Maya 2011 Gold Metallic Mental Ray Shader Tutorial by Stuart Christensen

Gold is an elusive element to re-create because it's shiny and predictable but only when you take into account the actual lighting in the your scene. So set up a few lights and learn how to create a Golden Mental Ray Metallic Shader in this tutorial by Stuart Christensen. This shader should serve as a starting point for you to add the golden touches to your scene. Remember, gold is awesome because of the way it looks in different kinds of light so keep that in mind as you play around with the parameters of this cool Mental Ray Shader.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Maya
• 2011
• Metallic
• Gold
• Shader
• Mental
• Ray
• Tutorial
• Stuart
• Christensen

[YogiRaina]

I made all my settings to match yours but when I apply my mental ray the object turns flat black? And when I render, it's just rendering the flat base color. Please help!

[deepfriedectoplasm]

@YogiRaina Make sure you are using Mental Ray for doing the rendering! Mental Ray shaders will show up as black in the viewport but render out in color. Hope that helps.

[LastActionCowboy]

my Maya doesn't have a mental ray option. when i go to render view thge only options are Maya Software, and Maya Hardware. there isnt even mental ray materials when i go to shade the object.

[deepfriedectoplasm]

@LastActionCowboy Open Maya and go to the "Window" menu at the top, and choose "settings and preferences" - "Plug-in Manager" and make sure the little boxes are checked for "Mayatomr" and this will enable Mental Ray and everything will be right with the world! Hope that helps. Stu

[patwauschek]

Great tutorial, man. But...the whole time I watched this, I just pictured Heath Ledger's Joker in front of a computer making this tutorial. "Here's our metallic paint and...here....we....go........­See it's simple...we render...in Mental Ray."

[ambaccabane91]

@deepfriedectoplasm ahahaha

[deepfriedectoplasm]

@ambaccabane91 Look, I had to clear my Frickin throat! Alright! So get on with your learning. You're lucky I didn't fart!

[timabad]

8:44  HHHMMRRRR

[romanhorol]

hey stuart, i was creating basic set of light using physical sun and sky , created then simple box and deleted some faces at the top of it , then i created spher e

and attached an mia material _x to and changed the preset to to copper, those setting with abit of ray tracing giving the best gold i could find , thanks again for your tutorials , you are really somthing somthing

[YogiRaina]

I've also tried importing my images as lamberts into a new maya scene however, when applying any type of new mental ray material the attribute editor displays the swatch as a weird icon with a red X through it?

[YogiRaina]

I've made sure that my render settings and render preview are both using mental ray...but it's still rendering flat black in the viewport and just the flat base color in the render? Is this a bug or do I have another setting wrong? I can send you screen shots. Please help....thanks again!