need a 3dsmax mental ray exterior rendering tutorial

[Sirk zalavarria]

fellow cg pipol, i've been searching the net for quite some time now for an exterior rendering tutorial using 3dsmax mental ray. all tutorials i've seen were interior.

to those really good with mental ray, please make a tutorial of mental ray exterior rendering. i think many of us here are anxious to find and have one coz majority of the tutorials there are for vray.

thanks and more power!!!!

[Alex Guzman]

Here they are, seme are for free some for a fee, many for XSI but ithink that MR is pretty much the same on all the 3d packages.

Good Luck


http://www.gfxartist.com/general/general_news/37652

http://www.3drender.com/ref/mr.htm

[William Alexander]

Sirkus,

Theres not alot out there for 3dmax. The other softwares use a "node" model for setting up materials shaders as a GUI. I found it very hard to follow those tutorials and how they directly relate to max.

You should start your model, give it some light and post a NEW thread in the CGA 3d max forum, with screen shots and or rendered images. I'll keep an eye open to give you a hand and there are quite a few others that can help also.

The http://www.cgtalk.com has quite a bit of info in the max forums related to MR.

WDA

[John Voltaire Garcia]

hey sirkus a.k.a. kris zalavarria,

there aren't a lot of mental ray tutorials out there because very few people use mental ray as their renderer because of it's steep learning curve. but, wda is right. open a new thread and post your screen shots, images and settings. more heads are better than one. or maybe put it in the "unchallenge" section of the forum.

[Sirk zalavarria]

sir alex, sir william and sir ira,

thank you very much for the reply. i'll try to post a sample scene as what you've said.

i tried experimenting with an exterior scene using values from an interior tutorial from evermotion. it's good. however, when i tried to apply them to my exterior scene, it seemed forever waiting for the results. i just turned off the 3dsmax instead. aniway, my cpu is p4 2.8 with 1 gig ram. (is my cpu to weak to handle exterior rendering with mental ray? coz, much of the work's i've seen were done by dual processor cpu)

sir william, as you've said, place a light. i was wondering what kind of light? is it the normal lights or the mr omni or mr area lights. also, will i use the standard materials or mental ray compatible materials. also, could you suggest values for GI and final gathering if there's any.

also, i would like to know in your opinion, do you think it's worth the time to learn mental ray?

P.S. sori for being an ignoramus... mental ray really makes me mental!!!

[Sirk zalavarria]

hey sir ira!!!

thank you so much for the support!!! your email before regarding radiosity really help me a lot!!! seen your rendered images in the gallery. very impressive... u can't tell what's real or not anymore.

[William Alexander]

also, i would like to know in your opinion, do you think it's worth the time to learn mental ray

Depends upon wether radiosity & scanline renderer meets your needs or desired goals. If you are not that familar with radiosity it is by far the easiest to understand and learn.

MR is a far better rendering engine, dare I say maximum control over the lighting. With the control comes a very complex and interconnected set of controls, even before getting into shaders and materials.

To gain any real benefit grom MR you have to tame the beast, learn how it works. Most use the default thinking that comes from the tutorials and general advice. That gets you up and running, but understanding MR comes from experimenting and use there are no quick high quality solutions.

If you want to continue-
Start with a standard sun only, work with the lights multiplier settings until your scene seems to be just lit up. Then enable the GI & generally up the energy levels ( do not be afraid of numbers in the millions). This will increase the energy of the GI lighting. Play with the samples and radius'. Post your best try in the max forum.

WDA

[Philip De keersmaecker]

my cpu is p4 2.8 with 1 gig ram. (is my cpu to weak to handle exterior rendering with mental ray? coz, much of the work's i've seen were done by dual processor cpu)
also, i would like to know in your opinion, do you think it's worth the time to learn mental ray?

when mental ray is setup like it should you will have faster rendertimes.
even scenes with a very high number of polygons will go very fast (read : 'fast enough to be productive for your clients')
when the settings are to high you will have exponentially longer rendertimes.

so you could say the 'room for error' is a lot smaller then with other renderers.
this might be the reason why people keep talking about the 'steep learning curve or mental ray'...

always try to limit the rendertime in test fase, obvious things like :
- render in smaller resolution, render in regions, ...
- when using stuff like depth of field in Mray, you will need very long rendertimes. setup the sceen without those extra's and then turn them on when all the others parts in your scene are setup fine.
- ...

exterior is a lot harder to master then interior in imexp.
cause the mray in max has only ONE photon bounce. there are some way's around this, but i feel this feature should be solved in the next release of max/MR.

so in anwser of your question : YES Mray is worth learning, but it will take you longer than other renderers probably. but onces you got the hang of it, you will love it

[John Voltaire Garcia]

when mental ray is setup like it should you will have faster rendertimes.
even scenes with a very high number of polygons will go very fast (read : 'fast enough to be productive for your clients')
when the settings are to high you will have exponentially longer rendertimes.

so you could say the 'room for error' is a lot smaller then with other renderers.
this might be the reason why people keep talking about the 'steep learning curve or mental ray'...

always try to limit the rendertime in test fase, obvious things like :
- render in smaller resolution, render in regions, ...
- when using stuff like depth of field in Mray, you will need very long rendertimes. setup the sceen without those extra's and then turn them on when all the others parts in your scene are setup fine.
- ...

exterior is a lot harder to master then interior in imexp.
cause the mray in max has only ONE photon bounce. there are some way's around this, but i feel this feature should be solved in the next release of max/MR.

so in anwser of your question : YES Mray is worth learning, but it will take you longer than other renderers probably. but onces you got the hang of it, you will love it

I agree! very well said! i love mental ray, its hard but worth it!

rendering in mental ray is fast because of the predictability of the outcome. This comes with the understanding of how mental ray really works. its like studying physics 101 all over again.

mental ray also has one of the best images sampling algorhithms. mr produces sharp and very smooth images.

btw kris,

USC - TC is now using max 6! sayang wala mo kaabot..