I changed renderer and it doesn't work

[Anonymous]

hi

(3ds max 2014)

I textured my cube and rendered it using scanline - all is ok

I changed renderer to mental ray and it doesn't work. What's wrong?

[bob.bernstein]

looks like it did work, but the mr image is overexposed.  reduce exposure as a test.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply

I tried change exposure but it doesn't influence on the problem

Notice that there are some artifacts on the cube that can't be given by exposure.

May be some incompatibility of mental ray to opacity slot in standard material?

[bob.bernstein]

I always thought that MR was compatible with standard materials, but perhaps there is something amiss with that combo.  If I were you, I'd swap  out my standard materials with MR Arch & Design material, keep the maps the same.  Test, and if the oddities are fixed, perhaps we learned the limits of standard materials in MR.  

Cool cube, btw

[Anonymous]

Yes, you are right - at first i use arch & design material but i couldn't force cutout slot to work. Opacity slot and cutout slot are not the same. Opacuty slot allow us see "underlain" material. I couldn't reach situation where i could see "underlain" material using cutout slot in arch & design material.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and welcome to the community,

Is this issue resolved now?  Did the helpful posts by @bob.bernstein help here?  If so, please mark any posts that helped solve this as a solution and thank you so much for doing that!  If you still have any problems or questions, I'd love to help.  Very nice looking model and texture by the way.  

Is there anything I can do?  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

no, we couldn't solve these problems.

In mental ray, when i use omni sourse light everything is ok. But, for example,when  i add skylight sourse, i get the second image that mentioned above the topic. As i experimented, white part of the cube are trasparent parts.

How to tune skylight sourse or lightning system at all to correct it?

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Would it be possible to replace the object with a sphere and put the shader on it and post the file here?  Or, I could create a private folder for you.  There's too many things that could be happening to guess here.  Did you solve the exposure problem?  Have you tried turning down the reflectivity?  Thanks for the info.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Thanks for attention to this problem

Yes, i want to get private folder

Yes, I experimented with exposure.  It doesn't influence on rhe cube in aspect of its transparency.

I set torus knot insite the cube. Pressed render. And saw the knot inside the cube.

Waiting fo folder...

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I have set up a private folder for you if you'd like to upload your files there. You should get an email about it shortly, and if you don't see it please check your SPAM folder. These files are private and will not be shared with anyone but yourself and the support staff. Please let me know if you have any questions. Please use at least an 8 character password or the Box account may not work properly.  Thank you!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

i upload 3ds max file without textures after registration.

I fogot about textures and resolve to upload 3ds max with textures but i couldn't  login in collabarative Box again.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Ok, no problem.  I can only send 1 invite per user in the Box, so I have deleted the folder and created a new one for you.  Please make sure to use at least an 8 character password or you will run into troubles like this.  Please upload to the new folder and thank you!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Report

When i remove my cube and assign material to sphere - then everything become OK.

But when i return my cube, the problems were back.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis · Accepted solution]

Hello @Anonymous,

I have an updated file that I put into the Box for your reference.  There are a couple things going on in here and I wanted to go over it with you.  

1) The composite material is misbehaving in this setup, and the white areas are showing up because of this.  You are using the AO as a mask but the standard materials don't transmit light properly with most high end renderers.  When you use an A&D material, it gets worse partially because the composite material isn't fully compatible with Mental Ray.  Since your purpose for it was to get AO, I have two more recommended suggestions to achieve this below. 

If you take the base material out and then render with it, you'll see an immediate difference.  To blend your AO, instead either use the procedural method built into the Arch and Design material in the Special Effects rollout, or use a composite map (not material) to multiply over your diffuse in the diffuse channel.  

2) You should override your normal map gammas to 1 if you are using gamma/LUT correction in 3ds Max.  (Recycled image below.)  

3) Your reflectivity is at full white, which seems too much for this.  Turn down the reflection color a ways to get more realistic shine on this. 

4) I would recommend using exposure control in the Environment tab.  I enabled this in the test file for you to check out.  @bob.bernstein was correct there is also a bit of an exposure issue here.  

That should do it!  I've done those things in the Box file already as I was looking for the cause of this problem, so I put the file in the Box for you since I already had it.  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Thank you for so detailed reply

Now i begin thoroughly translate it and learn. There will be some question later...

I noticed interesting solution: - if you don't change anything in my scene

(2 spheres side by side and torus knot behind them) and switch on Caustics

in Global Illumination then composite material will work correctly.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that with the caustics.  Thank you for sharing that information, I really appreciate it.  If you have any questions about translating the information or you need me to rephrase any of it, please let me know and I'll do whatever I can to help you.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

hi

i download the file "cube_mental_ray_material_AJ.max"

Tried to load it in 3ds max  - my 3ds max 2014 and get such a message: - 

"file was save by a newer version of 3ds max and cannot be loaded"

file save version number: 19000

3ds max version number: 16000

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

My mistake @Anonymous.  I have re-uploaded.  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

hi

Report

1.   I can't use composite map because my Ambient Occlusion is dirt with its material characteristics (BRDF of specular, glosiness, anisotropy)

      My cube is made of stone (marble). Marble material characteristics don't coincide with dirt material characteristics.

2.   Yes, I can use Blend material to blend marble and dirt but sometimes I must "combine" 3 or 4 materials . For example: Convexity, Concavity, Ambient Occlusion and marble. In this case i can't use just Blend material.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis · Accepted solution]

Hello @Anonymous,

The current AO is simply an opacity map on a black standard material with no BRDF, and the original post was using Scanline which doesn't have BRDF.  I'm working with what you gave me and I think the goalposts are moving here.  I can try to address your new concerns anyways though.  

The Arch & Design materials were never meant to be layered, and the composite material is old, not built for MR, and not fully compatible in the way you are attempting to use it.  It still exists to support old scenes but I wouldn't use it with physically based materials, as I've noted.  So you have some options.

1) Blend materials within Blend materials.  This is what people generally do here.  

2) Use composite maps for Spec, Diffuse, Gloss, etc. but having differing IOR's would be difficult.

3) Use a PBR texturing approach on a single A&D material, but having differing IOR's would be difficult.

4) Experiment with the caustics box workaround you discovered, but again... it's not going to be correct with the composite material and especially not with 4 stacked A&D materials and will take a very long time.

5) You might be able to look into the Mila or MDL shaders for 2014 but they need to be downloaded and installed, and that process is not one I am familiar with as they are provided by NVIDIA and weren't integrated in 2014.  NVIDIA would have more information about that most likely. The only link I could find was for 2016.  I really can't help too much with this if you go this route.  

Best Regards,