Anyone else having trouble getting shadows to work with Max 2017 and Mental Ray?

[GrChard]

Hi,

Long-time user that is having trouble getting shadows to work in Max 2017, when using Mental Ray. I have checked the usual suspects like MR Cast Shadows and Receive, I ma using a Direct Target light with Shadows on (Ray Traced), Atmosphere shadows checked, light added to FumeFX grid under Illum, Use Autovolume checked, MR Exposure Control with non-physically based lighting, etc. All the things I normally do, but to no avail.

Starting a simple scene from scratch doesn't seem to create shadows, nor do scenes that I have built previously that worked in 2016.

Attached are 2 images, one rendered in 2016, same file in 2017.

Any ideas?

Thank you for your help,

Greg

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[sitnisati]

Hello,

Thank you for the bug report.
It seems that something's changed inside the mental ray to cause FumeFX not to render shadows.
We're working on it.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[GrChard]

Thanks Kresimir, you guys are the best. Thought I was going crazy.

[sitnisati]

Hello,

It might make a while to resolve this as NVidia is a big company and they're not responsive.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[GrChard]

Thank you.

I made a post about this, just now, in the nvidia arc forum for Mental Ray on Max implementation, regarding FumeFX. Hope it helps get their attention.

Greg

[sitnisati]

Hello,

We've got a reply from Nvidia:
"Segmented shadow mode was re-worked in MR 3.14, and there have been some issues in the volume shaders.
It has been resolved in the meantime, but not in mental ray 3.14.1 in Max 2017."

So, at this point we're looking if there is anything inside the FumeFX-mr shader that can be done to solve this issue.

Thank you.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[GrChard]

As it has been six weeks... Any hope of using FumeFX in Max 2017 with Mental Ray, again?

[sitnisati]

Hello,

We are all waiting for nVidia to fix mental ray in 3ds max 2017.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec

[sitnisati]

Hello,

A small update.
We have tested all the options within the mental ray and it seems that Shadows Mode set to Simple or Segments does shadows properly.
The drawback is that this requires Autovolume to be turned off. This will result in complex scenes to render incorrectly.
However, if you only have one FumeFX in the scene, it might work. Adding geometry can cause problems to mental ray as well.

Regards,
Kresimir Tkalcec