How to render- noob questions

praxedes

Okay, this is really dumb I know, but...

I have Maya 2009. I have been told that Maya can't render normal maps, so to use mental ray instead. So far so cool. But, here's the thing- I take my low poly mesh (let's say 8.5k). I put some directional lights on the model and set the render size to a 1k square. I zoom in to the model and render. Mental ray then crashes with an error message saying it couldn't find 12 gig and some odd of RAM.

I zoom out of the model having restarted Maya, and re-render. I get a blurry image of the model from what in the real world would be about 10 metres away, looking out of focus. This render takes about 2 minutes. I don't even try to render my high poly modelling, I just drop it into Zbrush.

My computer is a BOXX 8400 with intel xeon quad core and 3g of ram, plus an Nvida quadro fx 1700. Surely I should be getting better performance than this? What is the problem- I expect it's me not setting mr and Maya up right, as I used to be able to render in blender's native renderer with much more complex scenes on my old and less powerful machine.

If anyone can shed some light on this I'd really appreciate it. I am considering moving up to 64 bit XP to address more RAM but this would mean new maya as well I think...and I ain't got no cash!

~P~

EarthQuake

who says maya can't render normal maps? That is just plain incorrect.

PieJesu

Rendering shouldn't be dependent on your hardware. Better hardware results in better render speeds, but it shouldn't really affect the quality of the result.

Are you trying to bake a high poly mesh into a normal map or are you trying to render a preview of the actual model itself.

praxedes

eq- if that's not the case then great. I'll try using maya hardware render instead of mental ray. I had been told that maya render misinterpreted normal maps as bump maps in a very messy fashion even though they worked in the viewport. If this is not the case, then great!

PieJesu- I've done the normal maps in XNormal, I just wanted a nice turntable of the low model all textured up.

Since getting marmoset I've not bothered with Maya renders at all, but it would be nice to get some real good looking turntables- and I would like to get my hi poly meshes rendered too. I also thought that the only thing affected was render speed- that was my blender experience, so it's been very frustrating to just keep having mr and Maya crash or lock hideously

~P~

EarthQuake

Oh wait sorry, i thought you meant BAKE, my bad. I think that is correct about offline rendering.

If you're just trying to display, maya actually has some pretty good realtime options, so unless you need ultra fancy stuff with your render i would suggest looking into some of the 3rd party FX shaders for maya.

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=954863

Check that out for starters

praxedes

wicked thanks

so...how does one use a cgfx shader?

also, having read your statement that Maya could do normal maps, even though you were referring to baking, I did a render of my game model using Maya hardware mode and it came out pretty much spot on.

But I really would love to use that shader I didn't actually know such realtime options existed- such a noob...

~P~

woogity

not nessecarily related to the issue at hand but since you are new id like to point out that in your viewport under renderer if you switch to high quality the viewport supports normals and alpha as well<< this is essentially maya hardware render.


-Woog

praxedes

yeah spotted this. thanks! The cgfz sgader looks great- I kind of got it working today and will continue to work on getting it up and running once I build the realtime model for my current project. Thanks all for the help!

~P~