Updated Layering Shaders
Added a little something to an old post about handling caustics when dealing with the mib_color_mix. Layering Shaders for Mental Ray
Yay Arroway !
Once in a blue moon I tend to make impulse purchases, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! >.> I got the Arroway Textures - All in One Bundle and didn't expect it to get here so soon but it did and ...wow, these textures are freaking sweet! I need to curb my enthusiasm as I'm prancing down fan girl alley right about now but really these textures are pretty awesome. Consider this post a squirt of excitement.
Random Render_Cherries
Trying to get back into the swing of things, and I was going through some old stuff and I stumbled on a fruit scene. Its a simple enough scene for some bug testing for some shader, camera and light setup scripts. On second sight, their reflectivity may have not been blurred enough.
PMM version 1.5
Making improvements, adding functionality and stuff.
I'm really getting sucked into this.
Quick update:
-The mule shaders auto update when the MR shaders are tweaked, so it doesn't matter if you change the textures or colors, the mule will stay current (might post a vid on that).
-The "screen composite" attribute will be unchecked automatically on all SSS shaders.
-When camera, area lights, and portal lights are created, a new panel for positioning and framing is created instead of taking over the current persp panel.
-The camera searches for any existing photographic exposure shader and attaches it, if not, it creates one and it checks for sky shaders too.
-The rename textures script names file texture nodes according to their system names and sets some filter attributes.
-The match FG to Raytrace basically grabs current raytrace settings and uses those values for FG tracing to avoid things like black glass for example.
*Will possibly add a caustic light feature.
The De-gamma shaders script supports:
mia_material
mia_material_x
mia_material_x_passes
mi_metallic_paint
mi_metallic_paint_x
mi_metallic_paint_x_passes
mi_car_paint_phen1
mi_car_paint_phen_x
mi_car_paint_phen_x_passes
misss_fast_simple_maya
misss_fast_skin_maya
misss_fast_shader
misss_fast_shader_x
misss_fast_shader_x_passes
The SSS shaders were the most pain in the ass ones to script because they differ a bit.
Still polishing and testing but so far so good.
I'm really getting sucked into this.
Quick update:
-The mule shaders auto update when the MR shaders are tweaked, so it doesn't matter if you change the textures or colors, the mule will stay current (might post a vid on that).
-The "screen composite" attribute will be unchecked automatically on all SSS shaders.
-When camera, area lights, and portal lights are created, a new panel for positioning and framing is created instead of taking over the current persp panel.
-The camera searches for any existing photographic exposure shader and attaches it, if not, it creates one and it checks for sky shaders too.
-The rename textures script names file texture nodes according to their system names and sets some filter attributes.
-The match FG to Raytrace basically grabs current raytrace settings and uses those values for FG tracing to avoid things like black glass for example.
*Will possibly add a caustic light feature.
The De-gamma shaders script supports:
mia_material
mia_material_x
mia_material_x_passes
mi_metallic_paint
mi_metallic_paint_x
mi_metallic_paint_x_passes
mi_car_paint_phen1
mi_car_paint_phen_x
mi_car_paint_phen_x_passes
misss_fast_simple_maya
misss_fast_skin_maya
misss_fast_shader
misss_fast_shader_x
misss_fast_shader_x_passes
The SSS shaders were the most pain in the ass ones to script because they differ a bit.
Still polishing and testing but so far so good.
PMM User Interface
Making a bit of progress on the UI for PMM yay. It's weird but I found it waaay easier to make the other scripts. Scripting a UI just feels really clumsy or maybe it's because I haven't gotten quite used to it yet. /shrug
The first UI I ever created and I'm just so proud ^_^.
The first UI I ever created and I'm just so proud ^_^.
Hooked on MEL
Ah yes some of the chaos from my recent move is mellowing out. Anyways, I've been hearing for years that being able to script in Maya is the shiznite and I totally believe it, I just didn't think I was the script minded type. But recently, I finally got a real “what the hell, why not” moment and decided to jump into MEL, I wanted to make something practical [but simple of course].My goal was to make a script that would create a 35mm render camera with a dark gray gate mask, film pivot, film origin and also slap an mia_exposure_photographic lens with a Cm2 factor of 100000 on it. Doing this manually is easy but just a bit “click intensive” for what it is, so it just becomes tedious. That in itself was surprisingly easy to script [the node and command ref in the help docs kick ass] but that snowballed into “Why not make a camera with aim instead?” and then “hmmm I wonder if I can slap a bokeh lens shader on that too” then that quickly turned into “Hey, I bet can setup a distance measurement and feed that into the bokeh lens shader” [Also I'm really leaning towards having the script detect the physical sky [if there is one] and plug that into the environment slot of the camera.]That worked but the generic names would become a problem so I decided to make a simple interface with a name input field and a “Create” button and that turned me onto the magical world of global procedures and variables.
Ok so the interface has a looooong way to go but for now its good enough for testing.
I made the distance locator independent of the aim, as it allows getting different values without screwing with the aiming of the camera.
Ok so the interface has a looooong way to go but for now its good enough for testing.
I made the distance locator independent of the aim, as it allows getting different values without screwing with the aiming of the camera.
Blog Title Change
Wow, ok so I was flipping through the keywords that lead folks to this site and lately I noticed a particular combination kept popping up from many different areas across the world. I poked around some more only to have my suspicions cemented, yep it was porn. So now, my blog title will undergo a little overhaul. I was pondering changing it anyway, as clearly this site isn't only about Maya. Yes, I know CG artists watch porn too and some could stumble in that way but I think it's best that I change it. So yeah...it's out there.
randomRender_glowStripGlass
This is a combination of two mia_materials via the color mix node. [Blogspot's compression was pretty brutal on this :s]
Random Render Idea
I'm thinking about making "random render" posts and giving them their own category. The little twiddling arounds you do when you're bored or uninspired, fun enough to save the results but too small to be called a "project".
Blog Tweaks
Making a few changes to the blog. I'm merging the sketch blog and my Maya blog, because quite frankly, I was neglecting my sketching and that's no good. Who knows, I might just switch up the blog design since its all 2010 and stuff, keyword "might". I need to fight depression and get the ol' juices flowing [we'll see how that works out lol].
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