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86 Chapter 17: Rendering
Effects rollout. (This rollout also con tains some
contour-shading controls.)
Note: When you use the mental ray renderer,
reflected or refracted light rays do not always
respect a camera’s clipping planes (set in the
Clipping Planes group of the Parameters rollout).
Also, large clipping-plane values can cause poor
quality in the rendering of s hadow maps. To
fix this, nar row the clipping range or switch to
ray-traced shadows.
Material Editor Enhancements
The Material E ditor works as it does with the
default scanline renderer. Certain materials and
maps,orsomeoftheircontrols,aren’tsupported
by the mental ray renderer; see 3ds Max Materials
in mental ray Renderings (page 3–83).
Bydefault,theMaterialEditorsampleslotsusethe
currently ac tive renderer: typically this is either
the default sc anline renderer or the mental ray
renderer. As of 3ds Max you assign the renderer
for sample slots by using the Render Scene dialog
>Commonpanel>Assign Renderer rollout (page
3–35).
When mental ray extensions are enabled (using
mental ray Preferences (page 3–837))andthe
mental ray renderer is active, the Material Editor
displays these additional mental ray features:
•Amental ray Connection rollout (page 2 –1461)
lets you add mental ray shaders to 3ds Max
mater ials.
• When you click a material’s Type button, the
Material/Map Browser displays additional
mental ray materials (page 2–1543).
• When you click a map or shader button, the
Material/Map Browser displays additional
mental ray shaders (page 2–1710).
Shaders are provided in shader library (MI) files
(page 3–972).Someshadersarecustomized
for 3ds Max, s ome are provided by the lume
library, and most are provided by mental
images libraries. Settings for the custom
3ds Max shaders are provided in this reference.
Settings for t he third-party lume and mental
images shaders are provided in their own help
files. This reference links to those descriptions;
see ShadersintheLumeToolsCollection(page
2–1713) and mental images Shader Libraries
(page 2–1712).
Pr ocess ing Panel (ment al r ay
R enderer )
Rendering menu > Render > Render Scene dialog >
Processing panel
Main toolbar > Render Scene button > Render Scene
dialog > Processing panel
Note: The Processing panel appears only when the
mental ray renderer is the currently ac tive renderer.
The Processing panel is an additional Render Scene
dialog (page 3–2) panel. It appears only w hen
the mental ray renderer (page 3–78) is active, and
its controls relate to manag ing how the renderer
operates. It a lso lets you generate diagnostic
renderings in pseudo color.