ATTN Ewout - Wiki Maya Tutorial

Hello Rich! It's good to see response like this, because it helps improving the tutorial all the time! As for your question, it's a bit hard to answer right away because at the moment I don't have acces to a computer with Maya, but I'll try to do it from my memory... It that doesn't help, I'll be able to give you the exact instructions on wednesday.

Ok, so you created an IBL-node. Your then in what's called the Attribute Editor, the right side of your Maya window. Can you tell me what you see then? I'm not 100% sure here, but I'm almost sure it should pop-up. It's called the 'Create Render Node' window, and it looks like this (this is just an image I found with Google):

It feels as if I haven't really helped you with this, but I'll post some more screenshots next wednesday or thursday I you really can't figure it out.

good luck! Ewout

- not very clear talking here :o) I wanted to ask what you see when you clicked the checkered box next to the texture field.

I made a phone call to someone, to verify this. It was the way I explained it in the tutorial, so maybe you missed a step?

Maybe it's confusing, "next to the texture option" -- I'm not talking about the texture option in the dropdown menu (where you switch from "Type: Image File" to "Type: Texture", but a bit more down the Attribute Editor. You see a black square, a slider and the chechered box there. That should open the "Create Render Node" I'm talking about.

does this help?

Ewout

Ewout

Thanks, I see now. When the 'Create Render Node' window pops up, It was defaulting to the 3D texture section, there is no file button there. When you move up and select 2D texture then it all makes sense and the file button is obviously there.

I'll keep going through to the end and let you know how I get on!

Thanks again, very much appreciated ;-)

Rich

Hi Ewout

I've progressed a bit further now but am slighty stuck again ;-)

After finding the file button with your help and picture, I come to the initial pre render with the single material. I cannot seem to get anything remotely near the quality of that render. its either over exposed or underexposed and very bland.

I wonder if you could give me the settings you used for Ambience, Ambient, Diffuse, and specular to compare? I don't get the nice reflections or the contrast between the lighter and the base. They are the same material right? and the look the same in mine, in yours there is a definate difference between the base and the lighter.

Anyway, thanks for your help, I do really appreciate it.

Regards

Rich

I'm sorry that my tutorial is so hard to follow, I thought it was quite clear actually, but I'll look into improving it.

As for the materials: I used the standard settings, but apparently (as shown with the "Create Render Node" Window) your standard settings differ from mine (and some others I've seen).

However, I use two different materials, a Lambert shader for the plane (which is the default material assigned to new geometry you create within Maya), and the Blinn as explained in the tutorial.

I guess the best advice I can give you here, is to fiddle a bit with the material settings until you think you get it right. It's not very important to have it look exactly like my (example-)render. That's just a temporary solution. When you follow the rest of the instructions, you'll see that I give you quite exact instructions on what settings to use. After I wrote the tutorial, I did it myself from scratch, to see if it's right. I really think this is about the results you should get, the only problem with the stage you're in now is the default settings (on which you depend there). When you assign the 'final' materials, there's not many default settings left (just look at the pictures for an exact copy of my settings).

Anyway, I hope you can finish it. If you can, post a link to your resulting render!

I'll make a list of good follow-up tutorials, because this should be no more than a case-study-introduction. I do believe however, that after this tutorial, you will have seen enough settings to be able to develop your rendering skills on your own.

Ewout

Ewout

its not hard to follow, just seems to be these defaults. I'll maybe add comments to the wiki wherever I get stuck.

I didn't want to advance too much further without having something that looked at least similar to your render for fear that I had something else wrong.

ah, that'll probably be why it looks different then.

will do!

I will, guaranteed!

That would be FANTASTIC. I'm sure lots of people would appreciate that me included.

I think so too, I think I'm already bitten, but time pressures on other projects sometimes stop be progressing as far as I'd like. I would really like to get good at this though.

Thanks for all your help, I'll leave you alone now until I get something finished ;-)

Take Care

Rich