The people who complain the most about mental ray tend to be the ones who 
never took the time to learn to use it properly.

If you read the manuals, mental images states some modes are more taxing 
than others for rendering.  For example, Segmented shadow mode incurs 15% 
additional rendering time vs. the default shadow computation mode, and is 
less stable inside of material shaders.  Segmented shadows is currently set 
as the default shadow computation mode.  If you do most of your rendering in 
passes, then you likely do not need segmented shadows and can revert to what 
is now labeled "normal" shadow mode to regain some performance and 
stability.  If your render pass doesn't need lighting, then turn shadows off 
completely.  That's just one example.

For XSI v1.0 thru XSI v5.11, the default settings Softimage chose for mental 
ray were fairly efficient, but users commonly complained about black spots 
when doing renderings involving lots of reflection or refraction (because 
they didn't increase ray depth) or anti-aliasing wasn't super smooth 
(because they didn't set filter to 'lanczos' or 'mitchell' instead of 
default 'box', or didn't adjust the adaptive sampling properly).  In 
essence, most complaints were due to user error - because users didn't take 
the time to learn how to use the renderer

To alleviate support issues, Softimage redefined the default mental ray 
settings in XSI v6.0 to what they are now - which effectively activates a 
bunch of stuff you don't need majority of the time and does a lot of extra 
work that never shows up in the final rendered image.  This change can often 
be blamed for inducing crashes and slower render times because many users do 
not tweak the settings.

If you learn to use the renderer properly instead of using a 3DSMax 
mentality of pushing a button and walking away, you'll get better 
performance and stability.  Much of that also involves strategy for setting 
up the scene before sending it to the renderer - another area users make 
gross mistakes because they don't take the time to understand the rendering 
process.

Matt




Date: Sat, 28 May 2016 09:25:06 +0200
From: Mirko Jankovic <mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Anybody still using mental ray?
To: "softimage@listproc.autodesk.com"

*1. I don't want to throw away a expensive CPU based renderfarm.*

It will be obsolete soon anyway so just make good planing for next render
tool, CPU or GPU road.



*2. mental ray still has more shaders. It's slow sometimes but it is
rathergood when you want to do non physically based things. A bit like
Softimageitself, the all-purpose, swiss knife.*

First time I heard something like this for MRay. Mostly it is in line I
wanna puke or quit 3d completely due to rendering part :)
When I discovered Arnold and then even more Redshift that is when a big
issue I had with SI, ie rendering was solved and 3d was fun again.
MRay was PAIN non stop! Swiss knife.. yea could say that, got ton of things
but nothing good for most of things :)

Redshift saved my 3d ;)

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