Zdepth - maya - why have you forsaken me?
polycounter lvl 10
so i've got an issue with zdepth in maya - I've created a render layer and its assigned with the preset for luminance which outputs a zdepth file. The issue is that the zdepth file thats being output is referencing my low poly geometry instead of the high poly turbosmoothed geometry. Is there something I'm missing? Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? Just when I thought I was on to something with zdepth and maya it goes and gives me 20 more questions.
pics attached
pics attached
Replies
Try using render-passes instead of render-layers. Or as a workaround just apply a smooth mesh (I assume you're using the 1,2,3 keys at the moment?)
I'll try the render passes method, and yes I was using the 1,2,3 keys to smooth the mesh. By applying a smooth mesh you mean going through the menu mesh>smooth to the object? (Just double checking) I didn't know that doing it through the menu was different then keying it.
Thanks for the answer Toast!
Use Modify -> Convert -> Smooth Mesh Preview To Polygons with your objects selected, this is the fastest way to convert the smooth preview instead of manually doing Mesh -> Smooth (it's the same thing).
It is a bit stupid, in fact Max has been doing this far better for years with its MeshSmooth and Turbosmooth which allow different viewport/renderer smoothing settings. Maya only just recently allowed this, and even then it only works using Mental Ray.
Out of interest, what Maya version are you using? 2010?
Toast: Care to elaborate on why Mental Ray in Maya is a big joke? I've been using it a fair bit recently for rendering some detailed scenes, the only issue I ran into was that it didn't seem to detect RAM allocation properly, so I had to manually set a maximum RAM limit in order to render a dense scene correctly.
But aside from that, it's been very fast and good quality, and very easy to set up. In fact, going from Maya 2008 to Maya 2011 trial just recently, they've improved the rendering menu too, so that's nice.
I don't have any trouble getting Mental Ray to produce nice renders in Maya with just a few basic tweaks to the settings (mainly Final Gather, shadows, and antialiasing), and it seems very fast too.
What exactly were you referring to - the UI?
Just things like custom Buffers. When adding in custom passes in Maya, render times have massive overhead which would double and sometimes even triple render-times for no apparent reason. It recently looks like this major bug has finally been fixed in 2011...but it was basically there for years, I think ever since ADSK added in render-passes (what was that 2008? 2009?).
http://mayastation.typepad.com/maya-station/2010/04/slow-custom-framebuffer-render-now-fixed-in-2011.html
And there's still no EXR compression options..
Linear Work-flow; In Maya 2011 this is only still half-assed addressed because their new colour management workflow only affects bitmaps, not swatches or procedural textures so we still have to use the ugly gamma correct node method for those nodes. All of this is just a simple setting in Max, probably XSI too - but I'm not too familiar with XSI.
Not to mention ADSK have disabled/hidden new standard mental ray 3.8 features in 2011, like progressive rendering and the new mental images default FG + IP method (Maya uses a backward compatible mode which is not being developed any-more by mental images) and also ADSK have ripped out the DLL files for Iray which ships with mr 3.8. Why? Who knows, some of this stuff was working fine in the 2011 beta apparently.
That's all, just having a good old-fashioned internet whinge.
I don't want to rant but I just find it frustrating that it's not up to par with other mental ray Apps. Just use the demo of V-Ray for Maya or mental ray in 3DS Max then go back to mental ray in Maya. :poly127:
VRay was always much nicer than Mental Ray in Max as well, it's just simpler and faster in most cases, it seems.
I guess I just haven't been doing enough in-depth heavy complex rendering to ever hit on any of the stuff you're talking about, for example I've never done any gamma correction, I just use all the default lighting/colour space settings, and do adjustments in postprocess.
It sounds like a lot of the stuff you're talking about would be a lot more of an issue if I was doing serious render work, and I guess that's bad, but for what I need it seems to be fine, so *shrug*.
Interesting to hear about the bugs and different implementations though. It has always seemed that Maya's Mental Ray implementation is a bit behind Max's, I wonder why that is.
The gamma correct node isn't that bad though, it only takes a few seconds to set up, granted however if it is a simple click in max I'm a bit jealous. This is actually my first in depth look at some serious high quality rendering in maya - getting in nice and deep into mental ray and understanding why things do what they do. I've always seen Vray produce some really really nice architectural stuff (which is obviously what i'm working on right now) I've been really tempted to try my hand at using 3ds soon, just can't really find the time.
I'm actually also curious as to why Autodesk can't even out the playing field when it comes to MR, I mean they've had several (and by several i mean like 7 or 8) iterations to optimize MR...