ID Mattes

I keep forgetting which to use for proper render mattes for Vray. There are 4,

Multimatte is the best

- Material Select

Material Select, you drag the material and plug it into the material select element. Named after the material. It only renders the material without anything else.

- Render ID

During render time, all objects get assigned an ID. So when using this...it automatically colours each other. No aliasing and the colors are random. Not the best use.

- Material ID

One has to go to the hypershade and assign the Color ID or Material ID to the shader. Ideally, only use RED, GREEN & BLUE as when using the color selector the color can mix up. To solve this, there is the multimap.

-  Multimatte

Under the shaders color ID there is a material ID. Assign each material a number.

For objects, use apple single object property to selection and then assign an ID number to that object.

BackBurner Renders Autokill about 60minutes

This is extracted from Mayastation - I am going to start using Backburner 2012 soon but this is something I keep forgetting and I can't be bothered to test so I will continue punching in this command and changing the number to 360 minutes.

BackBurner renders fail after 60 minutes - Part 1

Have you noticed your BackBurner jobs failing for no specific reason after 60 minutes?  Well, There is a simple explanation for this.  BackBurner has a default timeout function set to it.  After 60 minutes if the the frame or task is not completed BackBurner will send a kill signal to the job and restart.

If you are noticing this on your renders, there is a simple solution to get around it.  While there is no timeout option in the BackBurner submission window.  You can set a timeout flag manually by clicking the "Use Custom Command" box and then clicking the "Populate Command" button at the bottom of the Submission Window.  This will build a long command to be sent to BackBurner and begin the job.

This is where we need to add the -timeout flag.  Below is an example of the entire command with the timeout value set to 120 minutes. I generally set this after the manager flag.

system ("\"/usr/discreet/backburner/cmdjob\" -jobName \"exp_support_ash025444-110215\" -description \"\" -manager -timeout 120 -priority 50 -taskList \"/usr/tmp/exp_support_ash025444-110215.txt\" -taskName 1 \"/usr/autodesk/maya2011.5-x64/bin/Render\" -r file -s %tp2 -e %tp3 -proj \"/home/assist/maya/projects/default\" -rd \"/home/assist/maya/projects/default/images\" \"/Lnx-ubuntu/public/CustomerCases/renderash/exp_support_ash.ma\"")

 Hope this helps with any of your future renders!

BackBurner renders fail after 60 minutes - Part 2

I thought of revisiting the BackBurner timeout situation after a few customers mentioned that the need to manually enter the timeout was slightly annoying.
Since any permanent changes would need to be done by our development team. I thought It would be best to share a more permanent approach to get the timeout set.
Now setting this does involve editing the performExportToBackburner.mel file which support team does not generally recommend but editing these file.  Please make a local backup of the file before editing it.

We can simply add  an extra line of code to force the timeout to be a new permanent value. Since we are editing this at the file level you will no longer need to populate the command manually when submitting the job.

So, this is what has to be done.

1. Go to: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya 2012\scripts\others
2. locate the file called performExportToBackburner.mel and make a backup of this file.
3. Now open the original file in word pad and locate the the following line.

"// Prepare the list of tasks and send it to Backburner through a task list file"

4. A few lines below that I add a new line.  The new line is in bold below.

// Prepare the list of tasks and send it to Backburner through a task list file
int $startFrame = `intFieldGrp -q -v1 bbExportStartFrameCtl`;
int $endFrame = `intFieldGrp -q -v1 bbExportEndFrameCtl`;
int $taskSize = `intFieldGrp -q -v1 bbExportTaskSizeCtl`;
if( $taskSize < 1) $taskSize = 1;
string $taskListFileName = createTaskListFile($jobName, $startFrame, $endFrame, $taskSize);
if($taskListFileName != "")
{
$exportSysCmd = $exportSysCmd + " -timeout 360 ";
}

5. Save the file.  Launch Maya and submit job and the new task timeout will be set to 360 minutes by default for every job.

Hope this helps the folks out there struggling with the timeout in BackBurner.

Vray Water Texture

Vray Water Texture settings & what they do-

"Height multiplier" is equivalent to "Wave Height" in HOT;
"Resolution" in HOT is specified with the power of 2, but is the same in both;
"Patch size" is similar to the "Size" attribute, but you should modify the Repeat U/V of the placement node to get the same effect;
"Choppy multiplier" - controls the choppiness, should be the same as HOT's "Choppiness" (the values are different, thought);
"Rate" - controls the speed of the animation;
"Seed" - seed for the random generator. VRayWater and HOT use different generators, so you can't expect to have exactly the same results;
"Wind direction" waves perpendicular to the direction (relative to the UV space) are removed;
"Wind magnitude" - "Wind speed" in HOT;
"Wind direction multiplier" - controls the effect of the wind direction. The values are from 0.0 to 1.0 (0.0 means direction is ignored);

Surface Shader in Vray

For a surface shader in Vray. Apply texture to a Vray Mtl node and hook that material into the Vray Mtl Wrapper.

Vray Textures with alpha in one

I need to remember this.

To have a single image which contains Color as well as the alpha channel. One must create the mask and invert the mask in the channels segment in photoshop. Save that out as a tiff with layers and alpha and it will hook it up automatically without any reverse nodes.

Please remember to add the gamma input to de-gamma the color texture for linear workflow.

Facing Ratio for Ramp falloff reflection

I am surprised at how many times in my life I've forgotten something so simple. Throwing an image up so I have a place to look at this silly node layout.

Triple Switch in Maya

Triple switch for variance in color such as grapes. This tutorial is aged but it sure seems that nothing much has changed since.

http://misterdi.cgpot.com/tutorial/ShadingSwitch/shadingSwitch.html