zap's repository of mental ray tips and tricks, frequent questions and their answers, and some smoke and mirror mental ray trickery you may not find elsewhere...
As usual this time of year, it's time for the SIGGRAPH conference, this year in Anaheim. Yes, I am going, and as a matter of fact I am Speaking. Thursday, before lunch, in the "Physically Plausible Shading in Theory and Practice", I will hold a talk named "Everything you always wanted to know about mia_material * (* but were afraid to ask)", which will explain the story of how the mia_material (Arch&Design to 3ds max users) shader was developed, why it does what it does, why it is so hard to replicate... and a lot of funny anecdotes never ever heard elsewhere (and very very little math).
Show up - enjoy!
If you are attending this year, make sure to get the cool App, where you can see which talks I'm going to by "following" Zap Andersson. That is, if you are interested in hardcore rendering as I am ;)
See you all in Anaheim
HULK SAYS "GIVE ME ALL THE CINEFEX"
I bet nearly everyone reading this blog knows about the magazine Cinefex and is probably a subscriber. But I bet many of us has also looked longingly at the back issues and how many times have we not wanted to hold that issue about E.T. in your hands?
Well... you may be able to... soon... assuming your hands also hold an iPad!
A couple of people I know have gone through the audacious task of licencing all the Cinefex back issues and speant a year scanning every copy, OCR'ed it, marked it up for search.... etc.
Words fail me at describing this task, and I will let them describe it for themsleves, on their Kickstarter page, which you can find HERE:
If you find this interesting, consider throwing them a $ or more for the effort. I don't even have an iPad and still did it. Just the Blade Runner issue of Cinefex recently went for $250 on eBay. Here you ALL TEH CINEFEXES. That's...a deal.
...and it's only appropriate that it is about the fact that I've been hired by Autodesk.
Yes, you've seen Ken spill the beans over on CGTalk. It is true. Autodesk has hired me to handle rendering and funky stuff like that. Pixels. Whatnot. Friday sept 30:th is my last day at mental images/NVidia (which I end by doing the meet-and-greet-3d event in Berlin, see previous post), and Monday October 3:rd my first day at at Autodesk... this time around (I used to work for Autodesk in the past, doing mechanical design software).
This all started around some discussion between my good friends Neil Hazzard, Shane Griffith and myself back at EUE (all good friends which will now be my actual colleagues). It was thrown out as an idea, we pondered the thought, thought it made sense, and I talked to my managers at mental images/NVidia, and everybody thought it made a lot of sense.
Integration of mental ray and iray into Autodesk products have always been.. problematic. Integration work was done by Autodesk, but there was never a dedicated person with enough precise know-how of the nitty-gritty details to handle it (or sometimes simply not enough priority put on it). Well...... now I will be working there. 'nuff said :)
I think this will be interesting, and I've been "Shader Wizard" for mental images (now "NVidia ARC" - "Advanced Rendering Center") for 7+ years now, perhaps it's time to move forward to New Challenges. Todays physical rendering doesn't really require "shaders" in the same way it did in the past anyway..... 'tis all BSDF's and physics and shiny stuff :)
It's not like I'm moving far anyway. I will probably be in all the same meeting, just on the other "side"....
I think this will be really interesting, and the future is Bright (about 95000 cd/m^2 to be exact). Lets go there together.
With Sunglasses.
Also, as I type this I am finalizing some Really Cool Sh%t. Stay tuned - as always :)
On Sepmber 30:th 2011 I will be speaking at the Meet and Greet 3D event in Berlin.
I will do a small sit-down session about Linear Workflow at 2 PM, and a big-hall presentation about the physics of light at 11.50AM. <=== UPDATED TIME!!!
Venue info etc. available at www.MeetAndGreet3D.com
Location:
Forum Adlershof, Rudower Chaussee 17, 12489 Berlin
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if SIGGRAPH was about 200 of your best friends, had all the cool talks but none of the showfloor commercial glitz... and was held in a pub?
If you think that sounds like a good idea, you should have registered for the End User Event (see previous post). Me? I'm packing my last thing, flying down there now.
If you wish you were there, well..... I told you already. In the aformentioned previous post :)
This year I'm going a bit more abstract than previous years, and will be talking about "the Physics of Light", and 'tis gonna be fun.
I will (connection willing) try to amend this post with some pictures, videos, and other stuff as the event happens.
For those who want the (likely) stream of crazy updates, tune in to my twitter at twitter.com/MasterZap.... connection willing, of course.
As several years previously, I will be presenting at the EUE (= "End User Event") 2011 in Utrecht, Netherlands.
The event is June 30:th/July 1:st, and it is held in the Florin, a nice old building that used to be a bank, but now is a pub..... with adjoined conference rooms.
Think of the event as the worlds smallest SIGGRAPH - only with the commercial glitz shaved off, and held in a pub. And if you walk outside, you are not run over by yellow cabs, but by blonde students on bicycles. Seriously, you almost need a bicycle helmet to walk the streets here. :)
Check out the www.EndUserEvent.com site for more details; there is even a Youtube behind-the-scenes channel where you can see the organizers setting up the event, which I found neat.
This year I will be talking about light, the perception thereof, and how to translate that knowledge to what you do in CG.
But I'm not the only one rambling, other speakers include:
Jeff Mottle (CG Architect)
Wayne Robson (y'know mudbox guy)
Rune Spaans (about his work on Troll Hunter)
Jamie Gwilliam (Autodesk)
Neil Hazzard (Autodesk)
Shane Griffith (Autodesk, will be holding an NDA session on future dev. of 3ds Max)
Ted Boardman (often mistaken for a member of ZZ top)
While waiting, what about the trailer for Troll Hunter that Rune worked on? Think of it as "Cloverfield goes to Norway. With Trolls". :)
See you in Utrecht!
I normally don't use mentalraytips.com to post "funny" things, but I had to make an exception for this, because, well... you'll see.
When I received this little video, it literally made my day. It's the "Behind The Scenes" video for Freddie Wong's "Epic VFX Time". Freddie does little funny visual effects experiments and tutorials on his youtube channel - well worth a watch.
However, when this came across my screen, well, I couldn't help but laugh:
I've been mentioned in VFX behind-the-scenes documentaries before - but never like this.
Thanks guys. :)
However, I'd like to massively correct that I am not "the guy who programs mental ray", I am *a* guy who programs mental ray *shaders*. That's different. We are a whole team behind the software, not just me...
On June 3/4, my good friend Joep van der Steen, author of "rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max" will be - again - hold the "End User Event".
Imagine it as a very tiny and very European and very personal mini-version of Siggraph. There are two days filled with lectures and talks and mingling, and, yeah... it's held in a bar. :) (Well, a bar with conference rooms on the sides)
Sign up now if you want to join in on the fun. I'll be speaking there about MetaSL in 3ds Max 2011 and some other mental-ray-y things.... see you there.
Well, that was an interesting ride of 10 weeks of doing FXPHD. And while I really enjoyed doing it, well, it was quite a lot of work (since I'm such a nerdy perfectionist and want to embellish everything to the border of insanity) so I won't be doing it again any time soon....
I have not heard if the FXPHD guys plan to re-run the course, at least it is not being re-run immediately for the current April term starting up in the next few weeks. And of course, if/when it is re-run, it's the same classes run again, so all I have to do then is to hang around in the forums for questions, which is much easier....
It was quite fun to see the progress of the students and I saw quite a few nice renders done by them. I think I made several people see the light of linear rendering... :)
I'll let you guys know when more similar stuff happens. Next up is EUE (more in a future post)
Also, expect some trickle-down effect for the blog. I created some nifty Phenomena for the FXPhd course that I will post here after some polish.... stay tuned!
The questions I get most often about the FXPHD classes are:
Is it too late to join now?
No. The term may be called "January10", but it is not until 8:th week of the class (sometime in early March) is it actually "too late".
Classes are released once a week over 11 weeks (there's a break week in there), and you can download them at your leisure... however, the advantage of taking the class "live" is the interaction in the forum between the teacher (me) and the students (you, and many others).
Will this class be "Max Only"
NO. As a matter of fact, beggining Class 4 I've taken steps to include explicit information for both Maya and Softimage users, as well as amended one of the earlier classes with specific Maya and Softimage info.
I still do run the major demos in Max, though.
Will there be a lot of button pushing in Max that I will not have use of in Softimage or Maya
Not really. There will be some, but I spend a lot of the time in the class teaching theory and the why of things. How you see the world, why you need to do X, Y and Z. The actual mechanics of doing X, Y and Z is also shown - but frankly, that's in the manual! UNDERSTANDING WHY you do X, Y and Z, and UNDERSTANDING when not to do Y but Q, is where the real information lies. THAT is what I teach.
I had students that doesn't even use mental ray take the class (poor lost souls... just kidding) and enjoy it!
What does it cost me? This isn't free, right?
FXPHD has nice introductory information on their site, but here's the short Zaptronic description of how it works:
FXPHD supplies 41 courses this term (called "January10", even though it stretches over three+ months). One of these courses is my course, "production rendering techniques with mental ray".
To join a term, you pay $330. For this money you get to pick 3 courses freely out of the 41 available, plus are given on mandatory "Background Fundamentals" course, so four courses in all.
Each course has, as said, 10 classes, each class being a 30-60 minute video that you can download when you want (i.e. the class itself is not "live" per se). What is "live" is the FXPHD forum behind the class where studends (you) and the teacher (me) interact and discuss the classes.
Also, on top of your 4 * 10 classes you have chosen, you get access to the first two classes in ALL courses (so you can make up your mind before you choose the 3 you want to take). So that's 37 * 2 EXTRA classes that you get thrown in.
I once computed that this alone is actually 3 solid 24 hour days of video content! Not too shabby :)
Hope this straightens out some ?'s that people may have!
FXPHD is an online training site run by Mike Seymour, John Montgomery, Jeff Heusser and friends (who also are the people behind FXGUIDE, a VFX oriented news site I suggest you also check out if you havn't already)
Note that these courses are not free, but they are not extremely expensive either - and considering the classes run for ten weeks with full participation of the professor (that's me, in this case) in the forums for questions about the class, it's really a pretty good bargain, IMHO.
The standard FXPHD deal is that you pay for a package where you get to sign up for three of their courses. But the cool thing is that you get to see the first two classes of each course anyway, so you can spend your first two weeks of the term browsing around before you make up your mind to pick a (set of) class(es). Also, a freebie "Background Fundamentals" class is always included, with all sorts of topics.
(If you sign up as a new user, and there is a refferal field, fill in "MasterZap".
Here's my teaser clip for the class:
(If you want the FULL FXPHD orientation video (from which the above is my "segment"), it can be downloaded here.)
This course will teach techniques and concepts for rendering realistic, physically based CG elements in a visual effects context (i.e. for integration into live action shots). As it is a hands-on course in using Mental Ray to do these things, it will start with a fundamental treatment of everything from light and pixels through to cameras, response curves and compositing, as well as "learning to see". The course will be performed using the 3ds Max application, but most things apply to Maya and Softimage as well.
The ten classes will be rougly divided like this (subject to change based on feedback):
Class 1: Pixels vs. Light - What is a pixel? The units of light, and how they map to the RGB values we encounter every day. Shows how the math we apply to pixels can break, and how, if we are not careful, two plus two can end up ten.
Class 2: Lighting - Understanding the quality and quantity of light. Understanding how real-world lights map to computer graphics lights. Understanding how light gathers and reflects off a surface.
Class 3: Cameras - Understanding how a real world cameras function map to their computer graphics counterparts. Understanding what film and digital cameras do to the image before you even see it.
Class 4: Materials I - Using the physically based Arch&Design material to simulate real world surfaces. Learning to see the world, so that one can translate it to CG.
Class 5: Materials II - More about materials. Using the mental ray skin shader for realistic characters.
Class 6: Interaction between CG and the Real World - Using the production library shaders to seamlessly integrate CG objects in real-world background plates with reflections, bounce light, shadows, etc.
Class 7: What Not To Do - Computer Graphics is full of old "traditional" techniques that has stuck around for many years, but that are in conflict with proper physical rendering, and should be avoided. Just because the button is still there doesn't mean you should push it.
Class 8: Compositing - How stuff that comes out of the renderer goes together, and what can (and should) and can't (and shouldn't) be delegated to compositing.
Class 9: Technical topics such as sampling, flicker elimination, memory management. These classes may also adress issues that has come up in the forum as needed.
Class 10: Continuation of class 09
Check it out! I am very excited to do this class, and I welcome you all to join FXPHD!
On October 29:th and 30:th is the Animago Conference including the Animago Awards. This occurs in Babelsberg (which is the Berlin version of Hollywood).
On Friday October 30:th, at 9AM, I will be holding a mental ray Masterclass there. See the page above for more details, and stuff.
Welcome if you are in the neighborhood!
Update:
I will try to send out some updates to twitter, Phazeb00k and QiK as the event unfolds, feel free to follow:
I was recently interviewed by my good friend Mike Seymour over at FXGuide.com about linear workflow and linear compositing in a visual effects context.
You can listen to us ramble on the topic for nearly an hour by right here, or you can read a bit about it and comment here where you can also subscribe to the podcast for more glorious FX geekiness.
In the podcast, I mention Stu Machwitz about 1024 times. You can find Stu's blog over at ProLost.com (He doesn't consider it profound - get it?), and Stu even wrote a very lovely note on his blog in response, very heartwarming, thank you Stu! *wipes tear from eye*
Errata
Of course, as is when I ramble several run-on sentences for almost an hour, som errors creep in. After listening to it, I realize I misspaketh on a couple of places (disregarding some grammar snafu's, after all, I'm Swedish, darnit!)
I incorrectly attribute the creation of the EXR format to Pixar, I of course meant ILM. Apologies to both parties.
When describing the math of the "screen" composit operation, I say "sum" where it should be "product", i.e. the correct sentence should be "one minues the product of one minus each of the components". Duh. I.e. (1 - ((1 - A) * (1 - B)))
FXGuide and FXPhd
If you guys don't know about FXGuide, and their companion training site FXPhd, I suggest you check them out. These guys are very passionate people with a great knowledge of visual effects techniques, and they do some very nice stuff.
LinearWorkflow.com
Going to LinearWorkflow.com today isn't terribly interesting, but some stuff is coming up in a not too distant future. I just have other higher-priority work happening right now... stay tuned... :)
And, BTW, don't buy that stupid T-shirt, it's CafePress and it actually came out not-so-pretty.
Sorry for being incommunicado for a while. I've been busy, and I've been on Vacation.
On Monday, SIGGRAPH kicks off, and for the first time in many years I will actually not be going there... however, I will be there "in spirit". As usual, I have an Autodesk MasterClass running, only, this year the MasterClasses will be ONLINE, and not live in-person things.
My class is called "Giant Robots: Using mental ray shaders to integrate CG objects into real scenes", and it will be available from August 3rd 2009 somewhere on www.the-area.com
Here's a teaser:
I'll let y'all know when the actual class is on, and give a direct link to it.
Enjoy... and for those actually going to SIGGRAPH in New Orleans... have a beaker for me ;)
Those of you who enjoy watching me ramble endlessly (yes, such people exist), and don't think traveling to Utrecht (A short 30 minute train ride outside of Amsterdam), have nothing better to do on the 28:th and 29:th of May, and think the idea of a whole bunch of cool 3D people meeting in an actual bar is a good idea, should probably check out the End User Event
We'll all meet here, at the Florin
This event is arranged by my good friend Joep van der Steen, author of the book "Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max. The event is a kind of meet-and-greet get-together combined with a bunch of masterclasses and talks; sort of like a microscopic version of SIGGRAPH, but in a small Dutch bar in a very nice (not so) little town.
Feel free to sign up at www.EndUserEvent.com, I think you will find it an enjoyable experience, and there is many things to learn...
Speakers include yours truly (about mental ray), my collegue Ruediger Raab (about mental mill and MetaSL), as well as many other great people like Ted Boardman (depicted on the right), Niel Blevins, Allan McKay, as well as Ken Pimentel, product manager for 3ds Max, and many many others.
I'm doing two sessions there:
* Gamma and Linear Workflow * mental ray production rendering tricks & tips
I arrived alive and well in Singapore, almost immediately ran into Duncan Brinsmead from Autodesk (pictured here on the left) and since we had some free time we walked around Singapore, and even took a trip on the "Singapore Flyer", which is the Singaporean version of the London Eye thingy.
As it happens, both Duncan and myself are doing presentations at tonights Autodesk User Group event.
So for us, today is "Teh Big Setup Day" for this presentations, as well as the booth theatere stuff.
For most of the week, I'll be alternating between the Autodesk and NVidia booths. I also hear Autodesk is streaming their booth theatre presentations over the net this year (see link below).
On Friday december 12:th, the 3 hour version of my "Miracles and Magic" mental ray masterclass will be held. It's in the convention center, but note it's an Autodesk masterclass and hence requires a ticket beyond the siggraph one.
If you guys don't know about 
