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mental ray 2.x supports a new generation of the mental images scene
description language, called .mi2. The language version supported
by mental ray 1.9, called .mi1, is still available for backwards
compatibility. New translator designs should always use .mi2
because only .mi2 supports instancing, inheritance, incremental
changes, and many other features. Here are some rules for using .mi2:
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Use object space coordinates instead of camera coordinates.
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Use options, cameras, instances and groups instead of frames and views.
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Use incremental changes wherever possible.
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Do not use the following statements: red, green, blue,
white, recursive, adaptive, memory.
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Double-quote names to avoid clashes with new keywords.
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Contour rendering has been rewritten completely. The new algorithms
offer much higher flexibility, programmability, and features such as
colored contours, varying line widths and styles, parallelism, and
contour generation concurrently with color image generation, and
compositing. The contour modes of mental ray 1.9 are no longer
supported, any .mi1 scene file containing contour features must
be modified.
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Use contour contrast, contour store, contour output,
and contour shaders.
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Do not use: contour line width, contour depth, and paper transform.
Next: 6.3 Shader Writing
Up: 6. Upgrading from mental
Previous: 6.1 Rendering Algorithms
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