I’ve started to try to do some renderings in Maya. I’m exporting my model from SolidWorks as an IGS file or STEP file. When I render with Mental Ray, I get these breaks on many fillets and revolved parts. I’ve tried to adjust the tesselation in the attribute editor and in “nurbs tesselation”. I’ve also tried clicking on the “smooth edge” under nurbs tesselation. Nothing seems to help.
What am I missing?
mentalray tessellation is handled separately from maya’s tessellation. mr tessellation is handled by approximation nodes. Approximation nodes can be assigned to individual surfaces or to the whole scene.
If you have the help files, look up “approximation nodes.” There are tutorials there to explain how to assign the nodes to individual surfaces. When you get to the actual settings of the node, I find that the Parametric Grid presets work the best for the nurbs data I work with. Just keep raising the u and v subdivisions until the surfaces smooth out. For big arcing surfaces like you have, you will likely need to raise them above the default values.
To just override the settings for the whole scene, look up “override approximation settings” and follow the tutorial by the same name.
This is how it’s done in Maya 7 anyway. I’m sure 8 is not much different if you are running that.
Thanks Dustin. I feel like a total chump now, that was such an easy fix!