Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
With mental ray for Maya, you'll most often use Scanline or Raytracing for your renders. The
Rasterizer renderer with mental ray is often used for fast motion and transparencies in a
scene and isn't covered in this topic. We'll cover the Scanline and Raytracing algorithms for
the mental ray for Maya renderer.
To render with mental ray, open the Render Settings window, and
change the Render Using drop-down menu selection to mental ray,
as shown in Figure 11.32 (shown with the Features tab selected). The
Render Settings window now has the Common tab along with five
other mental ray-specific tabs: Passes, Features, Quality, Indirect
Lighting, and Options.
mental ray Quality Settings
As with Maya's Software renderer, the primary quality settings for
mental ray's renderer center on anti-aliasing. However, mental ray
for Maya offers you finer control over how you set the quality lev-
els through the Render Settings window. Under the Anti-Aliasing
Quality Raytrace/Scanline Quality heading in the Quality tab,
you'll find these attributes:
Sampling Mode This drop-down menu sets the type of sampling
mental ray performs in the render. Sampling is the number of times
mental ray reads and compares the color values of adjacent pix-
els in order to smooth the resulting render to avoid jagged lines.
The choices are Fixed Sampling, Adaptive Sampling (default), and
Custom Sampling. Adaptive Sampling is generally the best choice
because it sets the best range based on the Max Sample Level you set.
If you choose Custom, you can set your own sampling range with
the Min and Max Sample Levels.
Figure 11.32
The Render Settings
window for mental
ray, showing the
Features tab
number of Samples These Min and Max Sample Level values set the number of times
mental ray samples a pixel to determine how best to anti-alias the result. The higher the
number, the finer the detail and the smoother the appearance of your rendered lines will
be. These settings are exponential , so a small increase yields a much greater quality and
much longer render time. You won't need to set the Max Sample Level above 2 for most
uses. Both Max and Min Samples Level can be set into the negative numbers for fast ren-
ders, although you'll notice jagged edges. A good setting for most renders is 2 for the Max
Sample Level with the Adaptive Sampling mode.
What determines the exact sample level within the min and max range set by these attri-
butes is dependent on the Color and Alpha Contrast Thresholds, which are explained later.
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