From Wiki

User's cookbook for mental ray

The idea of this cookbook is to give some simple instructions on how to achieve certain special effects with mental ray and 3ds Max. This is to complement other existing documentation that typically is sorted by function, not by result.

This is a Wiki and anyone of you can add, edit or discuss anything in here. You are strongly encouraged to add your own knowledge to this, just use the edit link at the top of each page or to the right of each subsection header.

Editing a page is really simple. Check out the Formatting help page for some basic information on formatting text.

--MartinB 05:31, 28 August 2007 (PDT)

mental ray recipes

This list of recipes is split into three parts: Effects is about certain rendering effects that directly produce visible image elements. Techniques describes more technical low-level aspects of rendering or workflow. Finally, Materials contains a list of interesting materials with descriptions how to set up shaders to render these.

Training resources

Links to (mostly commercial) training material for mental ray

• Mental Bout Max Video Training Modules that deal with every aspect of using Mental Ray in 3Ds Max.

Books

• Thomas Driemeyer from mental images has written a set of two books (one on using mr, one on programming shaders) which is basically the bible for anyone working with mr. Unfortunately, these books, written for mr 3.4, only focus on the standalone version of mr so you already need to have some basic understanding of mr within 3ds Max in order to transfer the information. There is a third book on writing mr shaders with an emphasis the aesthetics of rendering with mental ray.
• Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max by Joep van der Steen
• Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds Max and mental ray by Roger Cusson and Jamie Cardoso
• For those that want to develop their own mr shaders: Andy Kopra of mental images is currently writing a book titled "Writing mental ray shaders". The book is not out yet but the accompanying website is.

Links to external mr resources

This is a list of general resources covering a wide range of topics. Each of the recipe topics also has external links pointing to specialized information.

• Jeff Patton has a set of downloadable mental ray example files that illustrate specific effects. Also check out his blog for regular updates.
• Zap Anderson of mental images also has a blog with excellent information, tips & tricks for mental ray
• The LA mr User Group, or lamrug in short, runs a very extensive website with very detailed MR information, tutorials, tips & tricks, optimization techniques etc. for hardcore mr users. They also host a forum with some very knowledgeable participants and have a collection of mental ray master class training material.
• mental images maintains a set of mailing lists for questions about mental ray.
• If you are on subscription for 3ds Max, there are some free videos about mental ray in 3ds Max in Module 11 of the 3ds Max 8 New Feature Lessons
• A collection of common rendering problems and their solutions, such a FG artifacts, photon problems, render elements
• mental ray in 3ds max by Pierre-Felix Breton, one of the developers of 3ds Max, explains some concepts of mental ray and how to use them in 3ds Max in nicely detailed steps, with a lot of examples
• mental images offers a set of Extra Documentation, currently covering the Production shaders, the Architecture & Design shaders, and the tutorial on Subsurface Scattering skin