THIS SOFTWARE IS FOR NON COMMERCIAL USE ONLY. BY INSTALLING OR USING THIS LUMA NEXUS ("SOFTWARE")
THE INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY LICENSING THE SOFTWARE ("LICENSEE") IS CONSENTING TO BE BOUND BY AND IS
BECOMING A PARTY TO THE INCLUDED LICENSE AGREEMENT (LICENCE.TXT). IF LICENSEE DOES NOT AGREE TO ALL
OF THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, LICENSEE MUST NOT INSTALL OR USE THE SOFTWARE.
©2008 Luma Pictures Inc.
written by Chad Dombrova

== SUPPORTED PLATFORMS ==
OSX
32-bit Windows
Maya 2008 sp1 or ext2 ( previous versions of Maya 2008 have a bug with the frame buffer API that broke buffer creation)

== INSTALLATION ==
1) scripts
copy these files into a directory in MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH
default:
win C:\My Documents\maya\2008\scripts
osx ~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2008/scripts

2) icons
copy these files to your default icons directory or to a directory set by the XBMLANGPATH
default:
win C:\My Documents\maya\2008\prefs\icons
osx ~/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2008/prefs/icons

3) lib
copy the shader for your system to the appropriate directory or to a directory set by MI_LIBRARY_PATH
default:
win C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008\mentalray\lib
osx /Applications/Autodesk/maya2008/Maya.app/Contents/mentalray/lib

4) include
copy the luma_nexus.mi to the default directory or to a directory set by MI_CUSTOM_SHADER_PATH
default:
win C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008\mentalray\include
osx /Applications/Autodesk/maya2008/Maya.app/Contents/mentalray/include
5) plugins
copy nexusSets.py to a directory in MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH
default:
win C:\My Documents\maya\2008\plug-ins or C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008\bin\plugin-ins
osx /Users/Shared/Autodesk/maya/2008/plug-ins or /Applications/Autodesk/maya2008/Maya.app/Contents/MacOS/plug-ins

6) WINDOWS ONLY - Modify your Maya.env
add the following line to your Maya.env ( usually located at My Documents\maya\2008\Maya.env ):
PATH = $MAYA_LOCATION/mentalray/lib;$PATH

== KNOWN LIMITATIONS ==

unique light names - when rendering diffuse or specular per light, the lights' names are used in the
output passes, so if the name of the light is not unique the file name gets garbled with pipes ("|").
as such, a catch has been placed in the nexusPreRender.mel to ensure unique light names.
assigning a shader as a bump map does not create a bump2d node - this is a general limitation of
custom mr shaders in maya
transparency - the nexus handles transparency a lot differently from a normal buffer shader: it
distributes the transparency across all appropriate passes. this solution has its pros and its cons.
a big pro comes when doing cutout geometry. imagine a bunch of square cards with a snowflake
transparency map: without distributed transparency, all your passes will be squares not snowflakes,
while the refraction/transparency pass will contain all the snowflake cutouts as a beauty. do too
much tweaking of your beauty comp and this refraction pass won't work any more. the con of
distributing transparency is speed, it's much slower.
specular color and reflectivity - unlike maya's shaders, specular color is not a multiplier on
reflectivity on the nexus. this may change in future releases.
exporting objects in light sets and matte sets - currently, a big limitation of light sets and
mattes sets is that if you export objects contained within them, but not the matte/light sets
themselves, the exported objects retain a special attribute which can confuse the nexus when
these objects are imported into a new scene.
16 character limitation for passes and set names - this seems to be a limitation of using string
array attributes in conjunction with mental ray shaders. we're looking into a solution.