Anyone know how to replicate this material in Mental Ray?

VVCephei

I've been playing around with mental ray materials trying to replicate the Red ring in the image, However I can't seem to figure it out, everything I've tried has come out looking too bright and lacking the proper material properties. So I'm wondering if anyone has any idea how to make it?



Thanks in advance!

low odor

not perfect, but a step in the right direction. You could mess with the fall-off colors to get it closer

VVCephei

low odor wrote: »

not perfect, but a step in the right direction. You could mess with the fall-off colors to get it closer

Wow that's amazing! I'll give that a shot now. Thank you!

VVCephei

I've tried to copy your parameters, but the result comes off very different. it's also very very transparent on my one due to the opacity being set to 4. Are there any other parameters you added/changed?

(I'm a little bit new to the slate material editor haha)

Here's my results with your material setup (Forgive me, I did result to doing a 1:1 copy as I couldn't figure out what's different so I just left it as a copy)

Perhaps its in the raytrace settings? You can also tell the preview is quite a bit different.

MrFrags

I just did a basic test; I think it's more or less that.



It's a simple MIA material. FG enable.
Something like that:

Diffuse
>>> dark red
-weight 0.1
-roughness 0.0

Reflection
>>> white
-reflectivity 1
-glossiness 0.45

Refraction
>>> red
-IOR 1.46 (personal choice, you can choose a different plastic value instead)
-transparency 1
-glossiness 1

Advanced Refraction
-solid
-refractive caustic

BRDF
-use fresnel reflection

VVCephei

Hey Mr Frags! Thanks!

I Really like the way your one came out (could use a little bit more transparency/Fresnel light around the edges. but that's pretty damn good.

I'll try replicate that and play with the parameters. I'll keep you posted.

Did you do that in Maya btw? As I'm not sure where to put some of those parameters in 3ds max. (FG enable/IOR for example)

Ah yeah. Maya mental ray and 3ds max mental ray are pretty different in many ways.

MrFrags

Yeah I work in Maya.

You can easily do the same thing in 3DsMax since the MIA
material are the same (it called Arch and Design in 3Ds I guess).

You can find IOR (index of reflection) parameter in the BRDF tab,
and FG (final gathering) in your render settings.

Also, yeah sure, you can tweak the material !

ps: actually, if you want to achieve something nearer your reference, you had to unchecked "skip reflection on inside" in the advanced Reflection tab, and also use
a zero value for the weight in the diffuse tab + use color at the distance option in the advanced refraction tab instead of using a none white value in refraction color.

VVCephei

Awesome! thanks so much for your help btw, this has been bugging me all day even with my own tinkering. I'd very much like to mix what you and Low Odor did, but I have no idea how to get that result working on my end haha.

I'll post results thanks again bud.

MrFrags

As I had wrote in my previous message, you have to tweak the parameter;
don't forget something really important, all depends of your lighting !

As you can see here, the look of the material change just by switching light, or adjusting the intensity.

VVCephei

Very nice, One thing though, shouldn't there be more of a glowy effect on the outside in some parts? In all 4 of those I see a somewhat illuminated center, but that should be on the edges, Right?

MrFrags

If you are referring to my picture, it's really 'normal' because of two things:
-the shape of the mesh affect directly the refractions
-the refraction is driven by the IOR value

You have to tweak the IOR value to get the "perfect value" again, mine was a basic plastic, not the same at all as your picture.

You can also "boost" the refraction intensity by pushing up the intensity of the
color (v).

rube

another option is to use the mental ray dielectric_material. It's designed to render transparent objects.

VVCephei

thats awesome rube! I am still playing around with the parameters and stuff. I can't seem to find any mental ray dieltic_material in the material editor for 3ds max though

rube

it may be in the legacy shaders section (that's where it is in newer mayas.) The mia_material has absorbed it's functionality but if you just need a quick clear material it works well.