[Maya] External World rigs and rendering Vertex Coloring

snickerwicket

hey all I'm working on a new reel and I found these rigs by David O'Reilly that are pretty cool. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time rendering them in Maya due to the fact they were colored with Vertex Coloring. I found this on the autodesk knowledge network and got as far as connecting the output of my color set to mental ray vertex color node. The part about connecting the out color to the input nodes of a shader is where it loses me.

Do I need to make a new material to receive the output of this node? If I use another character from the rig pack, it'll have its own color set and I assume I'll have to do the same thing to it, right?

Anyways, I'd appreciate any input on this subject while I read up on shading networks. Thanks all.

throttlekitty

Yep, it just plugs into the Color slot of any material, it's fairly straightforward in the hypershade or node editor, post back if you need more help with it. And yes each unique model with vertex colors will need their own material.

snickerwicket

hmm I think this is hooked up properly however when I render the vertex colors still aren't showing up. Am I forgetting to change a render setting?

snickerwicket

voila, I got it. Had to bring the material into the hypershade, connect the color, then change my renderer from maya to mental ray (duh). Thanks for the help! Do I have to do this for every article of clothing?

snickerwicket

post just to update: you can use the same material so long as you connect the color set to the cpvsets.
EDIT: spoke too soon.

DavidQ

Hi I'm having the same issue with these rigs. The problem I face is that mentalray is no longer in Maya, is there a way to still fix this without mentalray?

poopipe

Arnold will almost certainly support it

m4dcow

This video talks about getting vertex color working with Arnold.