Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Hi, what I'm I doing wrong if I'm ending up with just a black image while rendering with the hdr/mxi option under environment in maya 7.0?

I’m using a .hdr image in all of the slots available and even tried to put the .hdr image on a sphere with a emitter, but the emitter refuses the image with telling me something about bitmaps problem. I’ve got the .hdr image to be shown in the background of my render, but the object still ending up totally black even though I’m increasing the light.

Thanks

Let me put it this way.
Have anyone got hri/mxi lightening to work within maya?

From rhino it just does not start to render, have to fix it in studio and render from there.

Ricardo

Hey, Ludenhud,

I've read your post and prety extensivly testest all HDR inputs from within the MAYA 7 environments Attribute editor to test different combos of hdr reflect/refract/illum/background on off in combo with physical sun and sky and I gotta say that its works well IF i pick a properly illuminated HDR file..I did get black results when i ddi either one of two things:
*I used HDR NOT MXI files*

1) picked an hdr file that by default the exposure default was very low.. I had to take this file into photoshop and bump up the exposer.. ALso I guess. this can be changed with the intensity multiplier.. But maybe if its too dark this wont work too well.. Id increase the exposure in photoshop (CS2 handels hdr's) my intensityMultyplier in MAYA on the average wass set to either 2-5 for illumination and 5-10 for reflection and refraction(for extream reflection/caustics)

2)the most common way that I ended up getin black renders was that i simply wasnt picking the file off my disk correctly.. I thought I could simply Copy and paste the path to the HDR after choosing one hdr throuhgt the explorer.. even thouhg it showed that a file was input into my reflection/refraction channel my objects still rewflected black.. so for each channel.. make sure you hit the "hd" button and mannualy navigate to those specific hdr files.. kinda a pain to do it 4 times ina row.. Id like to just copy and paste but neccasary right now...

IF you'd like I can give you maya maya 7 scene and my hdr file that i used to test this out. (Im using maya 7 on winxP-shuld work for both xp and mac)

Hope you get it working soon, since at first i douted how well this hdr illumination channels worked but WOW they work great and the renders Definatly clear WAY faster than they did in comparison to hope i used to map mxi's onto a really really low poly geo around the scene...

-luke

scene settings:


no background with those reflect/refract/illum settings :


image using physical sky for lighting with hdr for Background/illum and reflection/refract:(physical sky also contributes to reflection)

YOO... A PROBLEMS thats been happening to me where it CANT find my MXMs or My HDRs.. IS sometimes.. essp if i Drag and drop from MXED the BACKSLASHES of the file path are BACKWARDS show up as SLASHES!!!.. so make sure your BACKSLASHES are the same as youd see them...

ie:

C:\Program Files\Next Limit\Maxwell


MAYBE this is why your renders are black? happened to me..
Just wanted to point this out to everyone that it happens essp with MXMs ALOT to me..

Thanks for all the information you're giving me and others here.

For this case the black render had to do with my setup and that's why it ended up with a black output.

However, I've discovered a new phenomenon while using hdri and emitters at the same time. If I'm rendering a metal sphere using only hdri in all slots, I'm having reflections of the hdri image on the metal sphere which is totally correct. But if I'm including 3 emitters with hdri the hdri lightening is turned all off. I'm unable to use the -ml option for my hdri image and nothing is working properly.


I let enclose some images of the settings end results below


This image is hdri lightening and 3 emitters


This scene is hdri light only (with -ml)

Ok, I made some tests after posting my other post about this hdri and emitter problem and came up with this result.

I turned -ml off while using emitters and Hdri and this is what came out...


Since I'm unable to change the intensity of the emitters I cant' really tell if they working with hdri or not.
So I cranked the intensity of the emitters up to more than 20 times of the original value, and this is what came out this time.



I have to say I doubt the emitters to working even when I turned -ml off and the hdri for once started to work.

So my results for now;

• Emitter +hdri (-ml ON) = Emitters and multilight working only - Hdri is turned off
  Emitters + hdri (-ml Off) = Hdri working fine but the emitters are acting like planes without emitting light