Mental Ray

[multimediaman]

Hey everyone... As some of you may have heard, I recently went to the Autodesk Launch Tour, where they showcased their latest line of products, including Maya 2008, 3dsmax 2008, motionbuilder, and combustion...

But as for 3dsmax 2008, their mental ray looked quite a bit better than what mine has to offer.

You see, I find mental ray to be quite limiting, since you can't have anything other than shadow mapped and raytraced shadows for your lights.

I use 3dsmax 7 ... does mental ray for newer versions of 3dsmax offer more versatility? I could've sworn I saw them use area shadows on their lights in the mental ray rendering.

How about exposure control, too? in max 7, mental ray exposure control is almost useless, with either automatic (flashy/flickery), or psuedowhatever ... which is something I couldn't figure out a use for if I was paid to...

so yeah, gimme your mental ray experiences!

[crazy 989]

I managed to use area shadows with mr in max 7, and in max 9 .....

[flux]

i know that in maya the newer versions have more features up front. (easily accesible) but mental ray is very customizeable and has alot of hidden things. im not to sure how this is for max tho.

[smoker]

I have used mentalray mainly for architectural design purposes, and I find it very good at that (max 8 ).

I tested max 9 and they improved the architectural materials templates (available in max BUT i think we are loosing so many advanced aspetcs of this renderer due the lack of documentation, specially regarding lume shaders and custom materials.

I would like it to have better lighting setup and capabilities (maybe it already has it but I haven´t figured out). An example is light maps or light objects available with vray; why they arent present in mentalray?

[dave_3d]

Originally Posted by multimediaman

You see, I find mental ray to be quite limiting, since you can't have anything other than shadow mapped and raytraced shadows for your lights.

? - ?

The Mr Spot and MR Omni have area light options ... have you tried them ? Much finer and more realistic control than area shadows.

Have a look at a tutorial I wrote about different lights in 3ds Max and Mental Ray :

TUTORIAL MR LIGHTS : DM Multimedia - Studio 3DS Max Tips and Tutorials - Full Tutorial - Schnorbill Lighting

Dave

[multimediaman]

max 9's mental ray must be significantly more improved then... I'm using max 7, and the stuff just doesn't look anywhere near like what your results do... I don't even have the option of "disc" lights.

Either way, I think I'm going to stick with scanline rendering until I get max 2008 and my dream machine lol

[Vegard]

My way to get a good MR render in 3ds max 9:

- create>Systems/lights>Daylight system

- Change the the lighting to MR sun and MR sky

- Go to the render box and go to the indirect illumination tab and turn on Final gather

- and hit render

you wil get the best clay render ever, and if you use MR matelials you could get a great result.