mental ray iray RC4 Release Notes

Michael Kaplan

Introduction

This release of mental ray 3.8 contains a Beta version of the iray rendering mode. Further improvements and additions of features are planned for later mental ray versions in support of the 3ds Max Subscription Release.

Code Architecture

This release includes all major architectural changes for the iray rendering mode. The core iray rendering code (both CPU and GPU) and the code that maps mental ray scene graph elements (including tone mappers, lens , light source shaders, and material shaders) to the iray core are now contained in two separate loadable libraries, which can be updated independently of the mental ray core. This architecture is also capable of supporting the future GPU/CPU hybrid rendering mode changes required for the 3ds Max Subscription Release without further changes to the mental ray core.

Lights

1) mental ray object lights are now supported.

Rendering Platform/Core Rendering Improvements

1) Firefly handling is improved. 2) Glossy transmission and glossy reflection are better mapped to mia_materials rendered by the mental ray software renderer. 3) Full 16bit alpha channel support is provided. 4) Better support for quality termination parameter and the (optional) post filter. 5) A multi-layer blend map in the iray core is now supported. It includes two layers and two blend modes, which can be extended if necessary. The blend map is able to have one level of nested map - and the nested maps cannot be blend maps (no recursive calls are allowed). iray release notes confidential Page 1 of 3

Materials/Shaders

1. New noise support via max_Noise. 2. Implemented the translation of max_base_Output, max_base_xyzgenerator, and max_base_uvgenerator. This means that 3ds Max procedural and bitmap shaders now have correct texture transforms in iray. The RGB color transform should also work. 3. Thin glass support (thin_walled parameter of mia_material).

Pro Materials

A subset of the Pro Materials is now supported. The set is not complete, nor are all parameters and inputs for each Pro Material yet supported.

Support for Pro Materials in this release includes:

1) Ceramic 2) Concrete 3) Glazing/Mirror 4) Hardwood 5) Masonry/CMU 6) Metal 7) Plastic/Vinyl 8) Solid Glass 9) Stone

Tone mapper

1. The mia_exposure_simple tone mapper is now supported.

Textures

1. Multi-layer blend map via adsk_Utility_Mix2Shader to support layering of textures as inputs to archcomp/mia_material.

iray release notes mental images confidential Page 2 of 3 2. Handling of texture transforms/generators via max_base_Output, max_base_XYZGenerator and max_base_UVGenerator. 3. Handling of RGB color corrections performed on textures. 4. Reduced memory usage for bump mapping and frame buffers.

CUDA

1. Working CUDA 1.0 support.

iray release notes mental images confidential Page 3 of 3