MayaMan Tips

This page outlines some tricks and tips for getting the best results when rendering with RenderMan through MayaMan.

Tighten Light Linking
By default, all lights in Maya will illuminate all objects. It is better for rendering efficiency if you reduce this linking as much as possible. Moreover, the RIB generation time for complex scenes with many objects and lights will be significantly reduced. This is because there are certain inefficiencies introduced by the Maya API being somewhat lacking in the determination of light linking.

Set Ground Planes to be non-Shadow Casting
Ground-planes and other objects that do not cast objects should have their 'cast shadows' attribute turned off. This allows MayaMan's adaptive shadow map functionality to work in cases where the objects casting the shadows are much smaller than the illuminated area. This functionality can produce high quality shadows even with low resolution maps. The adaptive shadow map generation is linked with Maya's 'Use Dmap Auto Focus' light attribute in case you have need to disable it.

Use Substitute RIBs
For complex objects in your scene, you should create an archive RIB file, then use the MayaMan Model Attributes dialog to tell MayaMan to use the archive file rather than regenerating RIB code for it. You can even replace the geometry in your scene with a lighter version and still have it render the heavy geometry in RenderMan.

Only Render Selected Objects
If you have a complex scene, but are only interested in certain objects for your preview renders, be sure to check the 'Only Render Selected Objects' option in the MayaMan menu. Subsequent renders will then translate only the current selection.

Using 3d Paint
MayaMan will only detect changes to textures from the 3D paint tool when those changes are saved to disk. If you're only going to do a stroke here and there then it's best to run with the 3D paint tool set to 'File Textures->Update on Stroke'. If you're going to do bulk painting then it's best to keep the 3D paint tool setting window open and press 'File Textures->Save Textures' each time you are going to switch from one texture to another.

Shadow Matte Extraction
The magic shaders create an output color variable called '__shadow' which contains the sum of all shadow contributions at that point. This value is suitable for use with Extra Channels Output to produce a seperate image which contains only shadow information at the same time as the beauty pass.

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