RIP Mental Ray

Mental Ray 3D Render

Mental Ray used to come bundled free with Autodesk Maya and, until recently, have released a version of their software which is free for student use.


This was good news for animation students, because Mental Ray has a number of advantages over its successor Arnold.  In particular, you can achieve some very quick and attractive lighting setups in Mental ray using Physical Sun & Sky, the closest thing Maya has to a "Make It Look Cool" button.  This can be done in just a few quick steps - and gets a great result in a hurry.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Animation Recruiter

Image
VIEW panel. From left: Amy Smith, Giorgio Xhaxho, Alex Williams, Tiffany Feeney, Angie Wojak What do Animation recruiters look for from recent graduates?  How do they find fresh talent? At last week's VIEW conference in Turin I was invited onto a recruitment panel hosted by New York's School of Visual Arts (SVA). Also on the panel were two recruiters, Amy Smith from Framestore and Tiffany Feeney of Talent Outpost, an independent recruitment agency based in Switzerland.  Both of them had a lot to say on the subject of student demo reels. But most of all, it turns out that recruiters want one thing from animation graduates... Be on Linkedin Both Amy and Tiffany stressed the importance of students and recent graduates being on Linkedin. As Tiffany put it: "I live on Linkedin" . Linkedin is where recruiters go to find talent, and find out what talent is now available - or will be available soon.  Above all, Linkedin is "your brand", a...
Read more

Free Horse Rig

Image
horse rig by Motorman TD So, how can our students get the most out of this rig? Real time playback You should, in theory, be able to get real-time playback with this rig without difficulty. Features Allows you to fine-tune the position of the legs, getting rid of unwanted knee bends. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for over-stretching the legs. Tail Rhett has one big advantage over this horse rig - no tail. Not having a tail means less animation to deal with, though if you have the time and inclination then the tail does give the opportunity to create an attractive overlapping action. It does mean extra work though. Credits Many thanks for Carlos Contreras at Mothman TD for the excellent rigs, made available for the Maya community for learning animation. Original model: Tomasz Jurczyk (www.ikkiz.pl) Textures: Didac Ruiz (www.didacruiz.com). Rigging: Carlos Contreras (www.mothman-td.com) License Type CC BY 4.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en). This me...
Read more

PathAnim by Brian

At $30, bhPathAnim isn't free, but it is priced attractively and could be on any animator's Christmas wish-list. Brian Hogan describes bh_pathAnim as "a robust and flexible new tool for path animation in Maya". His goal was to make it "simple and intuitive", easy to "attach any rig, with any number of limbs and body controls, to a path and animate it walking or running along it". bh_pathAnim "will work for bipeds, quadrupeds, and insects". We haven't had a chance to road-test it yet, but it does look very handy. You can download the new tool .
Read more