use background shader and MR?
 

is there a way to get the use background shader to work with mental ray? thanks in advance

??? use background shader?? you mean image plane?

The use background shader works perfectly with mental ray for me.

ok im lost LOL whats a background shader??

Backgroung Shader is a material that you apply to your object. What it does when you render is allow to see shadows, reflections but not the actual surface.

example: You have a background image of a parking lot and want to but your modelled car in it. To cast shadows you would use a plane under the vehicle and apply this background shader. when you render you will see shadows being casted as if there where actually in the picture.

Hope this makes sense.

It does work with Mental Ray. What version of Maya are you running.

thanks roach. I have new appreciation for those little brown things now LOL.

I'm running 5.0, the use background shader does show through to the background, but the shadows don't show up on the ground

Here is a quick render I did using MR with photons and all.

The guy in the pic is not me! I just pulled that shot from google.

mental ray
 

where can i get mental ray, do i have to buy it seperately?

Mental Ray is included with Maya 5 and if you have Maya 4.5 than you must download a plugin.

plug in
 

is there a plugin on the alias site?

yup

mental ray
 

when i go to the site i get directed 30 different ways. I see the link to take me there but it doe's not instruct me to do anything

mr shaders
 

I have mental ray installed and i even have some shaders thanks to high end 3d, but how do i use them(import into maya 4.5?