Rendering With Mental Ray
Note that before trying to render, you should make sure you created a .cam file and assigned a Rendering Type to your Entities.
Also make sure that your source character shaders has been imported in your scene and that they are active (see Quickstart / Importing Shader) for more details)
Also make sure that your source character shaders has been imported in your scene and that they are active (see Quickstart / Importing Shader) for more details)
Basic rendering
Export simulation
1/ Use the simulation tool to export a simulation cache.
It is not needed to enable Mental Ray export, the .Mi files are used only for stand-alone rendering.
Select Mental Ray as your current renderer
3/ Select Mental Ray in the Maya Render/Render Using menu
Create a render proxy
4/ Load the Golaem Crowd Render plugin, and create a Mental Ray Proxy
Check your render settings
5/ Go to CrowdRender/Check Render Settings and follow instructions if something is wrong
Render
6/ Hit Render, and you are done!
Rendering the Golaem Crowd Proxy with Mental Ray
Notice that, thanks to procedural rendering, it is possible to change asset repartition at any time with the Assets Manager.
Do not forget to save the .cam file before re-rendering.
Re-rendering with a different assets repartition
Troubleshooting
If your Entities are not correctly rendered you can check the Troubleshooting Rendering section
You can also take a look at this video tutorial:
Some Things to Know
Errors Output
Like Mental Ray, the Golaem Crowd for Mental Ray plugin outputs errors and warnings in the Maya Output Window. If one does not get any characters rendered, he should have a look at this window and check for errors.
The Maya Output Window
Missing Shaders
To get the shaders applied to your crowd it is needed to load them with the correct names in Maya. To do so, just load your source character in Maya (and do not hide it but just put it in some place where it is not visible by the camera). If you fail to do that, a default orange color shader will be applied on your characters.
A scene rendered with missing shaders
Handling Visual Diversity with Procedural Shaders
Golaem Crowd includes built-in Mental Ray shaders enabling to handle visual diversity easily. They can be found in the Hypershade in the Mental Ray category.
Golaem Crowd Mental Ray Shaders
Creating Shader / Texture Diversity
In order to be able to create shaders variation, Golaem Crowd provides a Switch shader, which input value should be linked to a shader attribute created in the asset manager. This link is done through a GetUserDataInt shader.
Creating Color Diversity
In order to modulate the color of a shader, Golaem Crowd provides a HSL shader, which input value should be linked to a shader attribute created in the asset manager. This is done through a GetUserDataScalar shader.