New Mental Ray shaders development

[Daniel Brassard]

Update to the Mila shader library on ARC.

Fixed/changed in this version (updated May 5)
-many elemental component inputs changed so that rendering related optimizations have been mostly moved from shader to string options. More MDL like.
- quality now instead of samples for scatter and diffuse
- the diffuse quality represents indirect detail samples (similar to ao samples using color bleed). The string options are "mila diffuse detail" on/off defaulted off and "mila diffuse detail distance" default 10.0
- one overall quality "mila quality" in addition to "mila diffuse quality" "mila glossy quality" and "mila scatter quality" all defaulting to 1.0
-direct and indirect scale factors added to elemental component inputs, not working yet for glossy/specular transmission
-roughness added to diffuse transmission to match reflection, but not working yet
-alpha propagated for mila_transparency
-added "mila clamp output" on/off for clamping outputs of mila_material to a luminance under 1.0
-changed most extra printed information to debug (-v 6)

Will need a proper (native) string options implementation in Softimage if this trend continue....

More about the May update and string options thinking on elemental ray:

http://elementalray.wordpress.com/2013/ ... tures-may/

[Nox]

Will need a proper (native) string options implementation in Softimage if this trend continue....

Is it only me, or MR devs really exist in their own universe?

[Daniel Brassard]

Is it only me, or MR devs really exist in their own universe?

Unfortunately, the "string options" issue is not a MR/NVidia issue but an AD issue. Only AD devs can provide the necessary integration into there software, that include Softimage. Their is a tendancy to blame MR but in most cases the blame is directed at the wrong culprit. There are many improvement to MR (since 3.8) that have been lacking for years now on Softimage, that is squarely on AD shoulders.

MR is no different than Arnold, 3DLight, VRay, or others in this case. TDs have been asking for years for AD to open up the SDK so that tools could be developed to breach these gaps or properly integrate their renderers.

That said, the MILA layering system is a good way forward. NVidia is currently working with AD on the MR integration. Let's pressure AD to put the proper priority in Soft so that we will not miss the boat this time.

Cheers!

[Kzin]

Will need a proper (native) string options implementation in Softimage if this trend continue....

Is it only me, or MR devs really exist in their own universe?

its the bad integration from ad's side.
normally you would have these settings in render option but because ad dont care, they need to expose it differently. keep in mind that si has the worst integration from the 3 tools, maya actually the best with the ui from mi. and because the si usern also dont care and dont giving feedback/feature requests, the situation will worse in si until you cannot rely on mr in general.
i think we are not far from that point.

[Kzin]

did some test with one testscene.
good news is that the arealights visibility of lights in si works now, so you can decide if the light reacts to direct and indirect reflections.
this feature and the new clamp option could reduce rendertime from 2h20min to 42min with same quality. unified settings were lowered because of better sampling (or lets say it samples less) now with clamp on.

problem is you need the buggy geo shader to enable clamp, but you also could go over it and use the direct reflection slider in the glossi reflection node to control direct light reflection contribution.

[Falam]

Anyone else who doesn't have Mila_Material_std for framebuffers installed ? I don't, wonder if I'm the only one ?

[Kzin]

Anyone else who doesn't have Mila_Material_std for framebuffers installed ? I don't, wonder if I'm the only one ?

what you mean with standard mila mat?
if you want framebuffers out of mila you have to add the mila framebuffers to the framebuffer list:

to get the framebuffers out of mila in si:
open scene render option, go to available channels.
then add new channels named like david wrotes in his elemental blog:

direct_diffuse
indirect_diffuse
direct_glossy
indirect_glossy
direct_specular
indirect_specular
diffuse_transmission
glossy_transmission
specular_transmission
front_scatter
back_scatter
emission

all as color type. then add them in pass option in the render channels output and si will ouput them.

[Falam]

Anyone else who doesn't have Mila_Material_std for framebuffers installed ? I don't, wonder if I'm the only one ?

what you mean with standard mila mat?
if you want framebuffers out of mila you have to add the mila framebuffers to the framebuffer list:

to get the framebuffers out of mila in si:
open scene render option, go to available channels.
then add new channels named like david wrotes in his elemental blog:

direct_diffuse
indirect_diffuse
direct_glossy
indirect_glossy
direct_specular
indirect_specular
diffuse_transmission
glossy_transmission
specular_transmission
front_scatter
back_scatter
emission

all as color type. then add them in pass option in the render channels output and si will ouput them.

In the Mila documentation is mentions to use the Mila_Material_std. You have to toggle on what framebuffers you want to have, otherwise Softimage doesn't know, and I don't have that node installed ? My practice scene has is the mila layers then (tranmissions, etc) plugged in, there is no option for framebuffers in the mila layers node.

[Kzin]

Anyone else who doesn't have Mila_Material_std for framebuffers installed ? I don't, wonder if I'm the only one ?

what you mean with standard mila mat?
if you want framebuffers out of mila you have to add the mila framebuffers to the framebuffer list:

to get the framebuffers out of mila in si:
open scene render option, go to available channels.
then add new channels named like david wrotes in his elemental blog:

direct_diffuse
indirect_diffuse
direct_glossy
indirect_glossy
direct_specular
indirect_specular
diffuse_transmission
glossy_transmission
specular_transmission
front_scatter
back_scatter
emission

all as color type. then add them in pass option in the render channels output and si will ouput them.

In the Mila documentation is mentions to use the Mila_Material_std. You have to toggle on what framebuffers you want to have, otherwise Softimage doesn't know, and I don't have that node installed ? My practice scene has is the mila layers then (tranmissions, etc) plugged in, there is no option for framebuffers in the mila layers node.

you dont need to activate them per shader. the framebuffers are global in mr, so no need to activate them locally in shaders.
but you have to add them in framebuffer list like i described in the older post. with this, the scene knows what you want to output. now you can add the framebuffers to your render outputs to get the files written out.

[Falam]

Can I see your Mila_material setup on a basic sphere, something I want to compare, showing a render tree may suffice

[Kzin]

simple example of a tree

[Falam]

simple example of a tree

Basically the same setup I have, except my sphere is not rendering <sigh>

[Daniel Brassard]

Little update from ARC

Our success working with the community on this has been very helpful, and we hope to have more news on how we plan to continue the testing and release process next week. As we get closer to release, we have to plan more synchronization with our OEMs (ie, Autodesk).

more details on ARC ......

Barton Gawboy
Training and Special Projects, NVIDIA ARC
LAmrUG Forum Originator

Now, if AD could properly integrate this to Softimage, provide us with a working string option solution and correct the geo bug, i'll be happy.

[Hirazi Blue]

Now, if AD could properly integrate this to Softimage, provide us with a working string option solution and correct the geo bug, i'll be happy.

You're way too easy to please...

[Daniel Brassard]

You're way too easy to please...

I have been told that, anyway this is only one of the thing on my long list of shaders improvement.

Back to topic... nothing to see here!

[Falam]

there was a mental ray string tool, I can't find the thread ? I was having issues getting it to work.