rendering with Mental Ray

#1

I’m a noobie with Maya and have a low poly model which I’ll need to render out several still images for illustration purposes. I’m using Maya 2018 with the legacy settings for Mental Ray. Under MR’s Indirect Lighting tab I created both the default mr physical sun and sky and an ibl.

The attached screenshot shows my MR settings under the Indirect Lighting tab. What I’d like to do is adjust the time of day regarding the sun’s position and the shadows cast relative to its point in the sky. Are these settings found under the sunDirection in the attributes editor? Also being able to effect the color of the sky maybe going for a sunrise or sunset type of sky and would this be done under the ibl attributes?

The jpg shows a basic 320 x 240 with the default ibl and physical sun sky loaded.

Thanks in advance for any help or tips.

#2

try just rotating the sky’s light in the outliner

#3

I suggest you move on to Arnold, mental ray is no longer supported and has been canceled.

#4

Thanks Hominid and thanks also Damaggio. Will experiment with both suggestions this evening.

Question for Damaggio regarding Arnold. Does it utilize similar lighting assets like Mental Ray within its render settings; i.e., ibl’s and physical sun and sky.?

#5

Yes and much more, is a very fast renderer and has many more advanced materials , features and good tutorials on the net.

#6

mental ray was every bit as “advanced” and excellent as Arnold before it was chopped off.

But Arnold ships with Maya now, not mental ray. How did you even get your hands on mental ray when they haven’t been selling licenses since 2017?

It’s a rhetorical question, don’t answer. Just use Arnold.

#7

you dont need a license if you dont use it commercial… one license on one workstation will work similar to Arnold…
or you get a license if you buy a quadro…
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/11/15/mental-ray-maya-free/

#8


Thanks for all the help and input everyone. Watched this youtube tutorial today and was trying it out on my model this evening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3QNbkyEe4I I tried the “custom” lighting rig he starts explaining around the 22 minute mark, involving the arnold sky dome light, a generic Maya directional light, and then finally a standard shy shader created via the Arnold Renderer/Environment/Background tab and then assigned a ramp shader to it in the attributes panel.(around 25:30 mark of video).

I’ve attached an arnold render of my model and a screenshot of my viewport. Right now I only have “aiSkyDomeLight1” created and none of the other lights. Was wondering why the render has a very “sepia toned” color cast while none of the model’s true textures/colors appear as evidenced by the two attached images.

Probably something really basic I’m not grasping yet. Even when I progressed through the video and added a directional light which did add cast shadows, etc, but again the models colors were not apparent at all in subsequent renders.

Again, thanks all for your patience and time in responding.

#9

Can anyone possibly help with my issues described below regarding my Arnold render vs viewport model scene? I’ve been searching for an answer since I posted these two days ago but not having much luck. Thanks in advance!

#10

Please make a post in the Autodesk forum and upload a smaller version of the scene, someone will help you troubleshoot there.
Good luck.

#11

Will do Damaggio. Thanks for the suggestion.

#12

If you started in MR, you’ll need to convert your materials to Arnold materials, Arnold made this easy by including a python script which you’ll find in the /docs of the install location of Arnold. I’m not in front of Maya right now, but all you need to do is run the script and it will ask if you want to convert “selected” or “all”, select “all”. You might need to adjust things a bit once you’ve done that, but for the most part, things should work correctly for you once you’ve done that.

#13

Remi,

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond. At work right now. This evening when I’m home I’ll give it a shot.

Much appreciated.

#14

Remi,

Having trouble locating /docs install location of Arnold. I’m on a Mac and assumed I’d find it inside the default install location of Maya which is in my applications folder: applications/Autodesk/Maya2018/docs/synColor

synColor’s the only folder inside that docs folder. Anyone out there using Maya on Mac might know where the Arnold install is?

Thanks again for your assistance.

#15

Remi,

Someone over at Solidangle forum told me where I could find the python script. I ran opened the script using the script editor and it ran. Nowhere along the line did it ask me to convert selected or all. It finished and my interactive scene render didin’t look any different.

I’ve attached a screenshot of the editor window, the IPR window and my scene in the background viewport.

Thanks.

o_6zh7tUhOTtWNZ8NwgncBUiShpriDuE.jpg3000x1866

#16

Please disregard previous post and image. Figured out that I needed to select “source script” from editor file menu instead of “open script”. Source script opened the “convert selected or all” dialog window.

Selected “all”…and Bingo…

Thanks for your help!

#17

Glad you got it working!:buttrock: