Maya v. Mental Ray Shaders

[hd_leach]

It may be elementary to some, but I'm a newbie. I understand that there's about 30 ways to skin a cat, but I'm looking for the best way. So, here goes... when developing shaders for architectural rendering in Maya with the intent of rendering in Mental Ray, is it more common practice to use Maya shaders (souped up with attached with Mental Ray nodes, of course) or Mental Ray shaders (buried in the Maya hypershade)?

 

I know the use of Mental Ray shaders allows for rendering utilizing a Mental Ray stand alone, but I'm just not sure how common that is in this particular application. It seems to me that the pain of dealing with placement matrices, etc. may be sadistic if using the Mental Ray shaders doesn't provide any advantage other than rendering in a stand-alone rendering farm.

 

Any input would be appreciated.

 

Thanks!

[richmondlu]

The best thing is to use the mia_material mental ray shader. It is made for arch work and is really easy to use. It comes standard in 8-8.5 but you can also download it if you have 7.0 from mymentalray.com. Other then that i would use nothing but mental ray shaders they seem to look alot better and i think you get a truer repisentation of the color your trying to portray. If you have any other question just let me know. or check out mymentalray.com for maya mental ray help.

[hd_leach]

Okay... since, I have 7.0, I went to mymentalray.com to download the plug-in. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find it. Should I look somewhere other than the "Shaders" tab?

 

Thanks!

[richmondlu]

http://mymentalray.com/forum/showthread.php?p=270#post270

 

 

try that one

[smiles]

hey i'd like to know if its ok to use maya shaders and render using mentalray? or should i use MR shaders to render it in MR?

[shaneis]

hey i'd like to know if its ok to use maya shaders and render using mentalray? or should i use MR shaders to render it in MR?

 

Yes, you can use any of the materials available in Maya when rendering with MR. It doesn't work the other way though. If you are looking to achieve physically correct results though, you should use the shaders for mental ray (mia_material, mia_materialX or mi_production and so-on).

[smiles]

thanks