Creating custom render passes in Maya & Mental Ray

Been studying up on how to create some render passes in Maya/Mental Ray. I'm using 2008 (so sue me), but this should mostly be applicable to 2009/10, as well, because there are some issues with the render passes coming out of both of those versions (mostly much longer renders, as Sagroth talks about HERE).
Basically the idea is to use the mia_x shader in particular to get a full spectrum of render passes basically at no cost (or little cost) to the render time of the images. This can be HUGE when you're rendering a longer animation or a series of animations.
Problem is that it's REALLY complicated, so I do it in three parts here. Part 1 talks about why you'd want to do this, Part 2 talks about the basic setup in Maya using the SimplePasses shader (which you can download HERE) and Part 3 talks about adding multiple shaders to your passes (both multiple mia_x and other custom passes) and some things to look out for re: render layers.
BTW, the script I'm using in the vids is here, though I make no promises about it. I fixed a couple things and can't replicate the weirdness from the 3rd vid, so I think . . . think . . . it should work OK for most things. To use it, source it, then type "zbw_renderPasses". If you open it in a text editor, there are some basic instructions in the header . . .
So anyways, here are the vids :)

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Render Passes (Maya 2008) Part 1 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Render Passes (Maya 2008) Part 2 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Render Passes (Maya 2008) Part 3 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Getting the most from your joint chains

Sounds fun, right? Actually did this video a while back, but been so busy with work that I forgot to post it here. . .
This is a video about how I "reuse" joint chains in a rig. The basic starter example is using copies of the same joint chain for an IK/FK arm. From there I show how to use a version of that chain in a stretchy rig and finally show how that concept applies to a rig I did for Method for a fish character that incorporates an autoswim function with FK control.

Maya/Rigging: Using multiple copies of joint chains from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Correctly orienting controls to your rig

A quick tutorial about getting your controls oriented correctly to the joints of your rig. Seen this done wrong a few times in the last couple years on jobs, and definitely amongst lots of student rigs so I thought I'd throw this together. One of the most sneakily fundamental things you need to know to make decent rigs . . .

Maya/Rigging: Group Orienting/Freezing Controls from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Portal Light

Was looking around at some lighting/rendering sites and noticed how often some people use the portal light/sky light in mental ray. Not much stuff about that, though, regarding Maya. So I thought I'd throw up a vid about what it is and how one might use it. It's a pretty cool shader/light that solves a couple of specific problems and can actually be used in bunches of other circumstances. Some more info can definitely be found at Zap's site and Andrew's site.


Maya/Mental Ray: Portal Lights

Maya - Rigging a dynamic hair system (or one hair anyways)

Here is a video about how to set up a rig for a strand of hair (or anything else that requires some dynamic simulation, like a tail or a wire or whatever). The basic concept is to use an IK spline and blend shapes to get a rig that is fully blend-able between dynamic and manual animation and still give full control over the dynamic component of the rig. It's a bit long (about 40 min), but has the theory behind the rig and pretty much the full setup in Maya.

Maya Rigging: Dynamic/Manual Hair Setup

One more time, for realsies this time

With feeling this time . . .

The Needful Head is for sale on Amazon! By the gods, it's frackin awesome! (can you tell I've started watching Battlestar Galactica?)
Rich made another banner for this holiday season (last year was kind of wash out with distributor issues) so the push is on. In case you didn't catch it in the business pages, we're up to #158,542 in the amazon dvd sales charts! With a huge holiday surge we can catch "Alluvial Deposits in the Nile Delta: The DVD". Those guys at the Geological Information Network think they're such hot s*$t. Let's take em down a peg!
The link to Amazon is here. (look around and you can also find the downloadable version)
The website is here.
Don't buy this crap: