
The release also introduces the new functionality rolled out last year in Mental Ray 3.14, the standalone edition of the software, and in Mental Ray for Maya, the equivalent Maya plugin. Today’s release makes it possible to use those scenes again, with Nvidia’s blog post stressing that the new plugin is “fully backwards compatible for all the functionality and data people depend upon”.Īdds new features from Mental Ray 3.14 standalone With Autodesk’s decision to stop bundling Mental Ray with its software in favour of its own Arnold renderer, legacy Mental Ray scenes are no longer compatible with 3ds Max 2018 out of the box. The first version of Mental Ray compatible with 3ds Max 2018įor many 3ds Max users, the most important thing about Mental Ray for 3ds Max will simply be that it exists. Network rendering requires commercial licences, which are available on a rental-only basis.īuying a commercial licence of Mental Ray also activates Iray for 3ds Max, Nvidia’s interactive physically based renderer, available as a separate plugin, and previously purchased separately. The plugin is free to use when rendering from a single machine. The release integrates the new features of Mental Ray 3.14, the latest standalone edition of the renderer, including the GI Next global illumination system and support for light path expressions.

Nvidia has released Mental Ray for 3ds Max, its new plugin version of the renderer, and first for 3ds Max 2018 users, following Autodesk’s decision to stop bundling Mental Ray with the software.

Displacement shading adds surface detail to models at render time.Volume shading can be applied to a camera or material.The mr Sun, mr Sky, and mr Physical Sky shaders are components of the mental ray Sun & Sky solution.The Car Paint material is also available as a shader, with the same set of parameters.In addition to the shaders described in the topics that follow, 3ds Max includes these shaders: Shaders provided with the NVIDIA or lume shader libraries have their own online documentation. Shaders created specifically for 3ds Max are described in this document.


The shaders listed in the Browser come from several libraries that are provided with 3ds Max. This rollout appears only on the Modify panel, not the Create panel. Buttons to assign camera shaders are found on the Render Setup dialog Camera Effects rollout, and the controls to assign light shaders are on a light object's mental ray Light Shader rollout. Note: Other kinds of special-purpose shaders include shaders for cameras and lights.
