spanner in the works… How do you use it… I have put the dlu file into my pluggin folder and have managed to open it in max but all i get is a grey screen with a yellow box in the middle.

Please dont answer on this thread if you have any knowledge about the above query. You could mail me at nebille@3dlaboratory.co.uk if you can be bothered . No worries if you cant. Its all about the Mental Shaders People… hmmmm some help on this wouldnt go a miss though…

Arghh thats the trouble with freedom of speech, sometimes there can be to much freedom/ maybe that could be a thread to… Better stop now had to much coffee…

sorry all

#835

You could always make an SME thread…or could go to the SME forum?

#836

Is it possible to let the (S)ub (S)urface (S)catter shader affect the shadows? Because as you see below it doesn’t look very realistic. The shadow is black but normally you would expect a slight color (like the object) in the shadow.

#837

Can anyone post a materail or scene which uses the diffraction shader in Max?

Thanks
:rolleyes:

#838

Have you tried generating caustics. If you download the files on the first thread you will see " dont qoute me on this " that Mr folical has used caustics to generate the light patches under the object.

Also has anyone noticed that if you use the 3d displacement shader with anything other than generic units in the unit setup the results come out strange… I have just been working on a project that is architecturaly based and needed some grass. I obviously crafted a suitable material from the one on the .mat file on the first post so the colours etc were right. Then i noticed while working in metres the 3d displace could only make mole hills instead of fine blades of grass. I then merged my intire scene into a new one with generic units and the shader responded as expected… weird ha…

Has any one else found this happening ?

#839

Just wanted to see what you guys think about this
shader?:shrug:

#840

can anyone tell me how to post a image or mat.