Must Use Maya Hardware Renderer for Particle Dynamics?

# 1 18-01-2010 , 04:16 AM

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Must Use Maya Hardware Renderer for Particle Dynamics?

Hi there

I'm trying to do some dynamics/particle instancing in Maya 2008 specifically making a snow blizzard / rainfall. I ran the animation and then tried rendering an example frame using Maya Software and Mental Ray but I could not see the particles on my monitor. Then I read on some Maya forum that for particles/dynamics, you MUST use Maya Hardware rendering. When I changed to Maya Hardware rendering, the Script Editor says my graphics card doesn't support the render. Does this mean I can't do dynamics/particle rendering until I get a new graphic card ? I did dynamics/particle instancing in the open source Blender 3D software also installed on my PC and it renders fine, no problems. How can I get around this ? Thks!

Ezani

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# 2 18-01-2010 , 04:56 AM

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Certain types of particles can only be rendered in hardware. However, if you switch your particle shape type to blobby surface, (or anything with SW at the end), you should be fine.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 3 18-01-2010 , 04:57 AM

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Particles should work with Mental Ray. It's just the software/hardware maya renderers that are specific for different things I think. Not sure about your graphics card. Which one is it?

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# 4 18-01-2010 , 06:49 AM

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Funny you mention it, My old Geforce fx 5200 would work with Maya hardware render, but the ati card I'm using now will not for some reason. Haven't sorted that yet...get the same error you got.

But as was stated, some types of particles are required to be rendered in hardware, others can be in software / mental ray.

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# 5 18-01-2010 , 07:13 AM

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Oh great...this'll probably mean I have to create my science fiction space 'movie' in a combination of Blender and Maya because I don't think I have the dough to get a new graphics card right now (yep, I'm a hobbyist). That snow blizzard I did in Blender looks just great...can't understand why I can't build an even 'better' blizzard in award-winning Maya but I guess it's : go get a more savvy graphics card first!

Anyway, thanks NextDesign...I'll take your advise and try to change the particle shape with a '_sw" at the end and see how it goes in Maya.

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# 6 18-01-2010 , 07:49 AM

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Originally posted by ezanih

Anyway, thanks NextDesign...I'll take your advise and try to change the particle shape with a '_sw" at the end and see how it goes in Maya.

Originally Posted by

Or render in Mental ray and take the time hit, MR will render any particle system in Maya from 2008 I think.

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 7 18-01-2010 , 08:22 AM

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Is that so gster123 ?

Because I would really prefer to do everything in Maya if possible? Ok, I'll go back home today and try rendering those snow blizzard particles with MR tonite. Tell you the results tomorrow user added image

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# 8 18-01-2010 , 08:38 AM

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Just checked and Mental ray does render hardware particles in 2008.

"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

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# 9 18-01-2010 , 08:40 AM

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Your still rendering in Maya, just using the Mental Ray renderer from the render globals.

Plus the time difference isn't that big unless you have a scene with huge scores of particles.

cheers,
Chris

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# 10 18-01-2010 , 09:45 AM

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Many thanks...although I thought I did try MR last nite, but couldn't see the particles...anyway I'll try again tonite. Anyway, I mapped a jpg image to NURBS plane and turned on Smooth Shading and Hardware Texturing ad the image came out ok (there was no errors). I don't know whether that has any relations to this issue of particle rendering. If Blender can do it, surely Maya can. I don't seem to be having any problem with Batch Render-ing an AVI as so many in the forums claimed.

Sigh...such a difficult job creating a "realistic science fiction space wars movie" in Maya (and Blender). Here's my work-in-progress :-

(1) Camera path animation / image plane / lighting - DONE

(2) Sound - DONE. Collected from freesoundproject.com

(3) Spaceships and space scenarios and animation - 50% done. One of the scene involves the snow blizzard user added image

(4) Photorealistic (nearly!) potrait animations of conversations - 70%. Nearly there. Eyes are OK. Hair OK. Bumps and texturing OK. Except skin. I used Lambert and it's still a bit plasticky. I'm experimenting with misss_fast_skin now.

(4) Putting together the movie - NOT DONE. Without any dough, looks like I have no choice but to use Windows Movie Maker 2.1 to put a decent animation muxing the audios and the video AVIs generated from Maya and Blender. Dope Sheet and Blender Video Sequencer do not do muxing.

Hmm....I have to see where I go from here. Hollywood ? Check that.

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# 11 18-01-2010 , 02:27 PM

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y don't u post your work here?

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# 12 18-01-2010 , 04:13 PM

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Blender and Maya are completely different.

Blender, from the start, was made for the enthusiast, and to be run on consumer based hardware. Maya on the other hand, was built for production work and studios; and made to work on workstation graphics cards, such as the quadro or firegl.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 13 19-01-2010 , 02:11 AM

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Yep, I know NextDesign. And I know most of you guys are actually in employment using Maya which is totally different from what I do with Maya as an enthusiast.

I mean..for example..I would like to use ZBrush 3.1 but...$$$. Same with Shave N Haircut and MudBox and Toxic.

But part of my aim is also to see how good a 'movie' I can come up with using these 'free' (except Maya and Photoshop of course) stuff like Blender to Movie Maker. I also know the core movie making workflow.

Another thing is I get to dabble and understand the "complete" (more or less) workflow of movie production from modelling to editing and muxing audio/video into a final amatuerr product. Yes, I know..there's storyboarding initially and post-production and after-effects once you've got your basic movie our. I'll get to these later but still can't seem to find any decent free after effects tools like Adobe Premiere, etc. Probably I'll be using PShop.

My amateur movie is just for personal satisfaction but photorealism is a very important part of it. It'll be fun to compare it with some Hollywood stuff (just kiddin'!) It's funny how many very dark scenes can be found in Hollywood movies...Predator 3 comes to mind. I suppose it adds realism but also it hides any shortcomings in digitally rendered frames?

Since I scoured the Internet, I've only found single digit numbers of really photorealistic Maya textured head models (and rigged models) but there seems to be lots of great photorealistic landscapes! As for movies, I found a great amateur movie entitled 'Panic Attack' done on U Tube. The explosions and techniques are good and inspires me user added image

I will post my science fiction movie one day once I'm satisfied with the results! user added image

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# 14 19-01-2010 , 05:08 AM

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Very cool. Being a blender artist, I'm sure you've head of Sintel (aka Durian)?

https://durian.blender.org/

All done using free and open source software.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 15 19-01-2010 , 06:39 AM

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Durian?

Unbelievable you brought this up. From where I come from, which is the tropical country of Malaysia (South East Asia), durian is the 'king of fruits' with thorns the size of a peanut. The taste is incredible but I have heard that, historically speaking, caucasians have fainted at its smell albeit there are many who enjoy it like us natives.

I'm guessing that that Blender project originator must have spent his or her holidays in some tropical destinations somewhere over here and must have enjoyed the fruit a lot, lol user added image

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Must Use Maya Hardware Renderer for Particle Dynamics?

Durian?

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