Quick Render tests

Did some really quick render test today with Mental Ray and Maya's ramp shader, definitely an improvement in terms of hardness of the edges over V-Ray. Soft edges can also be created too.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Debugging Maya using Visual Studio Code

Image
I've been testing debugging Maya Python scripts lately. Mostly focusing on free IDEs or editors such as PyCharm. So far this is one requires less setup in my opinion. This is mostly based off the remote python debugging functionality described here : Download and install  Microsoft's free Visual Studio Code Install the official Python Extension  Download ptvsd package as a zip Extract the ptvsd folder into your Maya scripts folder Open Maya and run (updated! Thanks  Luciana !) import ptvsd ptvsd.enable_attach( address =( '0.0.0.0' , 3000 ), redirect_output = True ) Back in VSC, switch to Attach (remote debug) in the debug configurations and start it The editor should now look something like this You are now ready to debug.  Note: here is the settings I use in launch.json Add break points, run your code and it should stop and populate the debug section of Visual Studio code when it hits a break point...
Read more

Lightmapping in Maya

Image
Time for lightmapping the pesky meshes. The guides I'm going for are: 128 maps for the bigger environmental pieces 64 maps for the bigger props, maybe 128 in some 32 maps for the tiny props New set of UV for light map, copying from original texture UV then cutting them up more 2 to 3 pixel padding or spacing between each UV island, I'll go into more detail on how I do this automatically later If neighbouring faces is angled around 60 degrees or more, the UV edge between the faces will be split All islands fit in the UV space from 0 to 1 in U and V axis Video series I used by WorldofLevelDesign for light mapping principles, simple and short. He uses Maya too but I have my own twists on things  My personal, more intuitive setup for the UV grid for 64px lightmap resolution (right click on the UV grid icon) Mainly use edge selection in the UV to cut rather than rumbling about with the mesh trying to cut edges After all the islands are cut...
Read more

Vray Non-Photorealistic shading Splur

Image
Been rendering the Maya ramp shader using Vray for the lighting and rendering test for major project animation. May be considering using other renderers as so far I feel Vray is not really designed for non-photorealistic rendering.e.g. the edge cut off is still softer than I wanted it to be. I tried to imitate this render setup but in Maya but have been unsuccessful so far, the VRay materials does not seem to map the colours correctly on the lightMtl or the geometry shadow color and fall off does not get affected at all by the ramp shader. One of the first tests piping outColor of ramp to VRay materials I may investigate further into geometry shadow falloff in VRay shaders later on but we'll see how others go.
Read more