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Translator Options Rollout (mental ray Renderer) 121
This can make renders faster, because the
bitmaps don’t need to be reloaded ever y time.
3ds Max will not read the texture from disk if it
was already loaded previously (for example, in
a previous render , for a Material Editor preview,
or for displaying the map in a viewport).
• Rendering uses a pyramid filter shader that
is identical to the standard 3ds Max pyramid
filter system.
Turningthisoptiononisusefulforlargescenes
that take a lot of memory to render. Turning it
off is quicker, b ecause textures already loaded in
memorydon’thavetobereloadedbymentalray.
But turning it off might use more memory and
doesn’t allow for flushing when memory is low,
unless you use the 3ds Max bitmap pager (page
3–826).
Note: Turning the option on and off mig ht re su lt in
very small differences between rendered images
because of the different algorithms used in the
mental ray map mana ger and the 3ds Max map
manager.
Yo u must turn on “Use mental ray Map Manager”
when performing these actions:
• Using distributed bucket rendering.
See Distributed Bucket Rendering Rollout
(mental ray Renderer) (page 3–124).
When rendered with distr ibuted bucket
rendering and the mental r ay map manager,
images with textures can look different tha n
when rendered with 3ds Max alone, because
the filtering technique is different.
•ExportingtoanMIfile.
See below.
Co nserve Memory—Tells the translator to be as
memoryefficientasitcan.Thiscanslowdownthe
translation process, but reduces the amount of data
being sent to the mental ray renderer. Default=off.
This option is useful when you are trying to render
ahugesceneandtimeisnotnecessarilyanissue.
When you render to an M I file, this option can
alsohelpreducethesizeoftheoutputfile.
Whenon,thistogglealsotellsthementalray
renderer to save frames as temporary .map files.
This allows you to render extremely large frames
without running out of random-access memory.
The location of t he temporary map files is chosen
in the following order:
1. If the file \[program folder]\mentalray\rayrc
contains a registry entry called
_MI_REG_FBDIR, the renderer uses
this directory.
Theentryshouldhavetheform
registry "{_MI_REG_FBDIR}" value "<path>" end registry
where <path> is the directory you want to use.
2. If the rayrc file has no registry entry, the
renderer uses the directory specified by the
TMPDIR environment variable.
3. If there is no TMPDIR environment variable,
the renderer uses the directory specified by the
TEMP environment variable.
Material Override group
Material Override allows you to render a scene
w ith al l its materials replaced by a single master
material. For example, if you need to do a
w ireframe pass, you can create a Wire material and
then specify it here. When you render, all surfaces
will use the Wire material.
Enable—When on, rendering uses the override
mate rial for all surfaces. When off, surfaces are
rendered with the m aterial applied to them in the
scene. Default=off.
Material—Click to display the Material/Map
Browser (page 2–1412) and choose a material to
use as the override. Once you have chosen an