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in the past
this has been somewhat troublesome for new and experienced users alike. however with this
tutorial i aim to explain how to set it up in a way that will enable you to go ahead and put it to
your own use.
We will also be covering the creation of caustics. Although i will be using it in the situation of
moving open water the process of creating them works in any situation that you require
caustics.
for all of the following make sure Interactive Creation is turned off
figure 1.1
5. Create another Polygon Plane, scale it by 20 and this time translate it by x=10 , y= 17, z=10.
figure 1.3
7. Create a Spot Light and rotate it by x=-75, y=50, z=0 and translate by x=15, y=36, z=15.
2. Open up the shading group for the "dielectric_material" by clicking on the "go to output
connections" button in the attribute editor
3. Click the chequered box next to "Displacement mat." and select the "Ocean" texture
from the "2D Textures" Category. the attributes for the texture should now show up.
5. If you want to animate the ocean attribute then Right Click on the "Time" attribute of
the ocean and select "Create new expression" and type the following in to the MEL
Expression area at the bottom:
ocean1.time = time/2;
Thats it for the water surface. On the next page we will be dealing with the Spot Light
Attributes...
2. So that the light covers the area of the "waterSurface" Plane we need to increase the size of
the "Cone Angle". if you have followed these instructions correctly you will need to change this
value to "74". See figure 3.1
To confirm that this has worked you can select the light and in the viewport select "Panels >
Look Through Selected". the circle that you see is the cone angle. See figure 3.2
figure 3.1
figure 3.2
3. Now is time to setup the photon emission. open up the attributes for the light again and open
up the "Mental Ray" and scroll down to the "Caustic and Global Illumination" Section.
4. Check the box next to "Emit Photons" and you'll see the section light up. Now set the
"Exponent to "1.5".
You'll notice that the "Caustic Photons" option is still greyed out. this is not a problem. we just
haven't told maya that we want Caustics yet. See figure 3.3
Figure 3.3
5. Open up the Render Options Diologue box and make sure the renderer is set to "Mental Ray"
then open up the tab "Indirect Lighting". Open up the "Caustics" Section and check the box next
to "Caustics". See figure 3.4
figure 3.4
6. if you now close the attributes for the light and open them again the option for caustic photons
will be available. Set this value to 500000. See figure 3.5
figure 3.5
Thats it for the light. in the next section we will be setting up the "parti_volume" node...
1. select the photonBoundry Cube and right click and select "Assign New Material". Select
"Transmat" from the Mental Ray nodes section.
2. Open up the Shading Group Attrributes by clicking on the "Go to Output Connections"
button and open up the "Mental Ray" section.
3. Scroll down to the "Custom Shaders" section and click the chequered box next to the
"Volume Shader" attribute. load into there the "parti_volume" found under the "volumetric
Materials" section under the Mental Ray nodes. leave the settings for the "parti_volume" alone
for now.
4. Select the waterSurface plane and open up the attribute editor for it.
5. Select the "dielectric_material1" tab and click the "Go to Output Connections" button .
6. Scroll down to the "Custom Shaders" section and where it says "Volume
Shader" type: parti_volume1
7. Now where it says "Phot Volume Shader" click the chequered box and select
"parti_volume_photon" from the "Photonic Volumetric Materials" section under the Mental Ray
nodes. Again leave the settings alone for the node as we'll set them up later.
1. open up the attributes for the camera by clicking on the "camera Attributes" button in the
viewport (it's the second button in on the "mini shelf" in the perspective viewport.) See figure 4.1
figure 4.1
1. open up the hyper shade and select the "parti_volume1" material that you created earlier and
use the following settings. See figure 4.2
figure 4.2
2. Back in the Hypershade open up the "Utilities" tab and open the attributes for the
"parti_volume_photon1" node you created earlier. Use the following settings. See figure 4.3
figure 4.3
Quick note: a few people struggled with the tutorial and it would seem the problems are witht he
parti_volume and parti_volume_photon setup. when setting the scatter attribute make sure it is
a dark grey and not a black colour.