Introduction to Maya - Rendering in Arnold
This course will look at the fundamentals of rendering in Arnold. We'll go through the different light types available, cameras, shaders, Arnold's render settings and finally how to split an image into render passes (AOV's), before we then reassemble it i
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1
28-11-2011
, 07:39 PM
Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 520
Mental Ray, Maya Software or a mixture of both?
MS is good for scenes where there aren't any textures, but those textures can be imitated.
Seems when it comes to reflection and textures, MR renders faster while MS is slow. But when fur is added...(see pics 3 and 4), MR slows down to a crawl, MS renders it at 46 seconds.
So which should I stick with and why? I can see workarounds to MS problem with textures (since I might not be adding too many of them and less likely to happen in reflective environments), but no workarounds to MR's slowness.
MR also doesn't render reflections of fur either with Production settings.
Why does neither of them render the shadows in a reflection though?
I've googled on this topic... Nothing found related to reflection omitting shadows except an unanswered topic somewhere, the user had problems with rendering a ball reflecting into a mirror because the mirror didn't reflect the shadow of the sphere.
Last edited by SilverFeather; 28-11-2011 at 11:29 PM.
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2
28-11-2011
, 11:45 PM
Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 520
But now I'll have to figure out how to soften these shadows. O_o
The light is an Area Light. Could this be the problem? Because so far no settings can soften these shadows.
I think I could use Maya Software for reflections that don't need to be too accurate with textures (since it blurs in render) and use Mental Ray for more precise reflections.
So far, Spotlight seems to be the best light for shadows.
Last edited by SilverFeather; 29-11-2011 at 01:42 AM.
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3
29-11-2011
, 01:54 AM
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4
29-11-2011
, 11:43 AM
Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011
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Posts: 520
Well MR is crawling in the following situation: If I add grass (fur) to the plane, MS will render it fast, but MR will crawl due to it.I don't know why MR is crawling like that, I don't know how the scene is setup. As for area lights their scale affects their intensity and shadow softness. If you're using MR then you can use the light shape option in the light shape's 'mental ray' section.
If there is no grass, MR works faster/better in rendering reflection of texture and shadows (only that the shadows need more adjusting for MR than MS). MS will be slower (though sometimes faster, no idea why) and will mess the textures (as seen in the tree in front of mirror pic and the cube in front of mirror pic)
Scene setup for tree pic:
Cube with blinn, reflective 1.000. Gray colored.
Tree is a paint effect turned mesh, with the tree base being a blinn with no reflectivity and mountain texture.
Light: Area light. Where shadow is not reflected it has Regular Shadow map format with no "Use MR shadow map overrides".
Where shadow IS reflected but its black and hard, the "Use MR shadow map overrides" is checked.
The ground is just another cube with the Mountain texture applied to it over a lambert.
Scene setup for cubes pic:
Small cube: Lambert with a hedgehog bmp texture.
Ground cube: Lambert with a bmp texture.
Gray cube: Blinn with reflectivity 1.000.
Light: Spotlight with shadows on. All I had to do to make the shadow softer was to make the shadow color gray. It instantly is reflected in the mirror whether I use MR or MS.
Last edited by SilverFeather; 29-11-2011 at 11:46 AM.
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5
29-11-2011
, 08:41 PM
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This render took 1min 1sec using 'production' render preset on a quad core 2.66GHz machine with 8GB DDR2 1066 Ram.
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6
29-11-2011
, 09:08 PM
Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 520
Try a different texture with more noticeable shapes on the ground and check out the maya software, it probably will make it look messy as well.To be honest I can't remember the last time I used the software renderer so I have no clue why the texture is such a mess in the reflection, however I believe the reason why the fur wasn't showing in the MR render reflection is because 'visible in reflections' was unchecked in the render stats section of its shape attributes.
This render took 1min 1sec using 'production' render preset on a quad core 2.66GHz machine with 8GB DDR2 1066 Ram.
Thank you, it now renders the grass too.
It's so hard to pick the fur to get to Fur feedback node... X_X any other way to select it?
Took me a bit longer on my pc using production. (though i still have winamp, msn and a server program running)
I'm on a dual core 3 Ghz with 4 Gb ddr2 and 1 gb video.
Still got to fix the shadow's aspect or change the light type. Still on Area Light.
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7
29-11-2011
, 10:32 PM
Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011
Join Date: Sep 2011
Posts: 520
I think I'll rely on Software rendering for scenes that don't require accurate reflections and on MR when I need to render something with special effects.
Now I'm really wondering if I should give my characters actual hair or just resort to what the usual animated movie creators do and make the hair out of a mesh unless I'm making fuzzy creatures. How would I control that though or make it look realistic?
Last edited by SilverFeather; 30-11-2011 at 12:20 AM.
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