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MEL How-To |
Extensitve list of Maya Embeded Language (MEL) how to's and how do I's
by Bryan Ewert. |
MEL Recipe |
MEL Recipe by Zhang Jian. These notes are intended to explain the basic
ideas about MEL scripting by providing a series of examples, giving a
recipe for MEL scripting that you can refer to. |
Mental Ray - Caustics |
This tutorial will cover how to create simple reflective caustics in
Maya using the mental ray renderer.
Reflection caustics are caused when light strikes a shiny/reflective surface
and is reflected off the surface and in turn strikes another surface,
causing a specific light pattern to appear on the surface. |
Mental Ray - Depth of Field |
Mental Ray for Maya's depth of field is very easy to use and produces
a very nice effect. |
Mental Ray - Final Gather |
Maya 5 included three new FG features that can both increase FG speed
and improve the render quality! Some of you may be wondering why you haven't
found any of these 'new cool features' yourself? Well, it's basically
because they're in a really un-obvious place. Autodesk must not have had
time to add them to the Render Globals or something. |
Mental Ray - Glossy/Blurry Reflections |
In real life, not all reflections are crystal clear. Glossy surfaces
have reflections that blur the deeper they get. Reflections in 3D rendered
images are typically clear, sharp and... unrealistic for a lot of surface
types. Fortunately these days a lot of renderers now have the ability
to produce blurry/glossy reflections, which can really add a lot of realism
to surfaces that should have them, as in real life. Now that Maya has
Mental Ray, glossy reflections are quite easy to achieve without the use
of plugins. |
Mental Ray Shaders Tab |
Adding the Mental Ray shaders tab. Mental Ray for Maya comes with quite
a lot of Mental Ray specific shaders, that give you the ability to use
more of Mental Ray's functionality and features. By default, those shaders
are not available in Maya even with Mental Ray loaded (probably because
some of them aren't completely finished yet). |
Mental Ray Volume Scattering
(Ray Marching) |
The method to generate this image is called volume scattering, or ray
marching. This can be seen in real life when light beams hit dusty or
smokey volumes of air. For example light beams coming through a window
into a dusty room, or the beams of lights at a concert, as they pass through
the smokey atmosphere. The light hits the dust or smoke particles, and
is scattered in various directions. |
Mental Ray Volume Scattering
Through Colored Materials |
This tutorial is a follow up of my frirst volume scattering tutorial but
with a slight addition. Basically we're going to simulate the same effect,
but this time the light will be entering our smokey room through a stained
glass window (or simply put a coloured, transparent surface). |
