(lack of) 3rd Party Mental Ray shaders

[JoelCallahan]

Greetings...

 

Max 9 with Mental Ray 3.5 (first encarnation of A&D Shaders)

 

Is it just me, or is there a shortage of 3rd Party shaders for Mental Ray in 3DS Max?

 

I know v-ray has been out a lot longer than Mental Ray 3.5 and 3.6 and seems to be the de facto standard for render engines, but I feel the new Mental Ray can definately give it a run for it's money.

 

However, I was looking for some fabric material for some couches and chairs and there wasn't something plainly labeled as Fabric.

 

Am I missing something obvious?

 

I intend to get Bri's new Shader Project series and hopefully these tutorials will address this issue for me, but I was just wondering if anyone else felt the drought in the Mental Ray shader market.

 

Thanking you...

 

-Joel

[Justin Hunt]

Sadly you are very mistaken there are a heap of mr shaders, take a look at http://www.mymentalray.com under the shaders section and in the forum.

 

The glory od mentals shaders is that they are not platform dependant, ie a a shader for xsi can be used in max, maya etc.

 

There are also a few "hidden" shaders that ship with max such as the new production shaders. For many years the lume shaders were also hidden.

 

JHV

[JoelCallahan]

Yes - I suppose I'm mis-using the term 'shaders'.

 

Thank you for the link - I'll check them out when I get off work.

 

Brian - I've sent you and joel email about the fabric shader.

 

Thanks guys...

[Justin Hunt]

I get what you mean now, there is a databank being developed, but seems to have stalled. Which is a pitty.

 

Having said that the A&D shader is very powerful and quite easy to tweek to get almost any material look you need.

 

I am quite interested in the new node editor plugin "NodeJoe" which will make even more complex shaders relitivly easy to constuct.

 

The one fabric material that I always struggle with is Velvet.

 

JHV

[ajvbochove]

Evermotion has got some Pre-made Architectural shaders for MR 3.5

[Justin Hunt]

check this out, I havnt downloaded it yet but look promising

 

http://mymentalray.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1107

 

JHV

[SandmanNinja]

Thanks for the link, Justin.

[CarlAhearne]

I just stumbled across this old thread, and it does look like there is some stuff out there in the way of materials, but no where near as much as say VRay. Not quite sure why Mental Ray doesn't have such a following; it's a pretty good renderer, and many people don't have time/money to play wth VRay.

 

Anyway, looks like in Max 2009, there will be many more presets, especially for the arch viz industry... I guess we'll find out at the end of the month...

[Exellite]

I'm assuming it was more to do with the ease of use & speed in render times when using vray comapred to pre-3.5 versions of mental ray. Mental Ray will just keep going from strength to strength now as I think the layout and implementation within Max can no longer be ignored.

 

Mind you, I could be talking bo**ocks...

[TheAllusionisst]

Shameless plug on my part: http://www.mrmaterials.com/