Maya Mental Ray Flicker Free

I've been documenting about how to handle Vray flicker free and completely forgot about the process that helped me do flicker free work in MentalRay. It is quite sad given how much time I invested and how confident I got.

Well, the industry has moved on and seem to have built on that whole concept with write ups and all so I'll just tap on that to relearn. Flicker free, perfect for architecture visualization renders and now with the subset node, to handle the dynamic stuff. Awesome

Maya MR Flicker Free

A chunck of really helpful info from the above link so I can get my renders going quick

"To create a Frozen FG map, define a map first in the Final Gather File field (an extension name doesn't matter, though I use .fgmap), then enable the Preview Animation mode in the Preview section of the Options tab of the Render Settings. Preview Animation will render out your scene but won't save files in this case. You'll ONLY be calculating the FG map for your main rendering camera. To set the renderer to render only the FG pass, under the Features tab, set the Render Mode to Final Gathering Only. Image sampling (anti-aliasing and such) settings don't matter and will have no effect, since FG is being rendered only. Then under the Common tab, set the By frame attribute to a setting such as 10, or 5, there usually isn't a need to render every frame for the FG map, unless the camera view is covering a massive change per frame. Keep in mind that the pixel resolution of the image does matter, so you'll need to set that to your target output pixel resolution, also under the Common tab. Now render the current frame and Mental Ray will calculate the FG data for the length of the animation. Remember to switch Rebuild to Freeze and unhide any objects (such as your characters/creatures) you didn't want in the frozen FG solution when you're ready to render again. Here's a quick explanation on the Rebuild modes in Final Gather:

Rebuild On: Overwrites the FG map on every render, and with each frame advance at render-time.
Rebuild Off: Appends (adds) FG points to the map, as needed, without overwriting it.
Rebuild Freeze: Reads from the FG map, doesn't overwrite nor append anything to it.

Applying Aim Constraint to multiple groups at once

string $sel[] = `ls -sl`;

for ($tmp in $sel) {

aimConstraint -offset 0 0 0 -weight 1 -aimVector 0 1 0 -upVector 0 1 0 -worldUpType "vector" -worldUpVector 0 1 0 Locator $tmp;

};

items in italics can be edited to suit requirement. "Locator" = name of target to orient towards.

Import Maya Camera to After Effects

To import Maya information from Maya to After Effects.

Be sure to set the frame rate to be identical to the After Effects Scene file.
Camera1 seems to work and I am sure the basic names work but no perspective & orthographic cameras.
To bake camera animation go to Edit -> Keys -> Bake Simulation and make sure the camera is not under any group nodes. If not use the constraint keys and bake the new camera.

Nulls can be named NULL, null or Null.

Upon export, select on the camera and relevant nulls that are to be used and export that as a .ma file.

Maya 2010, After Effects CS5

MR AO pass respecting opacity maps

I found this thing I drew up for someone and thought I better junk it here incase I forget too.

BRDF Type for Vray

My brain fucking hurts. My world is no longer what I remember. I was reading up on material BRDF on Vray trying to get more information. And it is not what I/we remember.

Apparently, this might be the new world order. Say hello.

Blinn= Matte
Phong = Glossy
Ward = Metal

Vray Renderfarm

Change License Settings

Type the IP address of the computer that has the dongle to link to it.

Launch V-Ray license Server

Launch this on the machine that has the dongle so that other machines will link to it and call up the license.

Launch V-Ray render slave

For distributed rendering after clicking on the distributed button in the scene. All machines with this will handle a bucket square.

Backburner

Manager

Distribution machine launches this application.

Monitor

Distribution machine will also require this to keep track of renders.

Server

All rendering machines will launch this and link the IP address to the appropriate server machine.

*Important

Setup a hard-drive for all computers to have complete access. No passwords and usernames.

*Possibility of workgroup, username and password may need to be the same.

Zbrush Pipeline

Been testing my Maya 2010 -> Vray 1.5 with Zbrush 4 pipeline. Results haven't been completely stellar but we are getting there. Typing out my solution to remember.

Model a standard polygon model in Maya and maintain quads. If there is a hole in the model. Go to Tool -> Geometry -> Crease

Subdivide once if geometry has triangles to turn model into a 100% quad model. Use this subdivided version as level 1 now if this has been done.

Now -
Tool -> UV Map -> Delete UV
Tool -> UV Map -> AUVTiles

Do you painting and export the lowest level mesh as .obj
Now go to your lowest level of the model and to create the displacement map

Tool -> Displacement Map (use adaptive and smooth UV options on)

Now in photoshop
Edit -> Color Settings -> Gray -> Gray Gamma 2.2 (If done right. The gray value in the background areas of that texture will be kept at 129.)
Image -> Image Rotation -> Flip Canvas Vertical

Now Save the file with options "As a Copy" & check the "ICC Profile: Gray Gamma 2.2"

Links below included a reply from Cgbeige -> this allows you to scale the model and have the displacement maps hold up.

CgTalk

Transfer UVs - Maya is retarded

Okay seriously, a mel script just to copy UVs? I thought it would be simpler by now. There must be a solution and i'm the retarded one. Anyway till I find the solution. Select Source followed by Target and execute the mel script.

On maya 2010 but it seems to work from Maya8 onwards.

string $cSelection[] = `ls -sl`;
int $pCount[] = `polyEvaluate -f $cSelection[0]`;
int $i = 0;
while ($i < $pCount[0]) { polyClipboard -cp -uv ($cSelection[0]+".f["+$i+"]"); polyClipboard -ps -uv ($cSelection[1]+".f["+$i+"]"); $i = $i +1; } warning "DONE!!";

Okay, so I was retarded instead. The other solution is to use the Mesh -> Transfer Attributes(options) -> Use component mode under attribute settings.

Combining 2 Particle Groups

//this procedure adds particles from one particle object to another.
//first select the object to add from, then add-select the object to add to.


global proc addParticles(){

string $particleObjs[] = `ls -sl`;
float $addPositions[] = `getAttr ($particleObjs[0]+".position")`;
int $countToAdd = size($addPositions)/3;;

string $emitCmd = ("emit -object " + $particleObjs[1] + "\n");
for ($i = 0; $i < $countToAdd; $i++){ int $xComp = $i*3; int $yComp = ($i*3)+1; int $zComp = ($i*3)+2; vector $addPos = <<($addPositions[$xComp]),($addPositions[$yComp]),($addPositions[$zComp])>>;
$emitCmd += " -pos "+$addPos+"\n";
}

eval($emitCmd);
}
________________________________

So, open a text editor and paste the code in there and save the file as "addParticles.mel".
Place the file in your maya scripts directory.
On Windows the default place would be:
C:\Documents and Settings\\My Documents\maya\scripts\

Then start or restart maya. In the outliner select the particle object you want to add from, and then add-select the particle object you want to add to. Then type addParticles in your MEL command line and hit enter. Done.

The particles from the first object are added at the same positions they had in their own object. And the original object is not deleted, but you can do that or hide it to verify that the first object now includes all particles.

Cgtalk

Vray is my jungle.

O.M.G.

For 720p version

So further development into the relationship. Been stress testing vray to see if it can handle previous jobs done with MentalRay. Sure seems like Vray plays way friendlier.

The first image was a close up of the tree proxies. There is about 14 trees at 50k polygons each. One tree. Vray was steady as hell.

Second image, if I am not wrong, took 10:32 hours to render but the resolution is 1080HD which is pretty much 2k for the second image, I tried to calculate the number of polygons but my calculator started giving me *to the power of* digits. But its around the range of 6k trees at 50k polygons each.

Lastly, the video clips. Started testing to see if I can have a flicker free solution. Good folks at Cgtalk pointed me in the right direction on this one. Rendering Walk-through animations & more info on the Image Samplers. The final equation was Irradiance Map for primary bounce and Light Cache for secondary bounce. I am very happy right now.

The last clip just had my jaw drop. Bucket rendering over 3 render slaves at a speed of 11min a frame. Sadly, as short as that sounded, 50 frames meant approximately 6 hours.

Vray is Love.

I am literally in love with Vray. I have invested countless months reading and expanding my knowledge on MentalRay. Yes MentalRay is powerful and yes it can do wonders but damned. Vray just works. It works like a freaking box of color pencils. It is obvious and it is fun. It has put a smile back on my face.

I will still use MentalRay when I have too while I slowly let the knowledge i've invested in it for linear workflow, deex render passes etc etc die.

The framebuffers / renderpasses from Vray are a freaking godsend. I am currently using the evaluation copy of Vray. But I am pretty damned sure I am going to make this purchase.

Last thing to look into is what to use for my render management. It will be a little trickier as I need to keep cost low. But still!

Vray is love.

To Convert All Mia_x materials to DeeX_Mia_materials

string $malistes2[] = `ls -type "mia_material" -type "mia_material_x" -type "mia_material_x_passes" `;
  string $montruc;
  for ($montruc in $malistes2 )
  {
  AEdoMiShaderConversion $montruc deeX_mia_material _deex;
  }