Hi

My mantra image is not as crispy as the one in the scene view.
I am quite disappointed by the poor quality of Mantra.
How can i enhance the mantra quality. Can any one help me.

Thanks in advance.

Steve

Not to be harsh but there is no instant satisfaction when it gets to mantra. It requires serious studying. http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini10.0/rendering/ [sidefx.com] to start and then I would recommend Essential Renderman 2nd Ed. by Ian Stephenson or Rendering for Beginners by Raghavachary. Most renderman concepts apply to mantra with little or no change.

Unfortunately the documentation on mantra is a bit thin on the low and high end of the learning curve. If you search the forum you'll find more than the odd thread like this where someone comes complaining about mantra and starts a big discussion. Also in those threads there will be lots of tips from others on where to start. There are also some video tuts out there from digital tutors, cmivfx, buzz that cover mantra I believe.

Good luck and know that this will require the persistence of a pitbull to get over the first few hurdles

Fabian

Steve,

What do you mean by the “scene view”? You realize that, unless you're meaning something else, that's the OpenGL view and will look NOTHING like the mantra render? Can you tell us a bit more about your scene? What's in it? What are your mantra settings, screen shots, etc?

aplink
Hi
My mantra image is not as crispy as the one in the scene view.
I am quite disappointed by the poor quality of Mantra.
How can i enhance the mantra quality. Can any one help me.
Thanks in advance.
Steve

Pictures, examples, the case description. Might help.

jimc
Steve,

What do you mean by the “scene view”? You realize that, unless you're meaning something else, that's the OpenGL view and will look NOTHING like the mantra render? Can you tell us a bit more about your scene? What's in it? What are your mantra settings, screen shots, etc?

Yes, I am using OGL with use color map checked and texture brought in from Illustrator. I do not use OGL Use Lighting. I just click the mantra icon right under the Render Flipbook to check the image i painted in illustrator.
Can you help me further ? Thank you very much.

Steve

It sounds like you have not put down a mantra node and are using the default driver. Read http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini10.0/rendering/setup [sidefx.com] on how to set up a mantra node and then load some of the examples listed here http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini10.0/examples/out [sidefx.com] and start playing and comparing the settings.

After that though you will have to start reading about the different settings in the docs and not least about the whole shading process. Personally when I first got to mantra/reyes after nearly 10 years of mental ray I was very confused about the settings and documenation until I had read the books mentioned above and understood how the whole rendering process differs from a pure raytracer, which is very intuitive in comparison. After that things started to become a bit clearer. Good luck.
Fabian