Mental Ray - Shaders

#961

Thanks. Don’t know why that didn’t come up when I searched google.

#962

Originally posted by zomboxy
[B]Trolldeg,

This has probably been covered in this thread already.
[/B]

really? because I’ve read the whole thread and I can’t recall seeing anything about frosted glass.

#963

try some of the extra features of the photon basic map in the volume slot.

#964

Trolldeg,

Sorry if it wasn’t covered specifically in this thread. I did see some info. on frosted glass in the texturing section of the 3ds Max forums. Not specific to MR.
After reading this entire thread did you figure out what you wanted to know?
There is also a scene file with objects that have frosted glass materials on the 3ds Max “tutorial and scene files” CD that ships with Max6. In the scene is located in the Version6Features/scenes/Mental Ray dir.
Their frosted glass uses the Dielectric material. An interesting way of doing it.

zom

#965

Originally posted by fabrizzzio
[B]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: [/B]

hi fabrizzio apart from reading all the threads wich can be very tedious check this tut its a good sss tut for max and mr:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/ronchin.basket/umxprime/tutorials/index.htm

#966

Hi im new with shaders, and id like to read about it , i mean theres a tutorial explaining what is a shader itself?, how it works, etc, thanks.

this was the best thread ive ever read, full of info.

saludos
Mariano

#967

I have uploaded a frosted glass scene and image file to the Upload site.

Zom

#968

Hey, first of all I would like to say that this forum has been really helpful. and I give my thanks to all who have contributed.

Im not sure if this has been dicussed yet but im trying to make a laser beam reflect off some mirrors using mental ray. I can get the light to relfect using final gather and GI but I dont know how to get the light itself to be visible. I tryed adding a light shader to the light but that did nothing and there are no photon emitter shaders to pick from. I also tried adding Parti volume photon to the material of the mirror but also no luck.

an info would be great or a link if someone else has already brought up the issue.

thanks
sir vulcan

#969

What you need is volume caustics, there was something about that in the begining of this thread…

#970

Thank you all for this thread (that I now has read all the way) …

I have only just started looking at MR and was wondering about Dirtmaps. I know that Markus wrote an interface of Daniel Rind’s Dirtmap Shader for max6, and that is working fine, but what I am looking for is a way to use simple bitmapped dirtmaps in my texturing with eg. a glass (made with the MR glass phenomenon) with some dirt added.

MR does not seem to allow use of glass phenomenon as part of a normal blend or similar. So if someone could tell med how to use bitmapped dirtmask in MR context I would be very glad.

Lars

#971

Im not sure if this has been dicussed yet but im trying to make a laser beam reflect off some mirrors using mental ray.

Personally, I wouldn’t waste the time trying to do this with volume caustics…unless your goal IS to make it work with volume caustics, then I understand.

I would slap some direct lights in there for the beams and either assign a beam shader to the camera output or just use an atmospheric effect and be done with it.

Just my .02

#972

Hi i have a question, i downloaded the interior building scene http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104578&perpage=15&pagenumber=19 , but the original one who post folical , then to that scene i tried to add dirtmap just like that to see what happends , and its took about 6 hours and comute the final gather about 30 times and go, it was like looping , any idea why?

thanks

#973

hey pholical hows things

wondered if you could post the parti volume shaders file that you did a couple of pages back… They seem to be missing. You know the ones with the glowing spheres on a spline

regards

nebille

#974

nebille, I’m not sure I know which one that is. I think you may be talking about the blue and red (or orange) spheres that are animated along a spline path? If so, that was posted in the lighting thread, not this one.

Here’s the link (towards bottom of page):http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=135785&perpage=15&pagenumber=2

If that’s not the one your talking about, let me know.

Jeff

#975

Your a good man

thanks for the link. im so stupid. i have been searching this thread for days and did not even think about going to the lighting one.

regards

nebille

#976

hi guys…
just a question about shaders…

I’ve been using (till max 5) the very useful Blur Studios shaders (there are a couple very useful… I like electric shader, dirt shader, shadow material, etc.)…
The problem is that I think that MR 3.2 doesn’t support this blur shaders. They are MAX 6 compatible, but doesn’t work with MR.

That’s because I opened an old scene I rendered some time ago with VRAY to render now with MentalRay, but when I initiate the render, a popup window opens up and says something about NOT SUPPORTED SHADER… (the blur shaders)…

Is it right? what could be happening?
Aren’t they compatible with MR? :cry:

#977

I’m just starting to play around with MR, and downloaded the CGTalk MR material library.
When I load up the material library file I get this error:

Missing DLL
Filename: mentalray.dlz class:mr_subscatter

Is there somthing else I need to download to use this library?
Mental Ray seems to work fine on my machine as far as Max tutorials and all.

I searched this thread and someone else asked this question earlier but there was no response.

Incredible thread though, I’ve never seen such great looking stuff in Max before!

#978

You need to download all the various .mi files that we’ve used. They are in this thread somewhere. I won’t go back and search the pages for you, but I do know that they have been listed here several times and I even posted all the .mi files from my own pc on one of the pages.

If your unsure what a .mi file is or where to place them, that too is described in this thread.

Please don’t take my comments as abrasive, thats not how I intend for them to sound. I need to get motivated and try to organize this thread a bit better and maybe even write up a FAQ.

Jeff

PS, the specific error you have is because you need to download the mr_subscatter.mi file from lightengine3d.com

#979

Hey Jeff-

No offense taken.

I tried to find the info going through the posts, but it’s quite a lot of info to sort through!
It’s really great that all this is being put together.

Thanks-
Steve

#980

For all newbies.

This is an old massage from markus.

dirtmap interface

Hi,
I wrote an interface of Daniel Rind’s Dirtmap Shader for max6.
It now appears similar to the one in XSI.
You need the latest version of the shader.

You can download the .mi file (interface only)here:
http://jechtech.de/XSISTUFF/Dirtmap.mi

(this is the dirtmap file with UI, and you can use it without mentalray error message. My writing)

If you don’t already know the shader you can get it here:
http://members.chello.at/thebigmuh/Dirtmap/Dirtmap.zip

About the lightengine3d shaders I noticed some problems:
It was originally designed for Maya. Objects created in maya are usually 100 times smaller than objects created in max.
The shader works with Maya-units, so most times it’s better to scale down your max scenes to about 1 percent(depending on the size of your models) to get no strange artefacts(facetted surfaces e.t.c.).
Another problem is the selfshadowing of the shader that can’t be switched off. Maybe in future versions.
Third problem: The shader works best being plugged into the “incidence” channel. Unfortunately there is nothing like that in max(or I couldn’t find it).

(I hope this is OK Markus)

Tommy Hjalmarsson
http://hem.bredband.net/tomhja/