salf

Hey out there.

I finally have some time to start practicing Mental Ray, see if I can learn it.

Im trying some interior rendering, using MR sky and MR sun, and so far Ive encounter 3 issues:

1- the camera viewport is way to dark, almost black, I can make it brighter by adjusting the AMBIENT color in the ENviroment window (8), but this affects the render. Why is it that dark? I can't work on mapping because of this. (the original file was vray, but theres no vray mat in the scene anymore, not sure if this could have something to do)

2- Im trying the A&D mats, but apparently any material with some level of reflection, tends to reflect the enviroment (solid light blue color) too much. FOr instance, without any material the enviroment looks really light blue, when I use an A&D mat with relfection, lets say a floor, the environment keeps lighty blue, but the reflectio on the floor is a darker and brighter blue? WHen I tried the material on the walls, the walls are actually blue!

3- Where do I control (reduce) the grain for the A&D polished metal mat. Its too grainy.

THanks.

SandmanNinja

1) Try L, or Shift L or Control L - if you have lights in your scene, it can make your scene appear to be dark.

2) If you are using HDRI's, then do what I do: make a copy of the HDRI, name it HDRI_Light, then drag it to the Skylight. You can now increase or decrease the amount of light the HDRI puts into your scene by varying the intensity of the skylight and/or the RGB Output of the HDRI_Light in the material slot.

3) dont know

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Justin Hunt

1) Exposure control use the mr Photographic control for best results,
2) Sounds like you have turned the max reflection down to 0. Increse this. Often if you are not seeing the backround it is better to leave it black. If you are seeing it then use the mr physical sky shader
3)the polished metal preset is too grainy, either use fast interpolate reflections, turn up the glossie reflection samples and remove any bump map.

For a full explination on the A&D shader it is best to read the PDF in the help folder. It's full of information, not just on the shader but also other considerations that need to taken when doing physically correct rendering.

Also I suggest running through the mr tutorials that ship with Max, they will get you going very quickly.

jhv

prodham

it's a noise map in the reflection slot.

in the A+D template desription box for brushed metal it says this...."Brushed metallic surface. The grain of the brush finish is created by a noise map modulating the reflection".

salf

Thanks all for the help so far.

1- issue 1 fixed, pressing CTRL-L literally "turned on the viewport lights"...hehe, no I cna actually see what Im going to render.

About exposure settings, I don't have a mr Photographic Exposure control, where do I find this?...Im using MAX 9 btw. I only have linear, logarithmic, pseudocolor and auto exposure controls.

2- Reflection problem got fixed by using the mr physical sky shader for the environment. Now I dont see blue tints on materials.

3- Grainy metal got fixed by turning on fast interpolation reflections, still have to tweak it, but it really made a change.

amer abidi

MR photographic exposure is only in the newer versions of max.

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Justin Hunt

In max9 Log gives good control

jhv