MR urgent help

[royter]

hello

i have an animation to deliver in 20 days to a big company.
and i have been trying to solve a problem for 2 weeks now and i am really out of time.

i have a scene in maya with alot of skycrapers, Final gather renders just fine but the calculation of the reflection (normal without any glossy) between the reflective surfaces in the rendering phase is just taking insane time to render.
i tried DGS, blinn,mib_gloosy(wityhout glossy), ctrl_ray,.. you name it, it's always taking insane time to render.

i switched to Maya 8.5, the scene opens normally and it takes 50 percent less time to render with mib_glossy (without glossy). But when i try to save it in the .mb format it wont, it only saves in the .ma format.
i tried exporting, importing in every possible format between the 2 version..for days..
maya 8.5 wont save this file in the .mb format even i f i type scripts that detects unknon nodes and delete them, it wont save.

( i have exactly the same 3d party shaders installed in both versions).
and if i continu to work in the .ma format, mental ray couldn't batch render (since it has to save a temporary file of the file in the .mb format, an saving fails, batch render is black).

so i have 2 options, the first is to continu in maya 7 (i wish) and boosting the calculation of the reflective rays, i have tryed everything....

or to continue with the .ma format and to be able to save in the .mb format.


if you could refer me to any solution it would be a great great help, i really need it.

thanks

[dlanier]

Hi royter,

Unfortunately this is a problem we have too. It seems to be computer dependent as it doesn't do it on every computer with Maya 8.5, it may come from the processor...

But loading Maya 7.0 scenes and trying to save them in Maya8.5 leads to the same result as you...

So no solution I know but if you find one I would be glad to know

At this time we have switch back to Maya 8 which doesn't have this bug but some others bugs with the batch render with mray that doesn't always update the transform of animated objects while rendering manually a given frame works fine... Well, so buggy anyway...

Regards,

[haggi]

I dont see any reason why maya shoud use .mb format to save a file.
The only situation where it happens is if you start a batchrender from within the ui.

If you start it from a batch file, it should be no problem.

[royter]

could you tell me how to render from a batch file ?

[haggi]

On windows create a textfile called doit.bat and write something like this:

render -r mr -proj yourProjectPath yourscene.ma

type "render -r mr -help" in a shell to get help for this command.

dont call the bat file render.bat because this will result in a endless loop.

[royter]

ok i created a txt file and named it doit.bat.

the i wrote inside it:

render -r mr -proj C:\Documents and Settings\batenjen\Desktop\Jeux_musical_demo\scenes \101.ma


now where should i type "render -r mr -help" exactly

and then what should i do with the file?


thanks

[haggi]

execute it. Maybe a double click may help.

Seems you are not really familiar with batch rendering from a shell, so this could be a little bit difficult....

a.) to avoid problems dont use paths with spaces like "Documents and settings" because the batch file will have problems with it. Create a new project maybe c:\Jeux_musical_demo and use this one.

b.) you can execute the batch file from a shell with c:\yourpathwherethebatfieis\doit.bat. Or simply execute it by double clicking. The advantage of the shell is that is does not disappear if it is done.

c.) if you want to avoid the batchfile to close if you want to execute it with double clicking, add a "pause" to the end of the file.

[royter]

haggi thanks alot
i will give it a try tomorow



Ok!
after days of hard work, i finally found it!

when exporting from Maya 7.0 to Maya 8.5, make sure that you don't have any FRENCH character in your geometry, shader, textures or whatever nodes. suspected characters : é è ç and company. That was the problem from the begining but it was impossible to detect it in a massive city scene with hundreds of objects.

No wonder why companys having the same problem are from France and Canada.

so that's it!

Ciao

- Royter -

[dlanier]

Hi,

Thanks for this, this is probably true for us too as we are French and I've often met these problems of French chars with 3DSMax too...
Regards,