Maya Materials -> To Renderman ?

# 1 11-09-2002 , 10:11 PM

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Join Date: Aug 2002

Posts: 15

Using Maya4 and RAT 5:

Can I somehow preserve all my hard work in creating
Maya Materials and translate/pass that info to the
Renderman Renderer?

Renderman doesn't seem to acknowledge my Maya
materials at all user added image

Cheers,

TH

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# 2 11-09-2002 , 10:48 PM

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Join Date: Apr 2002

Posts: 441

I have found a couple of things that may help:

hxxp://www.td-grafik.de/ext/xfrog/export/index.html

and have you tried MOTR....I know you need this for MAYA/Renderman.....so if that's loaded cool.

Check to make sure the plugin is enabled in the plugin manager. Windows-->Settings/Preferences-->Plugin manager.

Check that out.....
user added image

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# 3 12-09-2002 , 01:06 AM

The Maya Mountain
Join Date: Aug 2002

Location: Seattle, WA

Posts: 8,245

It is also possible to convert your shaders into image maps as well.

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 4 12-09-2002 , 12:38 PM

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Location: Austria

Posts: 290

MAYAMAN

The Magic word is MAYAMAN !

https://www.simplymaya.co.uk/forums/s...=&threadid=582

I've posted some images made with MAYAMAN and MAYA using RAT5.

The Materials which i've used are normal simple MAYA-Shading Networks

b u l l e t

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# 5 16-09-2002 , 07:47 PM

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Posts: 15

MayaMan

Thanks Bullet!

I am hittin' the net to unveil info on this "mayaman" that you
speak so highly of...
How much does it cost?

If you have any links or other info, please pass it along..

Cheers,

TH

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# 6 16-09-2002 , 08:33 PM

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If you have RAT 5.0 you are using MTOR (installed automatically), so you do not need mayaman. When you only have PRman xxx (no RAT !) than you need Mayaman to setup your renderman !

Or am I wrong ?

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 7 17-09-2002 , 03:46 AM

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THe way I see things is that I have two seperate rendering
environments - which can't see each other's shaders/textures/
etc.

I don't think that I can use any materials from the Maya
renderer unless I have some kind of translation tool
(such as MayaMan, I think).

I am not sure that all this is worth it but, I am still learning...
It seems that PRMan can't do some things (like fur)....

Renderman seems faster than the Maya Renderer and
I think Networking is 'easier' with Renderman - I still
can't figure out how to network render w/ only Maya!!!

Cheers.

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# 8 17-09-2002 , 09:38 AM

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Yeah... now you say it, the same happens to me to, never done this, because I always create teh shaders with SLIM.. hummmm... must look in to this one !

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 9 17-09-2002 , 09:49 AM

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MAYAMAN

The Australian Company ist called "ANIMALLOGIC" to be found under www.animallogic.com

there are also converters for MAX and Softiamge. Isn't that cheap but very powerful. Supports all renderer working with RIB File-Format like Entropy, BMRT, AIR, and of course Pixars Renderman.

It's attached seamless into MAYA, like new Renderglobals, and a new renderbutton. The rest is done in the background, like converting textures aso. The main advantage is, that you can see, where the textures are placed. When you are working with RAT and SLIM, you can only attach the shaders to an object, but you can't see where. For simple projections you have to work with additional coordinate-systems generated from the RAT aso. It's more like Trial-and-Error. With MAYAMAN you can stay within MAYA to create shading networks, or you can import shaders generated with SLIM for Shaderman, or even "Handmade" shaders.

b u l l e t

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# 10 17-09-2002 , 09:55 AM

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But when you create a shader in maya and attach it to an object and then render it through MTOR (RAT) to renderman it should be able to render the scene with the correct image right..... Thats way I have got RAT 5.0.

It should be no problem if I use SLIM or Hypershade the renderer should display the shader properly

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 11 17-09-2002 , 10:47 AM

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Shaders

Nope...Renderman can't handle Shading-Networks created with MAYA. It only can handle SLIM-Shading Networks

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# 12 17-09-2002 , 10:54 AM

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what..... ooohhh... that is stupid !!!!

The Important Thing is NOT to Stop Questioning.
--- Albert Einstein ---
www.ProtheusWorld.tk

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# 13 17-09-2002 , 11:04 AM

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RAT

So the point you have to decide with which renderer you want to render, has to be before Texturing...best joice would be: Before you start, because the RAT have several different modelling tools like SUBD's (the ORIGINAL), or blobs. If you want to use already finished MAYA-Scenes, you have to re-create the Shading-Networks, adjust all lights new, with Renderman-Shaders and MapGenerators aso. or you use MAYAMAN. SLIM has some very great, and impressive procedural shaders. And Networks are easily created. You have a Skin-Shader, Velvet, Plastic, Thin Plastic...whatever your heart wants, everything except real raytrace...this is one thing you have to fake in Renderman with Reflection MAPS, or Refraction MAPS...but the renderer is shurely THE choice. If you are working with Displacement-Maps it's the best available. And the DOF and MotionsBlur are the fastest available, because of the subpixel-displacement-technology (uses only 10-20% more rendertime for the best MotionBlur). Network-Rendering is also great (also with MAYAMAN, there you can split an image into several pieces, MAYAMAN generates a .bat-File u have to start on each computer, and every CPU generates a bucket. Then you have another .bat file, to put the several Pieces of the Image back to one Image)...

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