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3ds Max, as you are probably aware, ships with two completely
different rendering engines: the default Scanline renderer, which does
a capable job for most applications, and the more feature-filled mental ray engine,
for when you are gunning for a higher level of realism at the expense of
having a little bit more than you normally do setup wise.
We will be using both rendering methods as we work through this title.
Now, I mention this for a couple of reasons. First is we are going to be doing a ton of
rendering, but not a ton of going into detail on how to render.
So if you are needing a brushup as to how either rendering technique works,
you might want to take a couple of moments and review some of the other videos and
titles over in the lynda.com Online Trading Library.
Aaron F. Ross, for example, does a terrific job in demonstrating the ins
and outs of mental ray in his 3ds Max 2010 Lighting and Rendering in
mental ray title. Well worth a watch.
The other reason I mention both rendering engines is that certain maps and
certain materials in Max are only available when using mental ray.
So if I am fishing around for a certain map or material in one of the exercises
and you, in working along with me, can't seem to find that particular asset,
it may be because you simply haven't activated the proper renderer.
Let's take a look at an example of that happening. If when building a material I call out for
us to use let's say the Arch & Design material, we will access that by going
under the Standard button on the right hand side of the Material Editor.
Now, as we do so, you will notice that we don't see the name Arch & Design in the list.
This again is because the Arch & Design type of skin is available only when
using the mental ray renderer. If we open the Render Setup dialog and go
under the Assign Renderer rollout at the bottom, we see that we are currently
set up to use the default Scanline renderer. If we change that to the mental ray engine,
not much is going to look different about the interface, until we get back into
the Material Editor and start again looking under the Material Type button.
Now, all of a sudden we see a whole bunch of new material types, including
the Arch & Design. And every one of thosee, most easily identified
because they have yellow icon markers as opposed to the standard blue,
are all property of the mental ray engine.
And the same issue of rendering engines would also hold true when
accessing certain maps. You see when using mental ray and jumping
onto a particular material/map branch, you again are greeted with a bunch of additional
map types, each one listed in yellow, representing a map class exclusive
to mental ray. So important stuff to keep in mind if you
are working in the Material Editor and not finding specifically what you are looking
for. More times than not, it's going to be because
you simply have the wrong rendering engine loaded and ready for work.
So you can see for yourself there's pretty much proof as we are now back to the
Scanline method of taking pictures.