iray developer's blog

iray 2: iray in standalone mental ray

Even iray has no customized shaders, iray has a shader. It is mia_material (Arch&Design in 3dsmax) only. Actually, it is a shader that has mia_material interface and the implementation is different from mental ray (only for iray). mental images explains this is for the users who already know the mia_material. Such user doesn't need to learn the iray shader from the scratch. Therefore, some of the physically meaningless parameters of mia_material are disabled. They also said that they will support more physical shaders, like BRDF shaders. Someone asked about volume shaders support at the confenence, but, unfortunately, iray version 1 doesn't support volume shaders and will be supported in the following versions sometime. As for a DCC software user, the problem of iray is they can use it from 3dsmax/Maya/XSI or not. But NVidia's explanation is 'that is autodesk's decision.' Although, mental ray 3.8+ standalone or NVidia RealityServer support iray. (See ment...

iray 3: iray in standalone mental ray

How to export mi file from 3dsmax. 1. Assign mental ray renderer as Production renderer First open the Render Set Up dialog. Figure export_mi_1 show that opening the rollout of assign renderer and then choosing the mental ray renderer as Production renderer. Figure export_mi_1 2. Export a mi file from 3dmax. Choose Render Set Up --- Processing Tab. First you need to choose a filename as in Figure export_mi_2. Without a file name, the checkbox of 'Export on Render' is disabled. This was difficult for me. I wanted to export a file, but Export on Render is disabled. I wish I could choose the Export on Render and then see a warning message, ''an export file name is not specified.'' Next, push the Render button, then a mi file is exported. Figure export_mi_2 This is also difficult for me. When you ' export ' a file, push the ' render ' button. I wish it was like When you ' export ' a file, push the ' export ' ...

A note of mental ray/iray camera terminology.

The original mental ray camera is a pinhole camera. Therefore, some of the terminology differs with a normal camera. I will write them down here. aperture: This is the film width size. This has no relationship with lens aperture/opening. mental ray's camera was a pinhole camera, there is no lens aperture. focal: This is the distance from lens to the film (sensor). Pinhole camera always focused, so there is no focal length meaning. But using parameters aperture and focal length, we can compute the horizontal field of view. I think these two parameters exist for this purpose. aspect ratio: This is film(sensor)'s aspect ratio. There is no relationship with pixel resolution and camera geometry. aspect ratio = film width/film height. Note: If we use aperture, focal, and aspect ratio, we can compute the vertical field of view. mental ray/iray camera model (pinhole camera) without lens shader Current mental ray/iray can have depth of field effect, etc., this termino...

taming mental ray (English version)

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