Override Glossy Samples

[ivanjay]

Is there a way to manually override all glossy samples to 1 or via maxscript change?

 

With unified aampling a lot of our stuff comes in at 16/32 samples and manually changing is a nightmare!

[Francisco Penaloza]

If you are using VRay, you can use VMC script.

From what I can guess you are using Mental Ray, if so, there was similar script but they turn obsolete when Autodesk Materials came in, I have not use them but you can still try

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/multyconvertor

 

parameterManager

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

 

If you are using unified sampling, why you want to change to minimum of 1 any ways?

if your unified is default nothing change, if you increase this value everything get X multiplied so from 1 to 2 will make big improvements.

Also some materials need less samples to clean if everything has the same sampling it will just increase your render time.

[ivanjay]

Not vray, mental ray. I have always been told when using unified set all multipliers to 1 control sampling via quality on the sampling setting and let it calculate where it needs it.

 

As I change it to 1 my render time decreases significantly

[Francisco Penaloza]

As I change it to 1 my render time decreases significantly

 

of course, you have only 1 sample to calculate.

[ivanjay]

Not true... The entire idea of unified is it will continue sampling until max when required.... If you have a multiplier in the material options it will multiply above and beyond what unified seems needed. Or if you have, for example, 16 as a wall paint when it is a matte finish and not needed it will sample 16 times

[Francisco Penaloza]

are we talking about Global Turning Parameters? or Sampling values? your question was about glossy samples.

Any ways what you said is right, but Max always calculate until "he think is right" and that can be controlled with the Noise Threshold, Talking about Unified Sampling Mode, you have a "Quality" control that is is the noise threshold and min-Max samples.

If you have a material that has 16 samples in glossy, you will cap the calculations to 16 if need it, not the 128 that is default in the Unified sampler in the render panel.

But this 128 still depend of the Quality value.

So yes if you decrease your material samples to 1 and use Unified sampling your glossy reflection are processed by the Quality values on the unified method first then decide how many samples it will use.

[ivanjay]

Glossy sampling at the material level set to 1 is what I want. My understanding is that is the best to let unified do its thing. When I reduce I get the identical quality results and a much faster rendering. My understanding is if it is set at 8 at the material level it will sample 8 times. Therefore wasting time on a diffuse material

[Francisco Penaloza]

Pretty sure Mental Ray is smart enough to know if there is not glossy values it won't waste time rendering

The problem is when you use Autodesk materials all of them have glossy values. Even flat paints

As mentioned early I have not used any material setup script for a while in Mental Ray but you can search in scriptspot.com

Hopefully someone else will pop with some other options.

[ivanjay]

Cant argue with results. Lower setting equals better rendering time. Run a test. Big difference in a complicated scene. Ill check that site. Thanks

[blank...]

This is what you're looking for

http://www.infinity-vision.de/page/su_free_version

[ivanjay]

I did find that and when I installed it, it broke max. On two machines. Got all types of mental ray shader errors and had to reinstall

[blank...]

I did find that and when I installed it, it broke max. On two machines. Got all types of mental ray shader errors and had to reinstall

 

Strange, worked great for me. You should contact Thorsten and report a bug.