Use a custom-made mental ray for Maya shader in Maya
 
 
 

To use custom-made mental ray for Maya shaders in Maya

  1. Write or obtain a shader declaration file (that is, an .mi file that contains the description of the shader(s)).

    See Write a shader declaration file.

    Tip

    mental ray user data is now supported in Maya. Declared (with parameters), and Literal (raw bytes) data are translated as two separate nodes in Maya. This applies only to mental ray for Maya custom shader nodes.

  2. Insert the shader into a shader library (.dll on Windows; .so on Linux and Mac OS X).
    • Maya2012/mentalray/lib contains shader libraries that are compiled and loaded into Maya by default.
    • Compiling and linking a shader on Windows requires including shader.h and linking to shader.lib. These two files are shipped with Maya, and can be found at Maya2012/devkit/mentalray.

    For more information on shader libraries, see mental ray for Maya custom shaders.

    Note

    Beginning Autodesk Maya 2011, mental ray for Maya has implemented the default substitution rule .so > .dylib for the Mac OS X platform. Old shader libraries with a.so extension must be renamed. The consistent .so/.dll/.dylib substitution rules provide .mi scenes with cross-platform compatibility.

  3. Load the shader by doing one of the following

    See Load shaders.