So Jeff finished an internal tool for MR in Maya. It assists with using the Matte Shadow Production shader in Maya2008. To be specific, this tool automates the process outlined in Zap's Production Shader Examples. Read Zap's post to get familiar with the process. He basically outlines 2 modes of use. First, he renders the BG Plate in the shot, which we can describe as a LookDev mode. Next, some connection switching will allow for a final renderPass mode, where the BG plate is omitted. This is to generate output for later compositing.
The script below is a tool to generate and connect the required nodes automatically (setup), then easily switch between the lookDev and renderPass mode on the fly. It's not fancy, but it does the job. Also not a lot of error-checking. There is some, but if you delete the nodes it creates, the toggle will stop working. Hey, it's an early version;)
Remember, you will first need some things:
Maya2008, and you should unhide the production shaders via this cgtalk post. Otherwise, you may get missing node errors. Once you've got them unhidden, this script becomes useful. Use by placing the script into an active scripts directory on your system and typing in the command line, "motrMatteShadows 1;" 1 is for setup and lookDev mode. For the renderPass mode, type again, with a "2". I suggest creating 2 bu tons on your shelf for 1 and 2.
The first time you run it (in mode 1), it will create all the shading and camera nodes needed. Yes, it creates a new camera. Go ahead and graph it, and you will see the new connections. It also creates a matteShadow material. You should also graph that in Hypershade (and it's ShadingGroup).
While this early script creates a bunch of nodes for you, and toggles between 2 setups, it doesn't fill in all the blanks yet. We will try to work on that a bit more later. For now, you'll need to do the following steps yourself... Don't worry, they're easy:
1. After graphing the camera in Hypershade, you'll see 2 blank texture nodes. One pipes into mirrorball, and the other into cameramap. place the mirrorball image into the mirrorball texture, and your background plate into the cameramap texture. Since the same texture nodes are piped into your matteShadow material as well, this is all you really have to do.
2. You'll probably want to see the background plate in your viewport, so you'll have to make your own imagePlane for now. Use the same file you used for the cameramap texture. When rendering, you should set the alphaGain of the imagePlane to "0"
Set up your scene elements and do some test renders in mode 1. When you are happy with the overall look, set the script to mode 2 for rendering. You can toggle back and forth at any time to adjust with the bg plate in the render view.
There is a good deal to work on with this script yet. I'd like to start it with a UI, that asks right away for your mirrorball and bgPlate images. Also, it should have an option to auto-build your image plane. Perhaps in a bit. For now, I hope this is useful to someone, even in this rough state.
download
motrMatteShadows ver 0.3
(right click, save target as)
