Tues 28th April 20:
So I couldn't figure out how to fix the problem of the particles so I had to search on YouTube of how to install the plugin to Maya and I found 'Renderman 22 - Installation for Maya Tutorial'. I looked at other videos but this one was better to understand. So I created an account and downloaded the zip file off-screen recording.
Later, I installed the program on my computer then loaded the program in the plug-in manager so I could start using Renderman. So after loading the plug-in, I deleted the particle emitter, then started adding a PxrRectLight to cast the right shadows. Afterwards, I tried to render the light in the Renderman renderer but all the setting in the renderer greyed out and wouldn't work so I continued to watch the tutorial to see if the video would fix it. Afterwards, I grouped the riverbank and the other plane together as the video advised.
I wasn't sure so I continued by creating the Renderman lava texture with a PxrSurface material then added a PxrFractal to the material with the changes of its properties. Then tried again to render the changes but it still didn't let me render the scene. So I found out I needed to load a license into the program so I had to go look for this license in my document and I found the license file but it wouldn't load into the program.
So I looked on the Pixar Renderman website for the license (student license) but I couldn't get the license and figure out the problem. So I unloaded the plug-in from Maya but it didn't remove Renderman from the program so I had to close Maya to refresh the settings then I reloaded the last saved version of the file.
When I reloaded the Maya file, the Renderman shelf was till in the program so I went investigating in how to get rid of it. So I closed the program again then restarted it and that seemed to get rid of the Renderman self.
I still couldn't fix the problem with the particle emitter so I deleted it again. So I had to get rid of a few layers that weren't supposed to be there but this gave me some problem where the environment kept deleting when I deleted the transform layer that was separate. So I put all the transform layers into the grouped riverbank layer but have the single plane separate from the group.
As I couldn't get the emitter to work, I tried creating another to see if that would fix the problem. It still didn't fix the problem so I gave up on this technique in the tutorial. So I deleted the plane but it turned the riverbank's texture green so I undid the delete to bring it back which fixed the texture. So I moved that plane to the side so I could create another plane in its place.
So after placing the plane, I tried to find out how to add subdivisions to the new plane. As I thought to make the lava river out of the texture material I used for the lava rock in previous videos. I changed the subdivisions of the plane to 20 by 20 as the rock texture video advised so the texture could be replicate to tile the texture over a bigger surface. But I couldn't find out how to do it in the properties, so I deleted the plane and brought back the previous plane to use.
So I went through the properties of the original plane to find the subdivision and then I finally found the subdivision setting in the INPUT section, inside the polyplane2 section where the subdivision was. But when I changed the subdivisions it turned the plane green again so when I rendered the environment in Arnold renderer the plane went missing so I had to put another Lambert material on the green plane to reset the texture so it would be visible in the render.
After the plane became visible in the render, I had to move and sort the properties to get the right lighting atmosphere. So I change the skydome light from red to white so that it got the right effect. Subsequently, I started texturing the plane the same way I texture the lava rocks (Click this). But with this texture, I change a few properties so it looked like lava rather than rock. So change the noise type and the colours to make the effect.
After creating the lava river texture, I thought to get the river moving (animated) but I didn't have enough texture on the plane so I thought to make the plane bigger (lengthways). But when I scaled the plane it stretched the texture making it distorted.
So I had to create a duplicate to fix this problem because the plane wasn't big enough to animate and wouldn't scale bigger. So I put them next to each other, I combined the planes together to be one shape. But the tiling wasn't perfect leaving block colours on the sides so when I moved the planes along a colour dot appeared (See 1:35:13 - 1:36:08).
I kept messing with the planes to get the desired effect that I want for the animation to fix the dot tiling problem (See 1:36:08 - 1:43:00). So I deleted the plane to make a bigger plane for the texture to tile, but the plane always stretched the texture. So after struggling with the tiling problem and not succeeding, I deleted the duplicated plane and realised I could animate the original plane from one frame to another, always adding on frames to make the animation at the right speed. (See 1:49:23 - 1:53:24).
So after getting the speed just right (1 to 700 frames). it made the lava look realistic at that speed. Afterwards, I just took a single frame of the river for the background (as it will take a few hours to render 699 frames, about a day and a half, so long), and later I will render the moving river.
Earlier, I made a render test that was the switched off skydome version where the emissions colour only shone through to give the light in the render. After rendering the single frame, I forgot to save the rendered frame so went back into Maya to save the render so I can import it into After Effects to finish the background. After importing the background into After Effects, I had to move around some previous assets (like the flaming tree so there on the riverbank, making the devil shape look like he's in the scene).
Henceforth, I rendered the After Effects environment as a still JPG image to save a version of development. After doing the render I looked at the image and realised that I haven't updated the devil's model so had to go back into its Maya file so I could render the character out and update the environment image. (See 2:05:58 - 2:10:32).
Later, I thought if I have flaming trees, why not fire burning on its own so I went back into the flaming tree Maya file and get rid of the tree and leave the flame on its own. So I tried to make the flame spark height but couldn't get it to be a big flame, only be small. So I just rendered out the fire (small flame) as a single frame (and I will render the movement later), then imported it into the environment on the riverbank.
Finally, I rendered the updated, After Effects environment, as a still JPG image to save a version of updated development. In the end, I set up the lava river to render the moving texture 699 frames and I will leave overnight to render every frame. Starting the render on 28th April at 5:51pm.
Later, I installed the program on my computer then loaded the program in the plug-in manager so I could start using Renderman. So after loading the plug-in, I deleted the particle emitter, then started adding a PxrRectLight to cast the right shadows. Afterwards, I tried to render the light in the Renderman renderer but all the setting in the renderer greyed out and wouldn't work so I continued to watch the tutorial to see if the video would fix it. Afterwards, I grouped the riverbank and the other plane together as the video advised.
I wasn't sure so I continued by creating the Renderman lava texture with a PxrSurface material then added a PxrFractal to the material with the changes of its properties. Then tried again to render the changes but it still didn't let me render the scene. So I found out I needed to load a license into the program so I had to go look for this license in my document and I found the license file but it wouldn't load into the program.
So I looked on the Pixar Renderman website for the license (student license) but I couldn't get the license and figure out the problem. So I unloaded the plug-in from Maya but it didn't remove Renderman from the program so I had to close Maya to refresh the settings then I reloaded the last saved version of the file.
When I reloaded the Maya file, the Renderman shelf was till in the program so I went investigating in how to get rid of it. So I closed the program again then restarted it and that seemed to get rid of the Renderman self.
I still couldn't fix the problem with the particle emitter so I deleted it again. So I had to get rid of a few layers that weren't supposed to be there but this gave me some problem where the environment kept deleting when I deleted the transform layer that was separate. So I put all the transform layers into the grouped riverbank layer but have the single plane separate from the group.
As I couldn't get the emitter to work, I tried creating another to see if that would fix the problem. It still didn't fix the problem so I gave up on this technique in the tutorial. So I deleted the plane but it turned the riverbank's texture green so I undid the delete to bring it back which fixed the texture. So I moved that plane to the side so I could create another plane in its place.
So after placing the plane, I tried to find out how to add subdivisions to the new plane. As I thought to make the lava river out of the texture material I used for the lava rock in previous videos. I changed the subdivisions of the plane to 20 by 20 as the rock texture video advised so the texture could be replicate to tile the texture over a bigger surface. But I couldn't find out how to do it in the properties, so I deleted the plane and brought back the previous plane to use.
So I went through the properties of the original plane to find the subdivision and then I finally found the subdivision setting in the INPUT section, inside the polyplane2 section where the subdivision was. But when I changed the subdivisions it turned the plane green again so when I rendered the environment in Arnold renderer the plane went missing so I had to put another Lambert material on the green plane to reset the texture so it would be visible in the render.
After the plane became visible in the render, I had to move and sort the properties to get the right lighting atmosphere. So I change the skydome light from red to white so that it got the right effect. Subsequently, I started texturing the plane the same way I texture the lava rocks (Click this). But with this texture, I change a few properties so it looked like lava rather than rock. So change the noise type and the colours to make the effect.
After creating the lava river texture, I thought to get the river moving (animated) but I didn't have enough texture on the plane so I thought to make the plane bigger (lengthways). But when I scaled the plane it stretched the texture making it distorted.
So I had to create a duplicate to fix this problem because the plane wasn't big enough to animate and wouldn't scale bigger. So I put them next to each other, I combined the planes together to be one shape. But the tiling wasn't perfect leaving block colours on the sides so when I moved the planes along a colour dot appeared (See 1:35:13 - 1:36:08).
I kept messing with the planes to get the desired effect that I want for the animation to fix the dot tiling problem (See 1:36:08 - 1:43:00). So I deleted the plane to make a bigger plane for the texture to tile, but the plane always stretched the texture. So after struggling with the tiling problem and not succeeding, I deleted the duplicated plane and realised I could animate the original plane from one frame to another, always adding on frames to make the animation at the right speed. (See 1:49:23 - 1:53:24).
So after getting the speed just right (1 to 700 frames). it made the lava look realistic at that speed. Afterwards, I just took a single frame of the river for the background (as it will take a few hours to render 699 frames, about a day and a half, so long), and later I will render the moving river.
Earlier, I made a render test that was the switched off skydome version where the emissions colour only shone through to give the light in the render. After rendering the single frame, I forgot to save the rendered frame so went back into Maya to save the render so I can import it into After Effects to finish the background. After importing the background into After Effects, I had to move around some previous assets (like the flaming tree so there on the riverbank, making the devil shape look like he's in the scene).
Henceforth, I rendered the After Effects environment as a still JPG image to save a version of development. After doing the render I looked at the image and realised that I haven't updated the devil's model so had to go back into its Maya file so I could render the character out and update the environment image. (See 2:05:58 - 2:10:32).
Later, I thought if I have flaming trees, why not fire burning on its own so I went back into the flaming tree Maya file and get rid of the tree and leave the flame on its own. So I tried to make the flame spark height but couldn't get it to be a big flame, only be small. So I just rendered out the fire (small flame) as a single frame (and I will render the movement later), then imported it into the environment on the riverbank.
Finally, I rendered the updated, After Effects environment, as a still JPG image to save a version of updated development. In the end, I set up the lava river to render the moving texture 699 frames and I will leave overnight to render every frame. Starting the render on 28th April at 5:51pm.
References
askNK. (2019, 16 Apr). LAVA SHADING FOR NOOB & ADVANCED TEXTURING ARTISTS USING ARNOLD IN MAYA. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/QEKmtMJBl4c [Accessed 28th April 2020]
Small Robot Studio. (2018, 11 Sep). Renderman 22 - Installation for Maya Tutorial. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/yq928zvgi_M [Accessed 28th April 2020]
Pixar. (1986 - 2020). RenderMan Version 23 is Here!. Retrieved from https://renderman.pixar.com/ [Accessed 28th April 2020]
Pixar. (1986 - 2020). RenderMan Version 23 is Here!. Retrieved from https://renderman.pixar.com/ [Accessed 28th April 2020]