Mental Ray - Shaders

#941

Well, I scaled the settings for the material, but I had to tweak some other settings as well to get it close to the original. Here’s another render of the scaled scene with changed settings:

Not exactly the same as the original, but better than the last render I posted.

It seems adjusting only the extinction and min/max levels in the pari volume shaders isn’t the only thing you have to do. Doing that still leaves some transparency. I had to up the IOR as well as engery and decay values, and caustic radius in the indirect illumination panel.

#942

could you say specifically what you changed within the material and whether it follows a logical route or just trial and error. cheers - would help us understand the shaders better

#943

Oi, Herbert, I really like that waxy look. The SSS is just right. Realy looking forward to a scene or material. Did it take long to render?

#944

Need a lill help, lets see if someone can gimme a quick pointer here :slight_smile:

I need a shader for a water surface. Now i’m using the Reflect base shader, wich has the great advantage of generating a clean and precise alpha just for the reflected areas.

But the downside is no blurry reflections.

Any idea of what shader to use?

#945

Here’s the scene file for the cheese/sss:

Cheddar SSS Scene for Max 6

The rendering time (on a P4 2.66GHz system) is about 3 minutes, and about less than half that with AA sampling turned down.

If you leave AA sampling at default (1/4 min, 4 max) you get these wierd line artifacts:

The cheese material is a shellac material with a standard material as the base and raytrace as the surface (for the sss effect). Let me know if you have any questions about the scene. :slight_smile:

#946

hi there…
Im just starting with MR and I want to know how to use Sub surface scattering with a material, using MR as renderer.
Do I need to use special shaders or what?
I was looking at your works and those are really cool renders, but I don’t know how to get that effect…

:eek:

#947

Maybe you should start reading from the begining of this thread, fabrizzzio. Because this thread starts by explaining how to make SSS material. And if you have downloaded the material library from the first page, it also contains few SSS materials, how about studying them?

#948

yeah buddie, you’re right…:blush:
I saw more than 60 pages and I didn’t know how to begin but I will… I think…
The material study is a great idea…:thumbsup:

#949

Hi to zom and philipbruton,

I did the diamond(s) on the upload site as a test. In a previous post I indicated that it is a composite of two images. One done with the diffraction shader that daniel rind built (I wrote my own front end for it since I didn’t realize that others already had) and a separate pass for the caustics which are not handled by the diffration shader. It’s a kluge approach with only moderately satisfactory results since there is no rainbow dispersion in the caustics.

BobG

#950

hi bobg,

Sorry, didn’t remember what u’d said in that post, now i understand how you got those results.
Pitty the same qaulity of image can’t be produced through the shader alone, o well !

Phil b

#951

anyone have an idea for frosted glass?

#952

Trolldeg,

This has probably been covered in this thread already.
Lume Glass has a couple of blur funtions that will achieve a “Frosted” look.
There are also some “sanded glass” shaders in the CGTalk shader library. Try there for starters.

Zom

#953

Speaking of glass… does anyone know how to get a bitmap image onto the glass shader in mental ray… i would like to use a cloud jpg on the glass to simulate the reflection of clouds … Dont even know if this is the right way to go about it but it sees logical… Hoped to use a fall off map as well so that the image is not solid along the glass pane.

Any ideas would be welcomed

regards

Nebille

Hey pholical you still alive… you didnt reply to my last mail man…hope ur ok.

#954

cant you use the mentalray environment slot in the mental ray extension of the material?

#955

will give it a go and let you know

cheers

nebille:bounce:

#956

Noticed on some older postings they were talking about using a greeble plugin. What exactly does that do?

#957

Hi kungfu hampster, ( crazy name! ) :wink:

greeble works on individual polygons, building blocks ontop of the selected polys, to create a death star surface effect. It can be used to create quick city scapes by only layering one set of blocks ontop of the selected polys to create skyscrapers of differing heights. I think it’s probably been used used in a few sci-fi films to generate a quick, random city scape or space ship hull. Give it a go, mind, be careful not to select too many poly’s to start or have sub-d’s on as the poly count can rise quickly !

Phil b

( p.s. all geometry added by greeble is welded to the original geom’, therefore if you sub’d afterwards, everything stays together. )

#958

thanks for the info. Here’s some stuff I did while messing around with mentalray…

#959

Oh! Know where I can get a copy of greeble? The previous link in the post is a dead link.

#960

A quick google search result:

http://maxunderground.com/archives/greeble_for_max_6.html