Specular shading attributes not rendering properly in materials viewer [HELP]

[JuanDAyalde]

Hi all! This is my first post in the forums : ) and I find it very appropriate to be about a little problem I’ve encountered. So, I’m pretty new to Maya and most likely there will be something obvious that I’m missing but I have searched the forums and the internet and have found nothing yet. I was following a tutorial posted on knowledge.autodesk.com named “Adding Materials and Textures” (link should be the 5th tutorial posted there) and ran up into a problem that has to do with the hypershade’s material viewer. It so happens that in the tutorialthe instructor creates a new Blinn material and shows how the specular shading attributes change the appearance of the shader ball, first by altering eccentricity and then by doing the same with specular roll off. The problem is that when I do the same, my results are not at all as shown in the tutorial! Eccentricity should alter the crispness of the highlight making it look like a more or less rough surface depending of where you place the slider and specular roll off should make the highlight more or less prominent. In my case, the shader ball seems not to change at all (see pictures). What may be the problem and what should I do?

In the Pictures you will find different scenarios, where I compare My setup(left) to the tutorials setup (right). I set everything to be the same as in the tutorial even the color and secular colors are the same. Also the common material attributes are the same (default except for color).

I am running Windows 10 64 bit. I don’t think hardware is an issue (but who knows). My GPU is an Nvidia GeForce 1080 and CPU is an intel i7 8700 @3.70 GHz.

I also attached screenshots of preferences settings for Display and Rendering to see if that helps as well.

Thanks for the help!

[Abdulla-Qaladzay]

Hi @JuanDAyalde 

In my opinion the version of your mtoA and the author's mtoA in the tutorials is different

this image shows mtoA's  support  for Maya default blinn :

[JuanDAyalde]

Hi Abdulla, thanks for your reply! I checked what version of MtoA I currently have and it is 4.0.0. I checked and it is the latest version. But the problem is actually a little different, I think... The material viewer wont show any significant differences when the attributes (eccentricity, specular roll off, etc) are changed. In other words the "roughness" of the surface and intensity of the highlight don't appear different in the material viewer when the sliders are moved. (as shown in the screenshots). Any ideas?

[JuanDAyalde]

@Abdulla-Qaladzay Take a look at picture 3 for example. The shader ball on the right (screenshot from the tutorial) is rougher than the one on the left (screenshot from my own computer) and light is reflected differently, even though the attributes are the same. Also, the color on the one to the right is very different from the one to the left (and all color values  are set the same in the pallettes). So I think there may be something turned off or not set up properly that is rendering the shader ball in the material viewer erroneously... any thoughts?

[Abdulla-Qaladzay]

@JuanDAyalde 

try to use CPU and GPU , using CPU or GPU make difference in the result.

[damaggio]

from your images it looks like you have  a maya blinn, not and Arnold blinn.

You must always use the Arnold physical shaders when rendering in Arnold.

Please look on Youtube for Arnold tutorials by date.

[JuanDAyalde]

@Abdulla-Qaladzay Hello again Abdulla, thanks for the reply. I tried and indeed the results were different but not exactly better. The render image in the materials viewer still doesn't show more or less roughness and more or less prominent highlight. As a matter of fact, the render seems more pixelated even... 

[damaggio]

Are you using the Arnold shader now? please provide more screenshots Juan.

[JuanDAyalde]

@damaggio Thanks for the reply! I hadn't thought about arnold blin and maya blinn... I guess you learn something every day! I will start looking for tutorials and see if I can learn more on that. I will show you some screen shots of the steps I followed to get where I am now.

[damaggio]

That’s good, I just wanted to point out, I think you missed Abdulla’s comment.

[damaggio]

Yeah , that’s wrong, never use a maya shader , only Arnold shaders are realistic.

the  new maya standard shader is replacing all the old ones so it’s easier to transfer between packages.

Read in the docs about it too 2020.

[JuanDAyalde]

@damaggio Do you mean the CPU/GPU rendering different results? I did try that... I was using CPU and changed to GPU, but results didn't improve : ( I switched back to CPU after that. May I ask if you saw the last screenshot I sent? thanks for all the help!

EDIT: just checked your last post. Thanks for all the help. I will check into it and come back with a reply! 

[mspeer · Accepted solution]

Hi!

To make it short:

1. If you want to see the same effect as in the video for Blinn, set Reflectivity to "0.000".

Control the Intensity of the Reflection only with Specular Color

2. When using Arnold i recommend to use an Arnold Shader like aiStandardSurface.

The Blinn material is translated in background anyway, but by directly using aiStandardSurface you can see ALL attributes and with the "correct" names.

[damaggio]

Please Juan also accept the solution  provided by Abdulah and myself.

[JuanDAyalde]

@mspeer Thank you very much for the reply! It actually did work to set the reflectivity attribute value to 0.000. I guess since I was looking at an "old" tutorial, that the specificity of maya vs arnold shaders was not important at all. It had me all confused. Now, on the arnold side of things (aiStandardSurface etc) I will have to read and investigate more. Starting off at link (Arnold for Maya User Guide).

Still, I did learn how to do several things other than what I was initially trying to achieve. Thanks all! @damaggio @Abdulla-Qaladzay