Loading Mental Ray shaders off of network

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I am trying to create a central repository for our Mental Ray shaders so that we do not need to load them on ever machine, but instead we can have them load from the network.

 

My intitial attempts on how to do this seem to have failed. Initially I thought it wouldbe as simple as opening the 'rayrc' file inside of the Mental Ray subdirectory of 3dsmax. The original file looked as quoted below, my changes are in the quote below that. I was hoping it was as simple as typing out the path where I wanted it search for the shaders.

 

Anyone have any input or experience with this?

 

# RayRC

# Startup file for mental ray in 3ds max

 

 

# Include the standard 3ds max shaders

 

registry "{_MI_REG_INCLUDE}" value ".\shaders_standard\include" end registry

registry "{_MI_REG_LIBRARY}" value ".\shaders_standard\shaders" end registry

$include ".\shaders_standard\standard.mi"

$lookup "{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_LOAD_STANDARD_SHADERS}"

 

 

# Include the 3rd party shaders

 

registry "{_MI_REG_INCLUDE}" value ".\shaders_3rdparty\include" end registry

registry "{_MI_REG_LIBRARY}" value ".\shaders_3rdparty\shaders" end registry

$include ".\shaders_3rdparty\3rdparty.mi"

$lookup "{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_LOAD_3RDPARTY_SHADERS}"

 

 

# Define the auto-loading lookup directory.

# 3ds max will automatically try to load all .dll files found in the "shaders" subfolder

# and will parse all .mi and .mi2 files in the "include" subfolder.

# Auto-loading may be disabled by commenting out this line.

 

registry "{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_AUTOLOOKUP_ROOT}" value ".\shaders_autoload" end registry

 

# RayRC

# Startup file for mental ray in 3ds max

 

 

# Include the standard 3ds max shaders

 

registry "{_MI_REG_INCLUDE}" value "\\GROUP\FILES\SF Render Farm\Visualization Lab\scripts & utilities\Mental Ray\shaders_standard\include" end registry

registry "{_MI_REG_LIBRARY}" value "\\GROUP\FILES\SF Render Farm\Visualization Lab\scripts & utilities\Mental Ray\shaders_standard\shaders" end registry

$include "\\GROUP\FILES\SF Render Farm\Visualization Lab\scripts & utilities\Mental Ray\shaders_standard\standard.mi"

$lookup "{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_LOAD_STANDARD_SHADERS}"

 

 

# Include the 3rd party shaders

 

registry "{_MI_REG_INCLUDE}" value "\\GROUP\FILES\SF Render Farm\Visualization Lab\scripts & utilities\Mental Ray\shaders_3rdparty\include" end registry

registry "{_MI_REG_LIBRARY}" value "\\GROUP\FILES\SF Render Farm\Visualization Lab\scripts & utilities\Mental Ray\shaders_3rdparty\shaders" end registry

$include "\\GROUP\FILES\SF Render Farm\Visualization Lab\scripts & utilities\Mental Ray\shaders_3rdparty\3rdparty.mi"

$lookup "{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_LOAD_3RDPARTY_SHADERS}"

 

 

# Define the auto-loading lookup directory.

# 3ds max will automatically try to load all .dll files found in the "shaders" subfolder

# and will parse all .mi and .mi2 files in the "include" subfolder.

# Auto-loading may be disabled by commenting out this line.

 

registry "{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_AUTOLOOKUP_ROOT}" value "\\GROUP\FILES\SF Render Farm\Visualization Lab\scripts & utilities\Mental Ray\shaders_3rdparty\shaders_autoload" end registry

Edited October 24, 2008 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Solved the problem.

 

I needed to modify the '3rd party.mi' file in the 3rd party shaders directory to include the names of the mi and dll files I wanted to load.

 

I didn't have to do this to use them locally, because I had them in the auto load directory. As far as I can tell you can only auto load shaders from you local drive, and not the server.