2008

one. Because objects can be discarded from the memory to render other objects,
it’s important to avoid having to reload the same object multiple times. This
is especially important when you have enabled placeholder objects (see the
Processing panel >
Translator Options rollout on page 6122 ).
If you use distributed rendering to render a scene, it might be hard to
understand the logic behind the rendering order. In this case, the order has
been optimized to avoid sending lots of data over the network. Each CPU is
assigned a bucket as the bucket becomes available, so different buckets can
appear in the rendered image at different times. See the Renderer panel >
Sampling Quality rollout on page 6083 .
NOTE The mental ray renderer can also be run in a standalone fashion, using a
command-line interface based on the mi2 or mi3 scene description format. This
is described in the manual mental ray Programming, which is written for
programmers writing custom
shaders on page 7925 .
See also:
■
Getting Good Results with mental ray Rendering on page 6044
■ 3ds Max Materials in mental ray Renderings on page 6048
■ mental ray Concepts on page 6056
■ Enhancements to Standard Features on page 6050
Procedures
To use the mental ray renderer:
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.
A Choose Renderer dialog is displayed.
3 On the Choose Renderer dialog, click to select mental ray Renderer, and
then click OK.
TIP After you make the mental ray renderer the active production renderer,
you can click Save As Defaults to make the mental ray renderer the default
renderer for all new scenes. This can be a convenient way to avoid extra setup
time.
mental ray Renderer | 6041