Well finally I took the time necessary to analyze this amazing tutorial and quoting a favorite movie of mine: “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…” - Henry David Thoreau. Any one can guess the movie?
Ok, now ontopic again. I started analyzing the book and some doubts came out. I think is best to list the doubts in this post and when you could, answer some of them.
Page 6
You said that is best to install the mental ray shaders located in the Mr_Custom_Shaders_and_Scripts_2009_SP1A folder. I’m asking this because there is another 2 folders but none of them have the folder LumeTools_MR_shaders_for_Maya and mentalrayCustomNodeClass.
Hi Ciro sorry for the delay… I’m fine and even if I’m replying from a hospital in Bkk got good news for you guys, who trusted in me and showed some respect for my efforts following up with this thread…
Before to get into details I will briefly answer your questions since that from now on, I will likely use mostly screenshots to explain the various Maya and Mental Ray features used in the tutorial main production scenes…
Hmmm… Looking at the number of thread hits and feedbacks maybe the Maya green user might think that this huge tutorial is not that good after all, since is not branded Gnomon or DT…
Back in December I was warned that if I will publish it for free, I will just get a few thanks “which I really treasure btw…” and the green users will likely ignore it…
Since it is not branded and doesn’t have an outrageously high price tag… Just wonder if was published with a 1K price tag, maybe the green user will be more eager to get it…?:drool:
But then again… There are huge websites such as “The Pirate Bay”, which will mirror it in no time…!:eek:
When I first approached the Alias Wavefront Maya software, I recall that in the main help the user was warned that he will face stiff competition by the most smart brains in the world… Well it seems that since then, something has dramatically changed…:eek:
In my next and hopefully last “rant” online apart from sharing the main assets screenshots, I will go a bit more personal and finally explain why I decided from the start to create this huge project to be shared online…
Btw… The place from which I’m replying your questions, will give you already a little clue…!
First… You will understand why I suggest on page 6 of the part1.pdf to install the Mental Ray shaders and scripts located in the “Mr_Custom_Shaders_and_Scripts_2009_SP1A” folder, when I will start to share the main Maya 2009X32/64 production scenes…
As well as the updated version of the above mentioned folder, with all the Mental Ray shaders and scripts required by these scenes as explained in the main Part1 Part2 and Part3.pdf docs.
Second… Concerning the “LumeTools_MR_shaders_for_Maya” guess I explained earlier in this thread that these Mental Ray Custom Shaders, should be used exclusively with the Maya 2009X32.bit version since they are not supported by the Maya 2009/2011/2012X64.bit versions.
Just download the Maya 2009X32.bit trial version from the Autodesk website and use the “LumeTools_MR_shaders_for_Maya” Custom Shaders, in conjunction to the previously uploaded “SPONZA2009X32GLOW_2009_SP1A” scene to create the light Glow and Glare effects…
Btw… I just tried to use the “LumeTools_MR_shaders_for_Maya” with the latest version of the “lume.dllX64.bit” Dynamic Link Library file, in conjunction to the Maya 2011X64 SP1A version…
To add some Glow to the 3D Characters hairs created using the “Duncan Brinsmead” Maya Hair feature and the “Lume” Custom Shaders shows up in the Hypershade but are still way too unstable for my personal taste…
Therefore when using scenes created with the Maya 2009/2011/2012X64.bit versions, I strongly suggest you to add your Glow and Glare effects in post using either After Effects or Photoshop.
Third… Concerning the “mentalrayCustomNodeClass.mel” script file located under the “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya…\scripts\others” installation directory, this is the script file used to expose the Mental Ray “Production Shaders” usually hidden in the Hypershade main “Create” tab.
I provided the edited “mentalrayCustomNodeClass.mel” script file in the “Mr_Custom_Shaders_and_Scripts_2009_SP1A” folder and not in the other “Mr_Custom_Shaders_and_Scripts_2011/2012” folders as well…
Since I assumed you already knew by now how to expose these Mental Ray “Production shaders”, considering that this little workaround is well described by Djx on his blog as well as the guys at the Maya Station website.
Anyway… After a fresh Maya installion just open the “mentalrayCustomNodeClass.mel” script file using the “WordPad” editor, scroll down to the end of the page where there is a line that goes like this:
After the last backslash replace the word “internal” with the word “material” and that’s it, save the file using WordPad and the Mental Ray “Production Shaders” should show up in the Hypershade “Create” tab.
Now back to the good news… In the last month of August I spent a great deal of time going through a last control check iteration, for all the main production scenes and please remember that what I shared here until now…
Are just the minor assets and when I will start to share the main Maya 2009X64/2011X64 and 2012X64 production scenes, you will hopefully understand the real potential of this outrageously complex and complete Maya and Mental Ray learning resource…!
Thanks to this last control check iteration I finally realized that the decision of the guys at Gnomon to call it quits at the very last moment, on a commercial standpoint maybe was the correct one…:wise:
Since that apart from the copyright infringement issues… I just find out that there was still room for a very last round of improvements, to ensure that every feature used in the scenes will work as expected…
And as a very last effort I just lifted the complexity level of the main production scenes, from an outstanding level to an absolute amazing level… But you will judge by yourself very soon…!
When I use the terms “outstanding” and “amazing” I refer to the Maya production scene as a learning scene asset and not to the final render output, which can be greatly improved by your own artistic skills…
I just provide you the technical “know-how” and then is up to your artistic skills to bring your projects to a “hyper-realistic” level, usually achieved giving a lot of attention to the texturing aspect…
And even if my area of expertise is mostly focused on the Maya and Mental Ray lighting and rendering fields, I’m used to be quite skilled in the Maya Dynamics field as well…
Therefore I just added a new Maya 2011 production scene to introduce you to the “Duncan Brinsmead” Maya Hair feature from a basic to a very advanced level, to replace the Fur hairs previously used for the main 3d Characters.
The (4) Maya 2009X64 as well as the (11) Maya 2011X64 (200.mb each) production scenes are already completed and uploaded on my web, waiting to be shared…
At the moment I’m refining the (4) Maya 2012X64 (almost 400.mb each) production scenes in which I raised the scene complexity to such a level, that the Maya 2009X32/64 scenes compared to their 2012X64 counterparts are just a “walk in the park”…:surprised
Since that apart from using the Maya 2012 Mental Ray 3.9 Iray render engine as well as the Unified Sampling feature, almost every 3D model present in the scenes will be animated using standard and nDynamics features such as:
Maya 2012 Nucleus Particles and Emitters, Paint Effects grass clumps instanced to nParticles and standard Particles using the Dynamic “Instancer/Replacement” feature, Nucleus Mesh, Nucleus Constraint, Nucleus Fields and “Effects Assets” such as the “Rain.ma” Effects Asset…
Which will be used for the scenes illuminated by the (IBL) Environment Lighting feature in conjunction to an Hdri 32.bit image file texture…
As well as standard Dynamics Particles and Emitters, Fields, Fluid Effects, Soft/Rigid Bodies simulations for the grass patches (millions of Poly’s) using the “Duplicate, make copy soft” creation command…
With Dynamic Springs which cause the grass blades to react by bending, when colliding with the Aston Martin wheels and are animated by the Pfx internal Dynamic “Grass Wind” Turbulence Force as well…
The Aston Martin is now moving and drifting using a few Animation Motion Paths, with a dedicated camera that follows the movement of the car and thanks to the car wheels “rotate X” attribute keyed in the scenes…
Clouds of dust and grass clumps are lifted in the air as well as a couple of nParticles and Emitters, which are placed in the car exhaust pipes based on the “JetTrail.ma” nParticles and Fluid Effect preset.
A last note on the main 3d Characters which was created almost 8 years ago using Nurbs converted to Subd and than converted to Poly and btw… I couldn’t even find anymore the low poly version…
Therefore I had to use the high poly ones and I had to layout the UV in no time so I just used the Mesh/Tranfer Poly Uv’s command, to transfer the Poly UV layout from the original 3D Characters to my own…
Even considering the quite rough UV layout as well as the non standard topology edge flow, since that at the time there was no ZBrush and that to create organic 3D characters, you had to rely entirely on the standard Maya modeling tools…
On an anatomy standpoint they are quite cool as well as the main Rig done using Rigid Skinning and Flexors, which seems to works quite well and are ready to be animated…
They are used in the tutorial just as a kind of “stand-in” to show how the elaborate Maya and Mental Ray shading networks reacts to the lighting in the scenes, as well as to demonstrate how to use Maya features such as Fur and Hairs…
Hope I made my point…!
Before to share these assets and in particular an extremely elaborate Mental Ray Shading Network recently refined, used in the Maya 2011X64 production scenes to enhance the translucence of the 3D organic vegetation as well as human skin and hairs…
Based on the Zap Andersson Car Paint translucent material which I already shared in his basic form, in the Maya 2011 scenes located in the previously uploaded “3D_Characters_Production_Scenes_2011” folder.
This amazing Shading Network is driven exclusively by the transparency and translucency factor, with all the other attributes such as “diffuse” are left to the default value (0)…
The other attributes are driven by the third underliyng Mental Ray Misss_Fast_Skin material and the main tranlucency factor, is controlled by a “Multiply/Divide” utility node that can be pushed to extreme values…
Such as (16X) and even more without breaking the overlying Mia Materials energy conserving factor, hence avoiding hotspots, firefly lighting artifacts as well as the “infamous” NAN pixels.
I will make sure that this huge tutorial will get the attention and exposure it deserves, else I will keep my promise and share these assets privately with the guys that supported me here on this thread…
And to the other… Well goodluck guys since you will need loads of it considering that you will likely spend quite a few years in front of the screen, scratching your heads asking yourself why Maya and Mental Ray keep crashing on you…!
I really don’t mean to sound rude or offensive but there is a popular thread here on CGTalk, in which many users discuss about the “infamous” Maya and Mental Ray headaches…
Well if just 50% of what I keep saying will turn out to be true, this might be the “Aspirin” that could heal most of your Mental Ray headaches…!
Well to conclude… Just would like to say that I really admire the patience of great technical guys like Bitter, who still keep facing questions such as: What is a Mental Ray Portal Light?
Or other threads that goes like this: How to become a Maya Pro? Btw… Infernal gave the correct answer, just get paid dude…!:bowdown:
Ciao.
“The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons… Don’t settle for less, even a genius asks questions… Be grateful for blessings and don’t ever change, keep your essence…”
Thanks much for all your efforts! Just recently downloaded the files and look forward to going through everything as soon as I get a chance. If I had actually been able to go through it I would have more constructive things to say, but since unfortunately that has not been the case yet, the most I can say is thanks! As soon as I get a chance to crack 'er open, I should have some more valuable feedback. Your hard work of helping to untangle the nasty web that is the mental ray for maya integration is most appreciated. I have thrown many hours of my life down the drain sitting in front of the computer attempting to figure out this twisted maze of poorly documented (and often times hidden) features and workarounds for the various bugs over the last 5 years. If something like this had existed back then I would have been able to spend more time creating things instead of figuring out how to jump over the myriad technical hurdles. I know there is a massive amount of info in this guide that can help take me even further and I look forward to embarking on that journey. I still go back and reference your Importon and Irradiance Particle Gnomon Guide, and I have a feeling this tutorial will expand on and update the info you presented there. I know this had to have been a beast of task. Hope you recover from whatever ailment landed you in the hospital. That’s never a fun place to be.
Really looking forward to going through the final amazing guide. I know for sure that there will be alot of questions as people start going into it. It may take a while.
Much gratitude and respect Alex. I hope you are feeling well.
I have just started to read the tutorial and I find it so far very interesting and full of knowledge.
I can´t wait for the last material and to dig deep into the mental ray. I only wanted to say thank you and you deserve a lot of gratitude and respect, not only because you have created this amazing resource(which in itself is huge) but also for sharing it with the community.
So I hope you get better and again thanks alot for all of your hard work
Thanks a lot for your support guys, really really appreciated…!:applause:
Please keep patient a few more days and I will keep up with my promise, to share the first round of main assets before the end of September…!
Stay tuned guys…!
Ciao.
“The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons… Don’t settle for less, even a genius asks questions… Be grateful for blessings and don’t ever change, keep your essence…”
I haven´t been able to see the parts of the guide you have shared since my Internet connection is really bad, but im gonna try to download the whole thing tonight.
Now, lets be realistic in here my friend… what you are doing is really awesome but being myself a business person i don´t see it right that you have spent a huge amount of time producing this awesome piece of work to give it for free.
I do know that you are a man of your word and I admire that, not a lot of person in the world are like that. If someone decides to sell it im 99% sure that they will sell it no less than 100 bucks so the right thing is that you charge at least 40 bucks for this awesome guide. You can sell it your own, put a link on your site and sell it… Anyways if you ever decide to sell it let me know i will gladly pay for it even if i download for free in here.
Thanks again!
P.S: i will let you know what i think after i get it.
Thanks guys and sorry Andres for the long delay but I was busy finalizing the 400 MB each Maya 2012 production scenes, where almost every single feature is animated by NDynamics…:wip: To ensure that Mental Ray and Iray will not crash on you when rendering millions of animated poly’s… Btw you will still love me if I tell you that this Guide should be priced in the 1k range…?:curious: Anyway you will judge by yourself soon and yes I agree, after all of this hard work guess I deserve a bit more appreciation from the big guys at AD and maybe a little financial contribution as well…! The problem is that only the assets I already shared are worth way more than 100 bucks… Back in December when the Guide assets was almost half the actual size and far less comprehensive, with the guys at Gnomon we agreed on a price tag between 300/400 Euro (400/500 US.$). Btw I just had a quick exchange of messages with Alex and he also felt sorry that he could not publish it, since he invested quite a few bucks on this project as well… So we are defenetely cool and sometime things just doesn’t go as expected…! Anyway to keep up with the word spent here on CGTalk and mostly to say thanks since you guys waited patiently quite a long time, I will start to share the original Maya 2009X32 and 2009X64 production scenes as well as the required scripts plugins and textures before the end of September. Tomorrow will be a quite intense publishing session and since one of the great guys who is following up with this thread, after I replied from a hospital was asking me if the reason I’m doing this is because I’m ill in a terminal stage…:hmm: Geez I’m not, at least not yet…:bounce: Actually I’m still quite fly for a 45 years old white trash…:buttrock:
But will go a bit more personal tmwr… Just very briefly don’t worry, no more ranting online…!
Ciao.
“The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons… Don’t settle for less, even a genius asks questions… Be grateful for blessings and don’t ever change, keep your essence…”
Thanks Justin and just completed the render of a 400 MB Maya 2012 scenes using the Mental Ray Unified Sampling, in conjunction to the IBL Environment Lighting feature and everything worked out just fine…
So I’m very pleased since the assets are simply outstanding, plus I start to feel that this endless journey started almost 3 years ago… Is finally coming to an end…!
Now just for the records since somebody worried I was in a terminal ill condition, I’m ok but unfortunely there are other things which are not that well…
I was recently replying from an hospital in Bkk because my wife undergo a brain surgery for a deadly aneurysm back in 2006 and even if she miraculously survived, things still gets quite tough sometime…!
Having lost mother at the age of 20 and father at the age of 26 here in Thai during a long holiday, plus being a only son life wasn’t quite of a fairytale…!
I shared these personal bio in previous Q&A’s but I decided to omit my wife’s brain surgery, because somebody might wonder… What’s wrong with this guy, why such a bad Karma?
I’m sharing here these personal bio for 2 reasons… First reason is that I started to develop the idea to share this knowledge through a huge tutorial after my wife’s ordeal, since that day I’m leaving on the edge…
Second… Hope you understand that doesn’t matter how hard life can be, you always must look at tomorrow with curiosity and as the “Legend” always keep saying:
“Keep your head up since that after the rain, there will be always the sun”…!
That’s it… End of the pathetic and heartbreaking rant , now back to the main topic.
As promised here we go with the Maya 2009X32 and 2009X64 production scenes as well as the required scripts, plugins and file textures.
The recently slightly refined Maya 2009X32 production scene which I remind you was created back in 2009, mainly for the user still running on 32.bit OS with just 4 GB of Ram…
No Mental Ray Render Passes here, just Maya Render Layers and remember to disable the mia materials Detail Ambient Occlusion feature using the Attribute Spreadsheet…
Just as I did for the Maya 2009X64 scene, or you will face high render times.
With the “sunDirection” node “Emit Photons” checkbox, disabled:
Got the idea to use a huge Mental Ray Portal Light placed under the “FLOORDISPLACED” node, from LuGher3d a very talented Maya and Mental Ray artist and tutor…
I just refined this lighting workflow by enabling the “Emit Direct Photons” checkbox, which disables the Mental Ray Portal Light emission.
Let’s say that the Portal Light node is not emitting Photons at all, instead it gathers and concentrate the Photons emitted by the “sunDirection” node and shoot them back in the scene…
When using this lighting approach remember to disable the “FLOORDISPLACEDShape” node “Cast Shadow” checkbox, to allow the Photons passing through the floor thus contributing to the main scene illumination.
For more info check the link below, which points to the Maya 2009X32 production scene screenshots in the Acrobat Portfolio.pdf format:
A couple of screenshots from the recently refined Maya 2009X64 production scene which is the main “workhorse” of the Maya 2009 section, with all the features discussed in the Part1, Part2 and Part3.pdf docs…
Btw the Maya 2009X64 production scene renders much faster, since that I already disabled the mia materials Detail Ambient Occlusion feature:
Btw I posted the link to the mirror at the start of the thread as well, go on and download it since it has the previously uploaded assets organized in the original tutorial folder structure.
To use the above Maya production scenes you will need to download the updated scripts plugins and file textures as well, which are the final and full version of the tutorial assets…
Remember to store a copy of the original “SPONZATUTORIAL” folder mirror download before to add or replace the previous scripts, plugins and file textures assets.
The final version of the “SPONZAMAPFILES2009” file textures folder:
As well as the updated version of the previously uploaded “My_Documents_maya_folders” folder, which I used to refine all the main Maya production scene and once again…
Backup the original Maya folders located under the C:\Users\xxx\Documents directory on your drive, before to replace them with these folders:
A last note on the “SPONZA2009X64_SUNSET_2009_SP1A” and the “SPONZA2009X64_NIGHT_2009_SP1A” scenes, which I recently created to test the different lighting workflows discussed in the Part2 and Part3.pdf docs…
A screenshot from the “SPONZA2009X64_SUNSET_2009_SP1A” Maya production scene:
Even if these scenes was not included in the tutorial I will be glad to share these extra scenes, with the guys who supported me here on CGTalk and kept following up with this thread…
I’m still not sure about sharing them with the rest of the 3d Maya and Mental Ray community, which still seems to keep ignoring this huge project…:curious:
Will be back next week to briefly show you some screenshot from the almost (20) Maya 2011 and 2012 production scenes, but this is another story…!
For the time being, guess I completely fulfilled the promise made back in 2010…
Ciao…
“The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons… Don’t settle for less, even a genius asks questions… Be grateful for blessings and don’t ever change, keep your essence…”
Holy cow, this is absolutely amazing. I have been a long time fan of this thread and have never commented, but I feel that I must now. Thank you so much for all of your hard work, I appreciate all of this information more than you know. This is a fantastic thread, filled with information from some of the best minds in the industry. Thank you all so much. There is so much information to digest, it will take years before I can get through it all :D. I don’t know if many people understand just how hard it is to put together a tutorial, let alone something of this scale. I’m in awe of you sir. This is the most impressive thing I have ever seen. You are such an inspiration to me. Best of luck.
Jonathan replies like yours, keep me going… Thanks a lot for your words…! :applause:
I might not be the best mind in the industry, but I’m undoubtedly one of the most patient one… But as Italians like to say: “Even Saints patience sometime dries out”…! :shrug:
So for all the green user fervently debating on which Maya tutorial will help them out to improve their skills, here is my 2 Cents with the link to the best Maya tutorial ever:
Btw it reminds a bit my previous tutorial recorded for Gnomon, during an acute bronchitis… :hmm:
In Italy we have another say that goes like this: “Buono si’, ma Sxxxxxo no…!”, which translates roughly as “Good maybe, but Moron no…!” :rolleyes:
Ciao…
“The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons… Don’t settle for less, even a genius asks questions… Be grateful for blessings and don’t ever change, keep your essence…”
Now since in Italy we have another say that goes like this: “Quando fai una mossa, falla bene…”, which translates in something like: “When you make a move, just do it right”…
I will share the “SPONZA2009X64_SUNSET/NIGHT_2009_SP1A” Maya production scenes as well, to make it easier to test the results of the lighting workflows discussed in the Part2 and Part3.pdf docs…
Btw… There are good news for the Maya and Mental Ray users, since it seems that AD finally hired Zap Andersson and hopefully things will go much better from now on…
Once the MR implementation in Maya will be more stable, reliable and maybe even easier with just a few mouse clicks… Guess this Guide will be indispensable as well as the Maya Online Help docs…
To have a better understanding on the Mental Ray internal architecture and mostly on how to stuff an insane amount of lighting, texturing and rendering features…
In a single Maya scene as well as to ensure that everything will work as expected, since this is exactly what I’m specialized in…!
Btw I used the 2D Motion Blur lighting workflow suggested by Zap using the “mip_motionblur” Production Shader, connected to the main “persp” camera as a “Legacy Output Shader”…
To Motion Blur all the Dynamics and NDynamics features, used in the huge Maya 2012 production scenes:
I had to create a cache for every single Dynamics and NDynamics feature, such as the NParticles with Pfx Strokes instanced using the NParticles “Instancer” node…
As well as the NCloth flags, the Nucleus Rain Asset, the various standard Dynamic Fluids and Particles, Soft/Rigid Bodies and the 3D characters Pfx Hairs feature…
Which are all animated using NFields, as well as the “Aston Martin” Motion Path animation and was converted to poly’s prior caching…!
Hopefully will come in soon with a few screenshots of the (20) Maya 2011/2012 scene renders using the Mental Ray “IBL”, “PR”, “Unified Sampling” and Iray features…!
For the time being… I “STRONGLY” suggest you to check out first the Maya 2009 SP1A production scenes that apart fom being already quite complex, are also extremely reliable and informative…
Depending on your skills level… They will introduce you to my personal Maya and Mental Ray mindset, as well as my way of doing things and will ensure that you will not go “Borderline”…
Or just completely insane… When dealing with the extremely complex Maya 2011 and mostly the 2012 production scenes, I warned you guys no kidding…!
A few screenshots, from the “SPONZA2009X64_SUNSET_2009_SP1A” production scene:
For more info check the link below which points to the “SPONZA2009X64_SUNSET_2009_SP1A” production scene screenshots, in the Acrobat Portfolio.pdf format:
For more info check the link below which points to the “SPONZA2009X64_NIGHT_2009_SP1A” production scene screenshots, in the Acrobat Portfolio.pdf format:
To conclude this first section of "THE ULTIMATE MAYA AND MENTAL RAY ARCHVIZ GUIDE"… A link to the full set of “SPONZA2009X32/64 2009 SP1A” Maya production scenes, which you can download as a whole here:
“The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons… Don’t settle for less, even a genius asks questions… Be grateful for blessings and don’t ever change, keep your essence…”
Thanks Justin… “Epic” sounds quite appropriate, considering how much this Guide costed me…!:argh: But at least I fulfilled the promise made here on CGTalk, back in 2010…:shrug:
Please don’t forget to go to the first page of this thread, for a little recap of the links to “THE ULTIMATE MAYA AND MENTAL RAY ARCHVIZ GUIDE” assets…!
Ciao…
“The message I stress: to make it stop, study your lessons… Don’t settle for less, even a genius asks questions… Be grateful for blessings and don’t ever change, keep your essence…”
, now back to the main topic.
