Maya 2011 Dielectric Material Mental Ray Tutorial by Stuart Christensen

Glass is one of the most beautiful materials on earth. You will always be searching for a way to replicate this magnificent material as a CG element. Get started on the right foot with using the Mental Ray Dielectric material to create glass and water effects in this tutorial by Stuart Christensen. The dielectric_material is a quirky animal and has many adjustments to make before you get a superb result. Learn the basics of glass and water now because you will be using them often! Enjoy!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Maya
• 2011
• mental
• ray
• dielectric
• material
• glass
• tutorial
• Stuart
• Christensen

[WizardReel]

I'm modeling a car, would the dielectric material be good for the glass windows, or would suggest a different type of shader? How about standard glass vs tinted?

[deepfriedectoplasm]

@WizardReel dielectric would be fine, just mess with the transparency and colors for different styles of glass. Hope that helps.

[jfesmire]

I really need to put this shader on a piece of glass in a scene, but I'm getting "Error: Object 'dielectric_material_qualityMe­nu' not found, when I create the dielectric_material node. Any idea how to fix this? I'm using Maya 2011.  Thanks!

[deepfriedectoplasm]

@jfesmire Could be a number of things but much to hard for me to pinpoint without seeing the file. Sometimes you need to delete the prior material and then "delete" history by type and then do a save and then reassign the material...other times it's not that easy. Keep trying to troubleshoot....Maya loves a good troubleshooter...Sorry I can't be more help on that one!

[StudioGoldsmith]

How did you proceed when rendering video with mental ray in Maya? Can it be without using batch render?

[deepfriedectoplasm]

@StudioGoldsmith Anytime you want to get an animated sequence out of Maya you will be using the Batch Render to create final output of the image sequence so that you can bring it into After Effects or some other compositing program. I have some tutorials that explain the process more in-depth if you need, just check my main You-Tube channel page and scroll through the list. Hope that helps. Stu

[lemi667]

Very nice, thank you!

[GaroCARP]

thxx! i really enjoy watching your tuts!

[enlil06]

You're the bomb-diggity! Very nice and easy to follow. 

[SkifNomadcat]

Oh, man, thanks a lot! I started to learn dielectric material. Your narration just great! I've do all like you said, do some experimentation and just got what I need. Thanks again and cheers from Ukraine :)

[jfesmire]

@deepfriedectoplasm Thanks for trying! I tried again this morning after rebooting, and voila! No problem. I don't know why it didn't work in the first place, but that's what worked.

[TheYashu200]

Very nice tutorial .... i always messed up with the mental ray properties , which properties to check on and which to not .. this Tutorial helped me alot . And tell me is there any way i can get to know what properties of MR need to check in for Diff diff materials ...:)