Introduction to mental ray in Softimage 7.5
Available for iPhone

Preview Course

Lesson Outline (20 lessons)
In this course we will learn how mental ray's tools and core features work, as well as exploring solutions for simulating lighting that's physically accurate, and time-saving techniques to overcoming common challenges that artists of any skill level often encounter.

We'll begin our training by learning how to use global illumination, final gather, and the new Irradiance Particles as well as importons so that you can easily simulate the effects of indirect lighting and quickly render highly realistic scenes. We'll also spend some time going over how you can dramatically increase your rendering speed by saving and re-using indirect illumination data, giving you more time to focus on the creative aspect of the image. We'll also explore how you can use caustics to simulate the light patterns that are created when light passes through refractive surfaces. Then, we'll then take time to explore several specialized mental ray shaders like the architectural materials, subsurface scattering, and ambient occlusion shaders, as well as learn how we can use Render Passes and Render Channels to split our renders into multiple passes for compositing purposes.

1. Introduction and Project Overview

3. Simulating indirect lighting with Global Illumination

5. Using Global Illumination and Final Gather together

7. Using HDR images for realistic lighting results

9. Overview of Architectural material

11. Creating high quality displacement effects

13. Rendering with Physical Sun and Sky shaders

15. Rendering with Portal Lights

17. Alternative workflow for image-based lighting

19. Rendering multiple passes using Render Channels

2. Overview of Softimage render settings

4. Using Final Gather for indirect lighting effects

6. Saving and reusing indirect illumination data

8. Creating caustic light patterns

10. Controlling photon attributes in the Render Tree

12. Overview of Subsurface Scattering shader

14. Applying tone mapping shaders to the camera

16. Using Importons and Irradiance Particles

18. Setting up multiple Render Passes

20. Transferring render settings to the Render Manager



Become an Annual Member


 
What is Floating?
Our Partners