help with plant in MR tutorial

[surfengine]

tutorial: Creating Plants in Maya/Mental Ray part1

I'm using Maya 2012 x64 on win7 pro.

Whenever I get to the shader section for the shrub leaf. the one that has the file with alpha channel and I am creating the network, maya will crash.
(section miaMaterial & exposure part 1)

it crashes as soon as the connection from lumanice node to the mia_X node is made.\

I followed exactly the tutorial, its very simple to follow as its a great tutorial.
I tried to create this shader on blank scene and get the same results.

Anyone else get the crashing problem? Is there another workaround for making the alpha transparent?

[surfengine]

ok, for those of you that dont have the tutorial, but have the skills, please try this:

in hypershade:
create file
create ramp
create mia_material_x
create reverse
create luminance

ramp1 --> mia_material_x = diffuse
file1 --> ramp1 = colorgain
file1 --> reverse1 = outtransparency to input
reverse1 --> lumanince1 = value
lumanince1 --> mia_material_x = outvalue to cutout_opacity

this crashes my maya.

[surfengine]

it works ok on maya 2013.

so its either a version issue, a hardware issue or a setting issue.

[surfengine]

anyone out there?

[surfengine]

im still trying to find an answer for this.
i sacrificed and went with using the phong material, but actually that has some problems as well as not being as greatly detailed as the mia_material_x.

its also getting a gray outline when the leafs are against a black or dark background.

[gnomonhelp]

I am having the same issues as you with the files. I have opened some of the plant scenes and when I either try to render or open the hypershade to examine the shaders, maya will crash every time!

It is very frustrating. I have Maya 2012. I don't know if the files were created in maya 2013 and something is bugging out the nodes? I've tried resaving the scene as .MA and reopened but the same issue happens.

Please note this doesnt happen in all the scenes in the folder. But the ones that do it for sure are the clover and the fern scene. I know those use the alpha transparency in the shading network.

[RDeWeese]

I don't use Maya, but one thing I always ask people that are having problems with 3DS Max is if they are up to date with all hotfixes and service packs. Here's a link to the updates for Maya: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...&siteID=123112

If you haven't installed the service packs for Maya 2012, I would highly recommend it.

[gnomonhelp]

wow, thank you RDeWeese! that solved the problem. i didnt think to update since I thought I had the newest version from AD, but I guess they only sent me the original copy, so I installed service pack 2 and now things work.

thanks again.

[RDeWeese]

That's great! I'm glad I was able to help, even though I'm not a Maya user.

[surfengine]

Originally Posted by RDeWeese

That's great! I'm glad I was able to help, even though I'm not a Maya user.

RDeWeese! Thank you so much. that did resolve my problem. i only wish it didnt take a month for someone to suggest that. i didnt even realize there was an update.
i blasted that problem on like 8 forums and you were the only person to actually suggest...anything.

not to mention the 5 hours I spent uninstalling. like why cant maya uninstall like a normal program? i had to manually remove everything from the registry.