Hi,
Im hoping that someone can give me a simple over-view of how to contour render in Maya using MR...
I know about turning contours on in globals and on the shading group of the shader- but I need a bit more control and was hoping to be able to mess around with all those contour nodes in MR- but I really dont know where to begin using them...where they go, what they do and why...
any brilliant explanations of how these nodes function and simple proceedures for moving forward with MR for maya would be most appreciated..
Or if anybody knows of a good resource for non-programmers interested in getting into MR for maya...
thanks in advance
-a
okay heres a quick overview:
contours are based on 4 different nodetypes. Contour store, contour contrast, contour shader, and contour output.
Cantours are calculated based onb a extra bufferthets analyzed form the image, thets why there s a conrtour stoire function that keeps the samples in memory for teh contour sensing alorithm to analyze the scene.
Contrast defines how much those samples can vary before you put a line in place
output is the module that computes the finalized lines as graphic.
In genaral you do not need to define contour contrast or output fuctions since the switches in rednerglobals are basicaly just theese 3 things. Enabling contourrendering assigns a contours tore and output so unless you want a custom self programmed store/ output this should nb eneough. the draw contours section defines basicaly the contour contrast contrast.
Now the intersetsing bit is contour shaders!
they define different metrics for the lines such as colr and width (they represent what you ca define in maya shaders contour section), they offer some flexibility in use. for more indepth info for each shader look them u p in the mr shader manual you can find it in maya help: general usage -> Rendering and Render Setup ->ntal ray Reference-> mental ray Shaders Guide.
basicaly you just take the node and map it to the contour slot of your shading group:
for example if you wante d lines that get thinner as they get further
use the contourshader depthfade set the colors and line widths and assiciated z values (note z is negative and worldspace ranges if i remeber correctly), in general id say start playing with thisone as its fer the easiest to understand.
Pds also not ethet the base lambert does not contour even if you try.