The Layering Library (MILA shaders)

If you head over to the NVIDIA-ARC forum, you’ll see a beginning explanation developer thread to testing the Layering Library. This thread will continue to expand. (You must be a registered forum user. Also, the forum does not recognize users automatically for spam reasons, you need to participate by making a post at some point. This also prevents Bots from swarming the board. Once the shader package is linked you may be able to make a post and download it.)

You can participate there and come back to the blog time to time to see other examples and explanations on the shader library.

These shaders begin the transition to other modern techniques with a flexible selection of components. The features include (but not a complete list):

• Built-in framebuffer outputs
• Better importance sampling for faster renders
• Components as separate building blocks for arbitrary layering. A single library can make shaders for many different things from car paint to skin and more.
• Non-lightmapping scattering shaders (multi-threaded)
• Light Path Expression options for specifying framebuffer passes
• Layers maintain energy conservation without user interaction
• and more. . .

You’ll also notice a re-branding continuing on the site. The main website address is now: http://www.nvidia-arc.com

They are looking for images to use on the main banner, you can even try your hand at some images with the new shaders!

New Maya Rendering UI Testing!

After some careful thought and a lot of tedious work by developers Brenton and Corey (mental core), you can find a Maya Render Settings UI for testing. Barton Gawboy is project management. The purpose of this UI is to provide a more official/intended workflow for mental ray. This also means makers of UIs for other packages can use this as a template for features on modern mental ray (3.10 and future).

This UI is in an early phase and should not be used for production. Currently the Quality settings have been re-worked to provide a simpler interface and a modern workflow for using mental ray in Maya. Over time we will be improving on this (light and passes tabs to be re-worked) and adding documentation. We recommend Maya 2013 SP1.

You can find the scripts on the Google Code page: Maya Render Settings UI

A further discussion can be found on the ARC forum (must be a member): Maya Options UI