Sneak Peak mental mill 1.2

Today I want to talk a little bit about mental mill 1.2 - there are a couple of new features in the next version of mental mill that many of you will appreciate, since we heard requests for them over and over again. So we took the time to implement some of these.


New node types
There will be new node types in mental mill that can be recognized by their orange color. They are called "scene elements". There are several subtypes of scene elements. Even though all of them are equally important for the new workflow, the one you will be using most of the time is camera node.

A camera node inside mental mill displaying an entire scene built out of mutiple geometry using multiple shaders. All shaders are built with mental mill

Camera node
The camera node merges all your scene geometry into one view where you can render it using the realtime preview, mental ray or iray. You can also manipulate your scene: You can also select and move your lights and your geometry simply by clicking and dragging with the mouse.
A camera node may have its own environment attached to it. You may have any number of camera nodes in your workspace, each having its own environment shader attached.

A camera node with an environment shader attached. Each camera node may have its own environment shader which makes it practical for comparing multiple environment images.

Geometry nodes

For your scene to actually show some geometry, you need to create geometry nodes. There are two types: A geometry node that defines the type of geometry: There exists procedural shapes like the torus, sphere, plane and so on.

Various Geometry source nodes: Box, Terrain, .obj-file, Torus

The other geometry node actually defines the object in the scene. It must be fed by one of the aforementioned geometry nodes. Additionally it requires a shader connected to its 'material definition' input port. As soon as you have those set up, you have defined your geometry and it will be shown in the camera node.

Scene element being fed by a Texture_lookup_2d and a Geometry source node

Light nodes
You can create lights like any other scene elemnts using the context menu and creating a light. They use the same node types as geometry nodes, however, there are special ones that define the properties of the light source. Also, the scene element node that the light geometry is connected to also requires a light shader.

Scene Element being fed by a Light source node and a point light shader

You don't need to worry about wiring these scene elements manually - mental mill creates them automatically for you when you create them using the context menu.

Here is an example of a complete workspace in mental mill 1.2