At the time of He has lectured on the 3ds Max, always commented to my students a curious fact in relation to the use of external rendering to the Max After the Mental Ray is now integrated with the software as a way of encouraging their Autodesk use, was somewhat meaningless the addition of other renderer as the V-Ray or Final Render, as in virtually all respects the Mental Ray meet the needs of artists, with advanced options of Ray Tracing and lighting overall.

But this time the Autodesk failed to convince many people on the mass adoption of the renderer. Why not? Simple to learn just ask any artist what he thinks of Mental Ray and most will say that the learning curve it is very long. This means that you need much practice and study in order to effectively dominate the software, so he still finds strength in artists who need speed and speed in rendering solutions.

For people who are still learning the operation of Mental Ray, and want to start doing some tests with the software, I found a very interesting and simple tutorial, which also uses one of the scenes that accompany the 3ds Max This tutorial shows the configuration of global illumination, using a single point of light in this case a light-type Omni.

The author of the video explains the main aspects of setting up a scene with the Mental Ray, in which case the use of Photons and the dreaded Final Gather.

The first determines the amount of photons used in the simulation of lighting in the global scene, which can be well defined or with points presented problems. For example, a small number of photons generates aberrations, as small dots blur on the surfaces. With Final Gather you can refine the simulation of light, increasing or decreasing the number of parameter Samples. The higher the value of the Samples, the better the quality of light is final.

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