Scanline for Compositing

Entered a discussion today about Scanline files for .EXR. Definitely, if a file is bucket rendered, it is about 3x-5x slower to be read in nuke. - articles were dated back in 2010 though.

But it seems that vray 2.0 this has been addressed as stated on their website. A compositor told me that compression type and storage type; though both have the word scanline in there as an option are two different things.

Questions - I saw a blog post taken from 3dmax, they do indeed have a compression and storage type setting which indicates my compositing friend is right.

But if so, then where are the correct settings in Maya Vray to have the files output as scanline and unrelated but what is the "Auto data window (multi-channel scanline files only) button for?

Multi Tile UV Mapping Tutorial for Mari & Maya

4 Part Tutorial on Mult-Tile UV Mapping

Multi-Tile UV Mapping Part 1 
Part 1

Part 2: Multi-Tile Painting in Mudbox
Part 2

Part 3: Multi-Tile Shader Setup/Rendering in Maya.
Part 3

Multi-Tile UV Mapping/Displacement Part 4
Part 4

UV Mapping Pass in Vray for Nuke

Separate files will need to be created prior to final render. Turn off all linear workflow tricks and set the file to be 32bit.

UV Mapping Pass in Vray for Maya

Nuke Camera Animation to Maya

So I just tested this script and it works well. Important to note, Nuke artist should set up the camera to match the footage so that when it jumps over to Maya it is all in Sync.

Creative Crash Script

Displacement 50% grey - No touchy!

Displacement mapping should be simple enough. Used a 4092 texture map at 50% grey for base, 16bit & 8bit. Followed this tutorial http://mayazest.blogspot.sg/2012/03/simple-displacement-mapping-in-v-ray.html and tried -0.5 for displacement shift which gave a worse off result. 

Can't seem to have 50% grey leave the geometry alone. Why?

Vray Extrapolation

Was hoping that vray extrapolation was the equivalent of the MR EnvBlur. This is not the case. Listed as never to use this in an animation as it may cause flickering issues.

Vray Physical Camera

We have been texturing and lighting in a file with Vray Physical Camera with Movie Camera setting. This provided a way richer result as compared to Still Animation Camera.

Posted this question on the forums, awaiting reply.

Matching Vray camera to an actual physical camera

Was trying to find a way to keep the Vray Physical Attribute field of view similar to Maya's own camera to prevent issues. Turns out, there is an option to take the focal length info from Maya's own settings. Problem solved.

Stumbled on this while I was trolling. Good stuff for future use.

http://www.mr-jose.com/guides/vray_physical_camera_guide.pdf

Outliner Missing?

If your outliner is ever stuck in the second (now non-existent monitor) use this and it will snap it to the top left of your main screen.

window -e -tlc 1 1 outlinerPanel1Window ;

Zbrush GoZ not appearing in Maya

Faced the constant issue of GoZ button disappearing in Maya preventing me from sending geo back to Zbrush simply.

Just type the below and middle mouse drag it back onto the shelf.

shelf_GoZBrush();

simple fix. yay.

Vray Render Frame Buffer going missing

As I usually jump between 1 monitor setups and 2 monitor setups. This always happens. The dang Vray frame buffer goes missing. This seems to solve it, but I have only tested it once today.

1) Open the scene;
2) Before any rendering is done (this is important!) open the script editor and type this MEL command:

setAttr "vraySettings.vfbSettingsArr" -type Int32Array 0;

I do love simple solutions that work. Please make this work...always.