Digital-Tutors, an Autodesk Authorized Publisher, announced the availability of MENTAL RAY IN MAYA: RENDERING WORKFLOW, an interactive guide to learning the fundamentals of mental ray and the newest release in a growing library of interactive training for emerging digital artists. MENTAL RAY IN MAYA: RENDERING WORKFLOW provides more than three hours of project-driven training for learning rendering techniques and workflow developed to maximize the artist's time and creativity.
"Perfect for students and professionals learning mental ray and improving their rendering workflow, artists will learn how to add visual depth and stunning detail to their work," said Sunder Iyer, director of research and development. "Artists will learn optimization techniques, a results-oriented workflow, and how to implement the powerful features of mental ray at their own pace."
Highlights from MENTAL RAY IN MAYA: RENDERING WORKFLOW include: detailed overview of mental ray materials, global illumination, emitting global illumination photons from lights, photon falloff, intensity, and count, final gather, methods of controlling final gather light intensity, multi-bounce final gather rays, mixing final gather/global illumination effects, image-based lighting (HDR), creating HDR images, methods of setting up HDR lighting, caustics, emitting caustic photons from lights, caustic accuracy, caustic filtering types, sub-surface scattering, utilizing MR_fast_skin shader, ambient occlusion, light baking, HDR light baking, dielectric, DGS, sub-d/displacement approximation nodes, participating media, phenomena, passes, rendering features of Maya Unlimited, rendering Paint Effects and additional lessons developed to teach artists rendering techniques and workflow in mental ray.
Digital-Tutors (www. digitaltutors.com) develops training solutions for emerging digital artists using a unique teaching approach designed by university professors and industry professionals. Recognized as the largest resource for free online training, Digital-Tutors delivers intuitive project-driven training for artists of all levels.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
