8

Rendering with the mental ray Renderer 79
Common Par a meters R ollout
When you render with mental ray, controls on
the Render Scene dialog > Common panel >
Common Parameters rollout remain the same, and
func tion just as they do w ith the default 3ds Max
scanline renderer.
Limitations
The mental ray renderer does not support certain
rendering features, as described here.
•Outputditheringoptionsaren’tsupported
(in Main menu > Customize > Preferences >
Preference Sett ings dialog > Rendering panel >
Output Dithering group).
• Thementalrayrendererdoesnotfullysupport
G-buffer options in post processing and image
file output. The mental ray renderer generates
all required G-buffer channels, but do es not
include transparency information. If two
transparent objects overlap each other, the
mental ray render generates information only
for the frontmost object.
• When you use a bitmap as an environment (that
is, as a background), the mental ray renderer
will sample it and filter it. This can result in
unwanted blurring. To prevent background
blurring, render the scene against a solid-color
background, and then composite the rendered
scene with the background image.
• Sometimes when you render objects that
have zero thickness, or an Extrude modifier
w ith zero thickness, the mental ray renderer
generates rendering artifacts that appear as
streaks. In some cases, you can fix this by
turningonForce2-SidedintheRenderScene
dialog’s Common Parameters rollout. If the
streaks persist, give the object or the E xtrude
modifier a nonzero thickness.
See also
Sampling Quality Rollout (mental ray Renderer)
(page 3–97)
Camera Effects Rollout (mental ray Renderer)
(page 3–100)
Caustics and Global Illumination Rollout (mental
ray Renderer) (page 3–104)
Final Gather Rollout (mental ray Renderer) (page
3–109)
Shadows and Displacement Rollout (mental ray
Renderer) (page 3–111)
Rendering Algorithms Rollout (mental ray
Renderer) (page 3–113)
Translator Options Rollout (mental ray Renderer)
(page 3–115)
Distributed Bucket Rendering Rollout (mental ray
Renderer) (page 3–121)
Procedures
To us e the mental r ay render er:
1.
Choose Rendering menu > Render . The Render
Scene dialog displays.
2. On the Common panel, open the Assign
Renderer rollout, then click the “...” button for
the Production renderer.
AChooseRendererdialogisdisplayed.
3. OntheChooseRendererdialog,clicktoselect
mental ray Renderer, and then click OK.
Now when you render, the Render Scene dialog
appears with the mental ray controls. You can
choose to render the scene with the built-in mental
ray renderer, or simply to translate the scene
and save it in a
.mi file (page 3–1066) that you
can render later, perhaps on a different system.
Controls for choosing whether to render, save to
a.
mi file, or both, are on the Translator Options
(page 3–115)
rollout.