Maya 2013, pass rendering and architectural material

[juri]

This post may be of interest if pass rendering with architectural material produces rendering artifacts in passes (wrong shadows or noise).

Few days ago Autodesk released Maya 2013 Service Pack 1. This release contains a partial fix which reduces some of such artifacts. We have prepared the second ingredient with completes the fix.

The archive ftp://ftp.mental.com/pub/ray-architectural-3.10.3.5.tgz or ftp://ftp.mental.com/pub/ray-architectural-3.10.3.5.zip contains updated architectural.dll (.so/.dylib) shader library for mental ray 3.10 on all platforms. It can be used to replace the library distributed with Maya 2013 SP1.

[Note: some versions of tar will present an error about a 0 block when unpacking the tgz. The last dll should still work. Check your permissions on Win64 machines if it doesn't. We provided a zip as well in case you are still concerned about the error.]

Together, MayaShaders.dll from Maya 2013 SP1 and architectural.dll from the ftp archive resolve all pass shadow artifacts.
Note that one has to use MayaShaders.dll from SP1, updating just architectural.dll will have no effect.

Hope this will help,
Juri

[bart]

In the SP1 release notes pdf this is:

MAYA‐11154 Problem with mental ray shadow shader

It could be confused with:
MAYA‐10719 Adding custom passes causes a ray explosion and performance issue

Because we've seen reports that it is the shadow rays, especially, that explode. That one only requires the Maya dll.

In either case, these fixes should be good news all around. But of course, we'd love to hear some confirmation on this in your cases in production.

[bart]

And I'm having issue extracting from the tgz right in the middle of the Win64 dll. It appears Win32, Mac OS X, and Linux may extract fine before that. [As noted below, and above, the dll should still work, and this is an issue with tar versions, that shouldn't affect usage of the dll.]

[JJJenkins]

Can't wait to test this out! Looking forward to getting the fixed upload.

-Justin

[bart]

OK. Some later versions of tar (eg. 1.25) will display a "lone zero block" message when unpacking the tgz above at the command line. We supplied a zip file above, for those who want to avoid it. Also, the untgz'd Win64 architectural.dll should still work, as it is byte identical, even after seeing that message.

My issue when rendering with it was forgetting to set the ownership and permissions on the dll correctly. Came out black on object with mia_material_x, with a warning it could not find mia_material_x .... Sometimes this can be a bit tricky to set up correctly in Win7 environments I've found.

[JJJenkins]

I installed SP1 and copied the new .dlls, shader declarations, and header files into proper directories. This did not fix the issue for me. I still get completely black shadow and shadow raw passes. Also, the beauty, diffuse, and diffuse with no shadows passes, direct irradiance, direct irraciance with no shadows are still broken for me. Can you send me a scene where you got this working correctly?

Thanks,

Justin

[Remydrh]

With any luck there may be time, it's possible SP1 will be re-tooled. There are a few critical flaws including some with animation tools.

[JJJenkins]

totallyBrokenMiaPassExample.exr

So I just downloaded and installed the re-release of SP1. I also copied the new shader libs and declaration files posted here to the correct places. The mia material is still totally and completely hosed. I included an example so you guys can check out these ridiculous passes. I really hope you guys can get around Autodesk's b.s. and post up the shader libs here that actually fix these passes and get them to render correctly because it would be just superb to actually have a pass system that works.

I know it is not ya'll's fault but if you could get it fixed anyway that would be sweet.

Thanks,

Justin

[JJJenkins]

testNewArchMat.zip

Here is a simple scene that shows the problem.