MayaMan Material Attributes Dialog

TheMayaMan Material Attributes dialog allows you to control various material-specific parameters that only apply to MayaMan renders.

Adding and Accessing the MayaMan Material Attributes

Before you can modify the MayaMan Material Attributes, you will have to add the attributes to the materials. You do this by selecting the material(s) you want to add the attributes to, then select "Add Material Attributes" from the MayaMan menu. All attributes are stored on a separate node, so several materials can easily share the same set of attributes.

By default, "Add Material Attributes" will add one shared/common attribute node for all the materials in the selection that do not already have attributes attached to them. In the optionBox of the menu, there are alternative ways in which to add the attributes, eg adding separate nodes to each material etc.

Once a material has a MayaMan Model Attribute node, you can simply access all attribute parameters in their own panel in the Maya Attribute Editor.

Reflections

Cube Face Env

This parameter allows you to generate cube face environment reflection maps for the objects that have this material attached to them.

Flat Mirror

When this parameter is enabled, MayaMan will generate a flat mirror reflection map for all objects that have this material attached to them.

Reflection Blur

Increase the value of this parameter to increase the blur in raytraced reflections.

Reflection Samples

This parameter determines the number of samples that will be used when evaluating raytraced reflections. You will need to increase this value to reduce noise in blurred reflections.

Refraction Blur

Increase the value of this parameter to increase the blur in raytraced refractions.

Refraction Samples

This parameter determines the number of samples that will be used when evaluating raytraced refractions. You will need to increase this value to reduce noise in blurred refractions

Motion Blur

Motion Blur Shadows and Reflections

This option will enable/disable motion blurred shadows and reflecions of motion blurred objects. Use the option here if you want to override the setting made in the MayaMan Global Options.

Indirect Lighting

When you are using MayaMan's material emulations you can use these controls to specify a different shading network to be used for indirect lighting probes. This can be advantageous when the surface shader is complex (and therefore expensive).

Filter Scale

This option scales the size of all filters that will be used in the shader code written to emulate the shading network connected to Surface Shader. In general you want the indirect shader to be blurry so this provides a convenient control over all the filtering done on this sub-network.

Surface Shader

Connect a 'Surface Shader' to this input (the checker icon will create one for you). The outColor and outTransparency attributes of the surface shader will be used when the object is being sampled by an indirect illumination probe ray.

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