3ds max 6
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| Depth-of-field with Mental Ray (click for larger view) |
Mental Ray is a ray trace engine that has been around the industry for a pretty long time – 14 years actually. It was initially developed by a company called Mental Images led by John Berton, John Nelson, and Stephen Fangmeier, all of whom have become prominent visual effects supervisors with plenty of awards between them. For many years, MR was exclusive to Softimage and has only become available within the last couple of years to other platforms. In fact, it was last year that an alliance was formed with Alias to bundle MR with Maya. It was also around that time that discreet obtained licensing for it. For 3ds max 5, it was available as a separate rendering license, which would be able to be used more like a plugin. With the release of 3ds max 6, Mental Ray has been fully incorporated practically and functionally into the mechanics of the program – and the license is bundled with it. This gives users, especially ones from the film industry, a very viable alternative to 3ds max’s scanline renderer and all the restrictions therein.
Mental Ray brings some new features to 3ds max and enhanced some that were already there. For instance, raytraced reflections and refractions have been in 3ds max since Blur developed the first code for it many years ago. So nothing substantially new there, although I would have to say that MR provides a very nice image using these tools.
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| Motion blur in Mental Ray (Click for larger view) |
You may ask then “What is the big deal with Mental Ray?” Outside of the fact that it comes bundled with 3ds max, Mental Ray holds most of its power in the fact that it has a C-like shading language that allows users to develop their own materials without dealing with 3ds max’s SDK. The latitude that power users have opens many doors for large and small studios alike where you don’t have to depend on external forces to write new plugins for materials. On top of writing your own, there are also quite a few sources that post .mi files for people to download and utilize.
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| Click for larger view |
Nutshell: The presence of Mental Ray is a major jump for 3ds max toward being more readily accepted as a tool for film effects, and the fact that we get a license with our 3ds max is very beneficial and will actually make it a tool that we will use. For myself and most 3ds max users I know, it wasn’t worth it to purchase the additional license. However, I think that MR becomes too slow too fast for the quality of imagery that it is creating. Overall it is a great tool and will help 3ds max grab a larger foothold into the film market. I’m not turning in my Brazil licenses, though.
COMMAND LINE RENDERING
Alleluia! Command Line Rendering should have been A-Number One First Day Priority when the Kinetix people came up with the concept of releasing MAX. By leaving it out, they pigeonholed themselves into a niche where you had to stay in MAX’s world to the exclusion of the vast world outside of it. In version 6, command-line rendering has finally been incorporated. The technical directors of the world can rejoice. The simplest reason for using this is to be able render without the overhead of the 3ds max interface bogging down your system and RAM. But the big thing for me is that it opens the doors to outside programs and scripts. If I want to write a PERL script that will render out my 3D files, checks to see that those files are done, open a compositor to bring in the frames and comp them, render out to a sequence, and then create a QuickTime and send it to the machine that will be playing dailies the next morning – NOW I can do it. And I can do it because I can call the 3ds max file to render with an external command. Heck, if I’m in Maya, I can write a script that will render out my 3ds max files. Render managers like Alfred and Rush can manage 3ds max renders. This simple concept is so globally encompassing that I’m surprised the United Nations haven’t stepped in to write a resolution that all software must have command line access.
Nutshell: About frickin’ time!
MAXSCRIPT
When 3ds max followed Maya’s lead by incorporating a scripting language, it opened up a whole new world of tools that most regular Joe’s could write without wallowing in the quagmire of software SDKs. In version 6, discreet has made sure to include all the new class types to correlate with the new tools – i.e. blobs, shell, materials, mental ray, etc. They have also provided more hooks into the material editor for querying and setting sub-object materials. Reactor objects have been opened up for scripting and more access for Particle Flow. All of this adds to the users ability to control 3ds max through scripts, making the world a better place to live. Personally, I would like to have had a more C-like structure to the language with more restrictions to the syntax for easier reading – but there would probably be a mutiny if discreet decided to change the structure of the language now.
Nutshell: If you haven’t gotten on the scripting bandwagon yet, you might want to hop on now. There isn’t a piece of software out their now worth its mettle that doesn’t have some kind of scripting language built into it. And if you are a digital artist or aspiring digital artist, you should know scripting to ensure your position in the marketplace. Either that or be an absolutely outstanding artist – and there are only a few position available for that.
Overall, I think that discreet has taken a step in the right direction – and has done so for its entire user-base. Film effects people, game developers, web designers, and architects have benefited from advances in the software. Some of the largest jumps stem from the incorporation of Particle Flow, HDRI, and command-line rendering and the smaller additions of the UVWUnwrap relax tool and isoline display.
Todd Sheridan Perry is co-owner and VFX Supervisor of Venice, CA-based visual effects company Max Ink Cafe. His recent credits include: NCIS (spin-off of JAG), WB TV and Lord of the Rings: Two Towers. He is currently working on Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black 2 as a Technical Director. For more on Todd click on over to www.toddsheridanperry.com and www.maxinkcafe.com.
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