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[TUTORIAL] Mental Ray in 3ds Max 9

Started by swat-medic, May 23, 2008, 05:01:35 PM

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swat-medic

Sorry folks, pictures TBA very soon!

To start off, you will need 3ds Max Nine of course. 

Now, start a new scene, and open the renderer dialog.  If you arent already, choose the renderer as Mental Ray Renderer.  To do this, go to the Common tab, and navigate all of the way down until you get to Assign Renderer.  Open that up, and you will find a text box with the Default Scanline Renderer.  Click on the box next to that and choose Mental Ray Renderer.

Now you will need to click on the Indirect Illumination tab, and turn on Final Gatherer.  There is a checkbox on the top left of the window, check that, and set the render quality to low for a draft test render.  The render quality is on the top right, it is a drop down menu.

Now that you have Mental Ray Renderer assigned, and Final Gatherer is turned on, its time to open up the environment menu.  (Press 8 )
Go down about half way and find the Exposure control settings.  Set the Exposure control to Logorithmic Exposure Control from the dropdown menu.  Once this is set, create your scene, usually just a box with a teapot, and then a huge ground plane under that.

After your scene is created, find in the file Create>>Systems>>Daylight.  You must do this, otherwise some things will not work. I.E. If you don't use this, and use the create tab in the program, it will not set an exterior daylight flag witch is required.

Now set the Sun, and Sky to mr Sun, and mr Sky, and do a test render. (F9)

Now open the material editor, and create a material witch is an Arch/Design, and set the settings to be a matte finish.  All on the right side of the menu. (Ill add pictures later)

Play around with the settings a bit, but this is the basic approach to creating a realistic daylight scene in 3ds max 9 and above.  If you have any questions, please PM me or email me at   the-geek-within@hotmail.com

Thank you!

Pat Riot

I think autovino should repost his more indepth version of this from st.
this is a good tutorial for someone familiar with the program, but for those unfamiliar with 3ds the lack of depth/pics will kill them

swat-medic

Very true, witch is why first thing tomarrow I will be taking some pictures to post here along with the tutorial.  Should make it much more "user friendly."

callagrafx

Er, not going to bother with global illumination then?  You also haven't explained that when you create the Daylight system, you have to set the timezone, date and time to get the correct angle.

So much missing, not very useful.  :thumbsdown:
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it

swat-medic

Of course!  Ill add it when I get the pictures. :)