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The architecture of mental ray

Figure 1 shows the standard mental ray architecture. Figure 1 standard mental ray architecture. F1: Application scene file: Application proper file. For example, .max (3dsmax), .ma or .mb (Maya), .scn (XSI). F2: .mi file: mental ray scene description file. If the DCC software has mental ray plugin, or integrates mental ray, they usually support .mi file export. (A2) 1. Application: DCC (Digital contents creation) software. For example, Maya, 3DSMax, XSI, CAD program, and so on. 2. mental ray core: mental ray core program. There are library version mental ray and stand alone mental ray. The library version mental ray is usually invoked by a DCC application via translator module of the application. A translator is a module of a DCC application which translate the DCC application's internal data structure to the mental ray data structure. The stand alone version mental ray reads a .mi file and performs the rendering. If you have only mental ray core, mental ray does not work. mental

Using stand alone mental ray

If you render a scene using Maya, 3dsMax, XSI, and so on, you can skip this part of article. If you have your own shaders or you are managing a render firm, then this might help you a bit. References of mental ray The following mental ray references are the important ones. Thomas Driemeyer, Rendering with mental ray, 3nd Ed. (Mental Ray Handbooks 1), ISBN-13: 978-3211228753 Thomas Driemeyer and Rolf Herken, Programming mental ray, (Mental Ray Handbooks 2), ISBN-13: 978-3211838518 Andy Kopra, Writing Mental Ray Shaders: A Perceptual Introduction (Mental Ray Handbooks 3), ISBN-13: 978-3211489642 These are advanced documentation and there are some more introductory documents around. Among these three books, I think Andy Korpa's book is easier to read. There is also a support page of the book http://www.writingshaders.com/ . Getting mental ray In my case, I use mental ray at my company. Therefore, I have no problem to get mental ray. However, if you want to have mental ray in private,

What is mental ray shader?

mental ray shader is C/C++ code that is invoked by the mental ray core when a ray hits an object. The name ``shader'' is used by hysterical reason, I think ``Plugin'' is much better word nowadays. mental ray shader gives us a lot of freedom for users, but, I think we do not need to write a custom shader in most of the cases. The meaning of 'gives us a lot of freedom' is when a ray hit an object, a user could almost everything by a shader. For example, when a ray hit an object, mental ray can send an email from the shader. (I believe that mental ray designer does not recommended this kind of side effect usage, but, a shader is just a plugin and it should be possible.) You can do anything means also it is difficult to handle the shaders. mental ray was developed for a long time and takes care of backward compatibility, this contributed for its complexity.