Just diving into Mental Ray on MAX 2009.  I had tried converting a couple times through the years from standard scanline, but had difficulty getting a grip on controling the MR lighting.  2009 seems to have made the lighting much easier to deal with, and now that I’m starting to work in MR, I am finding that the material creation is quite frustrating.  It would seem that MR material properties don’t seem to directly equate to older “standard” material’ physical definitions or controls.  I’m hunting and experimenting my way through, wildly adjusting settings to see what does what, but its time consuming and I still have a workload that I have to be able to keep up to speed on, so hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

One of the things I am struggling with is, of all the silly things, is making a material self illuminate.  Not even emit light in the scene as i’ve seen lots of questions on, but simply trying to get a graphic material to be illuminated as if it was a printed back-lit sign with a lightbox, or even a TV or PC screen on a monitor.  I can make a material self illuminate, but the graphic appears to be washed out and loses saturation.  I get the feeling that “self illuminate” and/or “glow” doesn’t quite mean the same thing in MR.

Ordinarily I would simply place a bitmap image in the diffuse slot, and either set the self illumination to 100, or insert a grey-scale bitmap in the self illumination slot for more detailed control. (like windows in a cityscape at night)

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

I hope this will help. These are some tutorials, on this site. They talk about MR materials and self illumination MR materials. http://area.autodesk.com/for...material_with_mental_ray/
http://area.autodesk.com/for...ay_part_1_basic_settings/
http://area.autodesk.com/for...volume_lighting_caustics/
http://area.autodesk.com/for...ex/illumination_tutorial/

Thanks Jolly1976,

I have gone through those tutorials before, and again just now, but they don’t quite cover the situation I’m dealing with.  I have a feeling that it’s some small detail or toggle that simply isn’t set quite right, and I just don’t recognize it from my lack of experience in MR.  Its just too simple of an operation for it to be that complex.  (at least that’s what my gut is telling me) I’ve used the standard materials in the scanline renderer since 3DS R4 (pre-MAX), but haven’t had to get particularly adventuresome with material effects since my rendered subject matter is not for film, game, or fantasy effects…

Thanks for taking a stab at it,

So you set the material to an architectural material and gave it the amount of light? That isn’t working? If you could post a test file I could try and see what you are doing.

*edit* Here is a file I made with (in my opinion) the better ach design templates. YOu can take a look at these materials to see what I did.

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8855_R5eYgYZ4CZdWEnkPyu7i.zip

Jolly1976,

Thanks for the file.  As before I don’t think I’m communicating the effect correctly.  I’m not trying to create a “neon” or lightbulb effect, that can be done fairly easily as you have shown in your file and the tutorials.  I’m simply trying to get a bitmap image within a material to be “self illuminated” without the need for a light source in the scene.  In the old scanline standards, this property was called “self illuminated,” now I’m beginning to wonder if that term/property is not the same in MR.  Whether is acts as a light source in the scene is unimportant at the moment, that I will tackle later if I have the time.  I can’t even get the graphic in the material to render correctly.  I will try to attach an example rendering so you can see the difference between the rendered output and the original map files.

I’m attaching a rendering with the original map images photoshoped in next to the rendered item.  You will see that while I was able to get the material to be self-illuminated (no lights shining on it), the color saturation of the bitmap has faded.  The more I try cranking up the self illumination, the more white (or set color property) permeates and washes out the original graphic image.  Below is a link to download the MAX file with the maps so you can see what I’m messing with in terms of materials.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m just guessing on how to create and refine these MR materials.  It’s a whole new world compared to the standard materials of old that were fairly straightfoward to create and define.

Use the following links to download your file(s).

self illum graphics.zip
https://www15.sendthisfile.com/c.jsp?t=vVR6tiBz4HV3OrqrDIUsOf8a

Note: These files will expire in 14.0 days from 2008-06-12

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I will download this file tonight. there is another video that might help while you wait. It is fron the autodesk website.
http://download.autodesk.com/us/3dsmax/2008demos/NFM_MentalRayRendering.html

Thanks for the video, it showed some interesting features that I can use elsewhere in my “bag of tricks.” Its interesting how there is so much about being able to take an object with a solid color and making it self illuminate, be a light source in the scene, and adjust shadow and reflection properties.  Yet I have not seen a single tutorial taking the next step from a solid color, and adding a graphical map to it…

Honestly, there really is one. I have been searching for a while and can’t remember where it was. It may be on the subscription area of the Autodesk website. It talks about mr features in max 2008. It show how to add maps to your images. I just don’t have a ton of time to look, being at work and all. If you have subscription, check that area.

Ok, I think I’m begininng to make some headway.  Trying a different approach with a different base material type.  Had been experimenting with Arch & Design, Architectural, and ProMaterials.  This time starting with Mental Ray material and adding Glow (lume) to the surface slot, then started experimenting with inserting my graphic into the available slots and seeing what I’d get.  Still dialing it in, and very much working in the dark, but finally starting to get to where I can use the material…

Thanks for helping out-

I think I know the issue that you might be having. When I use bitmaps and using my pictures for non-print, I turn on gamma and change the input to 2 and keep the output to 1. I didn’t change anything in your scene except Gamma correction and this is what the light pillar rendered out as. The second image I doubled the amount of lighting. The biggest problem with your scene is that there isn’t a scale to it. It is set to generic units. Everything with pro materials and arch design materials is that they are physically based. So if you set it for a 40 watt bulb, it will produce enough light for a 40 watt bulb. The scale seems about right, but actually having a scale is the best way to work. Things always seem to be a little easier.

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