RnD
Mental Ray Override Material (Maya)
Quick post on a very useful but obscure attribute that can be added to any geometry so you can override the material that is assigned to it.
A practical use for this would be fur/hair in Maya. As by default hair and fur is shaded by Maya’s default shaders. These shaders are hard coded into Maya, and there is no usual way of just selecting the feedbackshape/pfxHair and assigning any shader you want to it.
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New shaders + linear tools
Hi all I have just compiled new shaders for mentalray:
New features ::
- ar_pointPosition — misc shader for generating screen and or world space position of current surface point
- ar_bufferWrite — now working with named buffers
Also you can now download a little tool for converting tifs to linear openEXRs
This file contains executables for linux 32 and 64 bit, intel based mac os x, and windows 32 bit.
You will need to have openexr and tiff libraries installed on linux and mac os x .
useage:
from a console/terminal simply run :
sRGB2Linear “file_to_be_converted.tif”
this will spit out an exr image that can then be used as your colour texture inside your rendering package.
Tutorials should be out by the end of next week.
Ash -out
Linear Tools etc
Hi all
Just a quick post to say that I’m currently writing up a tutorial on linear workflow in Maya/Mentalray.
As part of this i have made a little converter for tiff->openEXR.
All source and executables will be uploaded shortly 
Stay tuned
Ash
ar_shaders release 0.1
Hi all, well as promised (if a bit late). Here’s a 0.1 release of ar_shaderPack
It contains three collections of shaders:
ar_baseShaders – basic color shaders for constructing shader networks.
ar_fresnelShaders – fresnel reflection/refraction and utility shaders.
ar_bufferWrite – framebuffer (AOV) writing and creating shaders
Currently on for Linux 32/64 bit, and made for working with Maya 2008/2009.
Windows and mac version to come shortly.
Ash
Parade 3D
I am currently developing a 3D viewer for clients (and artists) to view models that we have generated.
Once the first release is done i’ll release the source for others to look at/improve/augment.
The main purpose is for clients to view what we are doing and comment upon a 3d model rather than a still jpg that may not be clear for everyone to see.
main target features:
Load propritory format (with decription for security perpsoes).
Ability to leave comments / mark areas for adjustment.
Ash out.
Importons / Irradiance Particles in Mr 3.6, Maya 2008 SP1
These are a new method for bounce illumination in side metal ray. inside maya 2008 sp1 you can add the command via the script editor:
[code lang="c"]
setAttr -type "string" miDefaultOptions.stringOptions[1].name "irradiance particles";
setAttr -type "string" miDefaultOptions.stringOptions[1].value "on";
setAttr -type "string" miDefaultOptions.stringOptions[1].type "boolean";
[/code]
this turns irradiance particles on, however make sure that you turn off Final gather.
you can read more at lamrug.org
I’m, going to try and place up some example comparisons for you to see soon
Ash