2008

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 on page 7848 file
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
rollout
on page 6122 .
Rendering with the mental ray Renderer
Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog > Common panel > Assign
Renderer rollout > Choose mental ray Renderer as the production renderer.
Main toolbar > Render Scene > Render Scene dialog > Common panel > Assign
Renderer rollout > Choose mental ray Renderer as the production renderer.
To use the mental ray translator and renderer, you must first choose mental
ray as the production renderer, as described the "Procedures" section below.
Once you have chosen mental ray rendering, the Render Scene dialog displays
panels and rollouts that control the mental ray renderer.
Common Parameters Rollout
When you render with mental ray, controls on the Render Scene dialog >
Common panel > Common Parameters rollout remain the same, and function
just as they do with the default 3ds Max scanline renderer.
Limitations
The mental ray renderer does not support certain rendering features, as
described here.
■ Output dithering options aren't supported (in Main menu > Customize >
Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Rendering panel > Output
Dithering group).
■ The mental ray renderer does not fully support G-buffer options in post
processing and image file output. The mental ray renderer generates all
required G-buffer channels, but does 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
6042 | Chapter 18 Rendering