Rendering Mental Ray: Mental Ray Nodes

From TOI-Pedia

Mental Ray for Maya comes with a selection of Nodes that expand the possibilities beyond the default materials Maya has. All of these node are specially designed for the use in Mental Ray (and therefor will not work in any other Render Engine). Besides the "usual" materials, Mental Ray also knows nodes which can define properties for the camera, shadows, volumetric effects (like fog), environment, lights, overall output and more. When more advanced, the user can even write his own nodes. In this section you can find a selection of these nodes.

Where to find these Nodes

RMB to select MR Nodes

Like all other Nodes, the Mental Ray nodes can be found in the Hypershade; by right-clicking on the "Maya Nodes" label you can switch to Mental Ray Nodes.

If the Mental Ray option is not shown in the pull-down menu of the Render Settings, go to: Window » Settings/Preferences » Plug-in Manager and make sure the check-boxes for Mayatomr.mll (Mayatomr.bundle on Mac) are checked.


Materials

mia_material

This material is available from version 8.5 of Maya and originates from Autodesk 3D Studio Max, where it is called Architecture and Design Material. The "Architecture and Design" already indicated that this material is designed for mimicking real-world materials. In Maya it is part of Mental ray's Architectural library.

The mental ray mia_material is a monolithic material shader that is designed to support most materials used by architectural and product design renderings. It supports most hard-surface materials such as metal, wood and glass. It is especially tuned for fast glossy reflections and refractions (replacing the DGS material) and high-quality glass (replacing the dielectric material).

Learn more about the mia_material: Rendering Mental Ray: mia_material

Lenses

mia_exposure_simple

Exposure.jpg

Mental Ray produces image data with a high dynamic range (HDR), especially when used with physical lighting. This means the range from dark to light is much larger than a classic rendered image (also referred to as LDR: Low dynamic range). The LDR is tailored to the maximum contrast a conventional computer screen can display, which is much lower than the human eye can handle. The mia_exposure_simple controls how this conversion is done.

Learn more about the Exposure Control : Rendering_Mental_Ray:_Tone_mapping


Lights

mib_cie_d

Allows to specify color values for lights using the color temperature in Kelvin from the CIE.

The mib_cie_d Color temperature is measured in degrees Kelvin. A low value results in a 'warm' color and a high value will result in a 'cool' color.

Color Temperature

Notice: The lowest possible working value in MentalRay is 4000K. Below this value you'll get a cold color instead of a warm color.


Asssigning the mib_cie_d node to the color attribute of a light:

Open the attributes of the light. Click on the checker box next to the color.

Create mib cie node 01.jpg

Locate the mib_cie_d node in the mental ray tab.

Create mib cie node 02.jpg

When this node is added, the color temperature can be entered and the intensity changed. Be sure that the intensity of the light itself is, and stays at 1.0!

Mia Light Surface

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MentalRay Photographic Node

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