VRay For Maya

Hi everyone!

My name is Dennis and just got my hands on the Vray For Maya demo! A friend asked if I could explain the basics, so here is a very simple tutorial.

First of all if you havent, get Vray For Maya from ChaosGroup --> http://www.chaosgroup.com (you have to create an account)

- Then just install it, simple as that.
To load the plugin, go to �Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager� 
Then scroll down untill you find �vrayformaya� and check both Loaded and Auto Load and press �close�.

When that is done, hit the render Settings button and choose V-ray!


Ok, so now Vray is loaded, and we are ready to set some preferences. First, this is a demo, the resulotion is locked to 600*450 and it only supports 200 objects in the scene.

In this tutorial the settings in the �VRay Common� tab is not that relevant, so we jump right to the �VRay� tab! To override mayas enviroment check �Override Enviroment�, then I usually tint the blue color to a more white, but thats optional.



Hit render, my scene looks like this!





Under the �Indirect Illumination� tab, check �On� to activate Global Illumination. Under the �Irradiance map� settings, you can choose from different quality settings, �high� is for production. Keep in mind, for testrenders it might be better to lower the settings to medium or low, to save time!




New render!



A feature under the �Settings� tab that can be useful is the �Adaptive Threshold� For Production quality, set it to 0.003, it reduces the noise pretty good, for testrenders I sometimes go up to 0.5, saves alot of time!
Default is 0.010




We leave the �Translator� tab and �Render Elements� to another tutorial!

Ok, so we did just set up a basic GI enviroment, lets add a light and also take a quick look at the vray materials!

To add a vray-light go to �Create > Lights > V-Ray Rect Light�

It adds a vray-light in the middle of the scene, rotate and change the size of it as you wish, also you often have to lower the intesity(default 30) I used a value of "3" in my scene!

U and V size depends on your scene. I changed the lights subdivs to �32�



To create a simple chrome material, open up the �hypershade window� and select �VRay Mtl�  In the attribute editor change the color to black and make the material reflective!  





And there we have it! You can se the lights reflection in the chromespehere, it can easily be turned off under the lights attribute and uncheck �Affect reflections�



If the light should block your view, check �invisible� in the attributes for the light

Here is a quick test I did! I hope that this simple tutorial can help you to get startet with Vray For Maya! 

Posted in: tutorial