Maya final gather blocked by skybox?

malcolm

Is there any way to tell a model to let final gather pass through it? I'd like to use final gather background colour or image based lighting to create the indirect part of my light rig. The problem is when I put a skybox in with a texture on it, it now blocks the final gather being shot out from the background colour/image based lighting. As a workaround I've been compositing my skybox in later using render layers but then the sky texture doesn't make it into my reflections. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

r_fletch_r

Have you turned off the skyboxs primary visibility and turned its final gather recieve and cast settings to false? (within the render/mentalray tabs in the meshs shape node.)

If this doesnt work you could use a mip rayswitcher to provide seperate background and reflection maps to your camera. For some reason the production shaders are hidden in maya so you will need to enlist google to help. i think theres a global you can set to reveal them. I'd check it out closer but i dont have maya installed at home.

malcolm

r_fletch_r yeah tried disabling all that stuff it still blocks final gather, I've found a weird workaround though which seems to be the easiest solution.

1. Apply skybox texture to image based lighting, turn off visible in final gather

2. Create a poly sphere and apply a surface shader to it so it illuminates the scene with final gather. Turn off cast/receive shadows, primary visibility, visible in reflections/refractions.

r_fletch_r

Glad to hear you got it working. Its so damn easy to do in max, i can never get how maya complicated rendering so much.

On a less whiny note I'd take a look at the ray switcher it really is a neat a clean solution, plus the production shaders are damn awesome.