Anim Bizz

USING THE MEGATK SHADER TO OUTPUT MULTIPLE PASSES IN 1 RENDER This is a fantastic universal shader that allows you to shade multiple attributes then output passes through a buffer writer. You have to assign the shader to all objects needed for passes, then assign a light shader to your lights and finally write out a buffer on a dummy object. The full documentation and tutorials are here... http://www.puppet.cgtalk.ru/shaders_p/docs/ p.s. Why didn't they implement output passes for the new mia shader!!! There is a mia_wrapper out there but you still have to hook it all through the ctrl.buffer shader. Fix render layers Autodesk!!!

JOINT SELECTOR Here is a way to select joints via a control object when rigging a character: create a control object and parent it to the joint, freeze its transformations (the object not the joint) now select the objects shape node (not its transform node, below that) AND THEN the joint, and run the following mel... parent -r -s; now that joint has a shape node, selecting the shape will select the joint.

MENTAL RAY MEMORY SETTINGS You must set the memory limit manually by turning off the Render Settings -> Batch Render -> Options -> Memory -> Auto Memory Limit. Then you can specify the memory limit manually. If you are rendering under Windows XP 64bit there is another issue with automatic memory which maxes out at the limit of the 32 bit version of the OS. - or - Either on the render Options or (when you use the commandline renderer with Render -r mr) by doing this: add this line to the mrRenderer.xml file in the Maya8.5/bin/rendererDesc/ directory (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya8.5\bin\rendererDesc on Windows) Now you can specify the limit in the commandline: for example "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya8.5\bin\Render.exe" -r mr -v 5 -jl 4000 "C:\Shared\maya\projects\myProject\scenes\myScene.m b" *TIP : Under MR globals/translation/performance you can check EXPORT OBJECTS ON DEMAND which apparently only loads objects if they are hit by a light ray. *TIP ...

USING RAY TYPE SHADER TO EXCLUDE OBJECTS FROM RAY CALCULATIONS This shader can be assigned to surfaces to control reflection, refraction, light, shadow, environment, final gather, photon, custom. For example, to cast FG to a surface but have reflections from another surface... *On your IBL, turn off visible in reflections -assign a surface shader to your reflection poly sphere -set the transparency of the surface shader to 1 -assign to the "ray type" node to the color of the surface shader (you will find it under mental ray/ miscellaneous) -check "enable reflection" and "enable refraction" -set eye to black -assign a maya native envirnemnent map (or a reflection map) to the reflection and refraction slot. -don't forget to turn off the secondary reflection of the IBL and thank the mental ray guys for offering super mega amazing complexe hypertechnical plugthisandtwistthat long workarounds just to achieve a simple effect.

NOTES ABOUT MR GAMMA http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4141325&postcount=37

GREEBLE SCRIPT Greebling is a technique to procedurally generate boxy relief. For example, adding all kinds of panels to a spaceship or building the base for a city. One of these scripts for Maya is called Degreebler... http://deesine.grafikfel.org/DeeGreebler/index.html