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Author Topic: Mental Ray problems?  (Read 8381 times)

LR1243

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Mental Ray problems?
« on: December 22, 2008, 04:26:29 PM »
I am trying to get a nice shadow and render. I have used scanline for years till about 7 months ago when I switched to Mental Ray.

The way it' set up is using a base Forest Pro object. Cloning it to get me duplicates. Making the dups not face the camera but the MR sunlight. Now in the past that would get me a nice shadow and still have the trees follow the camera. But now I get that BUT the dups are still seen. I have them as not visible as usual but for some reason they still are rendering? I have tried every way I can to make this work just as it is but not have them be seen. What am I doing wrong? I noticed I set my textures up differently then you show but it renders still perfectly. I tried the 2 trees that I saw with using multi sub and mental ray but it just cam back black.

Attached is my render sample and the map tree. As you can see I'm using Arch shaders but it works great......minus that plane in the red circle. Thanks!

LR1243

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2008, 06:30:52 PM »
Just from looking through I think I should load my smaller scene for you to see what I have going on here. Hope it helps, Thanks!


By the way I shrunk the heck out of my 4 textures for you and killed the scene much as I could to get it to a attachable size for you.

LR1243

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2008, 07:45:53 PM »
Ok so been testing all this morning. If I render this from just about any other angle. Such as one from more above. I only see the one plane that should be seen. The other is not being rendered except for the shadow. So that part is correct.

So why then when I drop down would it decide to render out both planes and not just keep the one still non visible??

iToo

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2008, 08:28:55 PM »
Hi,

I'm trying to render your scene, but all objects look as white although the Exposure parameters seem correct.  :-\

However, why are you using separate objects for trees and shadows, instead a single object with "Forest Material 3" and the shadow options of the plugin ?

If you have not done it yet, i suggest you upgrade to Forest 3.05b. In the latest beta releases we have improved the Mental Ray shader, it renders faster and get better results. There must not be differences from using "Architectural" materials or "Forest Material".

« Last Edit: December 22, 2008, 08:32:16 PM by Itoo »
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

LR1243

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #4 on: December 22, 2008, 09:30:16 PM »
Hey sweet thanks.

I'm using Mr exposure controls and what not.... but yea  I kept trying to do a multi sub but it'd only do one of my textures not all 5 then it'd only do the one all black. nothing I did would get the texture to come through. So I set it up with the Arch shader an all is good except for the part of the visibilities.... it's very weird. Even the guys at the old job are not sure whats going on here.

I'm going to do that update right now. Probably will have to update the other machines too i take it with the dll's?

LR1243

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2008, 10:40:11 PM »
LOL now I'm just all lost. Loaded the new updated software and now I can't get a shadow from my trees at all. They were glowing and I was able to finally use just the plan Forest Shader alone.....but now I cant get a shadow to save my life...?

LR1243

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #6 on: December 22, 2008, 11:11:55 PM »
I got it! Whew.......Needed to go into the plug in stack and turn on the ray traced shadows for MR....didn't do that before but I think you mentioned it some where.

iToo

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2008, 09:57:26 AM »

Quote
I'm going to do that update right now. Probably will have to update the other machines too i take it with the dll's?

Yes, all computers must use the same Forest version or you will get different rendering results.

Please, post here your impressions with the shader. The user feedback is important to us, to fix all possible problems before releasing Forest 3.1 (if all run fine, 3.05b must be the last beta).

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

LR1243

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Re: Mental Ray problems?
« Reply #8 on: December 23, 2008, 03:33:08 PM »
So far it's looking and working just fine. I use Mental Ray all most 99% of the time now. First scene with the update as you know. Working fine