I saved that script to a folder, picked it in the submitter, and when I submitted the 3dscmd job, the soft shadows rendered as expected. The trick I used was to assign a Pre-Render MAXScript to the job via the Advanced tab of the 3dscmd submitter. Thankfully, I have 3ds Max 2017 installed on my machine, and it still ships with mental ray, so I was able to test, reproduce, and work around the issue. The remaining slider positions are also available as the Global Tuning Parameters rollout Soft Shadows Precision control. The leftmost slider position (“Soft Shadows off”) is equivalent to turning on Area Lights/Shadows as Points. Typically the light should be set to cast ray traced shadows, although in some cases shadow maps work too. This includes all photometric lights (Target Light, Free Light, mr Sky Portal), as well as mr Sun, mr Area Omni, and mr Area Spot. Unfortunately, if you want to use mental ray with Backburner to run a render farm, you will need to purchase licenses from NVIDIA.A global multiplier for the Shadow Samples setting in all lights casting soft shadows. Note – the free license is good for a single stand-alone installation only, and does not include render-farm capabilities. The mental ray rendering plug in is available as a free download from NVIDIA and can be obtained here. Good news – you can still use it in 3ds Max 2018! However, if you want to use the Lighting Analysis Assistant for 3ds Max, which is still included, you need to be using the mental ray engine. In fact, I’m finding the quality of the images, especially interior scenes, to be superior in many ways to what I could achieve with mental ray or ART. So I’ve spent the last few months getting up to speed on the Arnold engine, specifically for use in Revit to Max rendering workflows, and I’ve become much more comfortable with it than I was when 3ds Max 2018 was initially released. I’m the sort of person who tries to adapt to new technology whenever I can, and I don’t usually have much trouble leaving the past in the past. 3ds Max 2018 includes the Arnold 5.0 rendering engine, along with the Advanced Ray Trace (ART) renderer, and no longer includes the legacy mental ray renderer that so many people have been using for the last several years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |