mental ray User Manual for version 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1

Version 2.1.47.64, 3.0.6.125, 3.1.3.16

Contents

• Contents
• Introduction
  • 0.1 Organization of this Book
  • 0.2 Introduction to mental ray
• 1. Functionality
  • 1.1 Parallelism
  • 1.2 Free-Form Surfaces
  • 1.3 Edge Merging and Adjacency Detection
  • 1.4 Special Points and Curves
  • 1.5 Subdivision Surfaces
  • 1.6 Atmospheres and Volumes
  • 1.7 Materials
  • 1.8 Light Sources
  • 1.9 Area Light Sources
  • 1.10 IES and Eulumdat Light Profiles^3.1
  • 1.11 Shadow Maps
  • 1.12 Texture Mapping and Texture Files
  • 1.13 Memory-mapped Textures
  • 1.14 Bump, Displacement, and Reflection Mapping
  • 1.15 Texture Filtering
    • 1.15.1 Pyramid Filtering
    • 1.15.2 Elliptical Projection Filter Lookup
  • 1.16 Light Mapping^3.x
  • 1.17 Multipass Rendering^3.1
  • 1.18 User-Defined Shaders
  • 1.19 The Camera
  • 1.20 Lens Effects
  • 1.21 Depth of Field
  • 1.22 Animation
  • 1.23 Motion Blur
  • 1.24 Sampling Algorithms
  • 1.25 OpenGL Acceleration
  • 1.26 Color Calculations
  • 1.27 Output Shaders
  • 1.28 Pixel Coverage
  • 1.29 Contours
  • 1.30 Caustics
    • 1.30.1 Light Sources
    • 1.30.2 Objects
    • 1.30.3 Material Shaders and Photon Shaders for Caustics
    • 1.30.4 Physically Plausible Material Shaders
    • 1.30.5 Shader Functions
    • 1.30.6 Fine-tuning Caustics
  • 1.31 Global Illumination
    • 1.31.1 Light Sources
    • 1.31.2 Objects
    • 1.31.3 Fine-tuning Global Illumination
  • 1.32 Final Gathering
  • 1.33 Volume Caustics
  • 1.34 Global Illumination in Participating Media
  • 1.35 Diagnostic modes
• 2. Scene Description Language
  • 2.1 Shader Declarations
    • 2.1.1 Parameter Types
    • 2.1.2 Shader Apply Flags
    • 2.1.3 Declaration Options
  • 2.2 Shader Definitions
  • 2.3 Shader Lists
  • 2.4 Shader Graphs
  • 2.5 Phenomena
    • 2.5.1 Phenomenon Interface Parameters
    • 2.5.2 Phenomenon Roots
  • 2.6 Commands
  • 2.7 Scene Entities
    • 2.7.1 Options
      • 2.7.1.1 Sampling Quality
      • 2.7.1.2 Tessellation Quality
      • 2.7.1.3 Motion Blur
      • 2.7.1.4 Trace Depth
      • 2.7.1.5 Shadows
      • 2.7.1.6 Rendering Algorithms
      • 2.7.1.7 Feature Disabling
      • 2.7.1.8 Caustics
      • 2.7.1.9 Global illumination
      • 2.7.1.10 Frame Buffer Control
      • 2.7.1.11 Scene Geometry
      • 2.7.1.12 Contours
      • 2.7.1.13 Diagnostic Modes
      • 2.7.1.14 Miscellaneous
    • 2.7.2 Cameras
      • 2.7.2.1 Output Statements
      • 2.7.2.2 Multipass Rendering Statements^3.1
      • 2.7.2.3 Other Camera Statements
    • 2.7.3 Textures
    • 2.7.4 Materials
    • 2.7.5 Lights
    • 2.7.6 User Data
    • 2.7.7 Light Profiles^3.1
    • 2.7.8 Objects
    • 2.7.9 Polygonal Geometry
    • 2.7.10 Free-Form Surface Geometry
      • 2.7.10.1 Bases
      • 2.7.10.2 Surfaces
      • 2.7.10.3 Surface Derivatives
      • 2.7.10.4 Texture Surfaces
      • 2.7.10.5 Curves
      • 2.7.10.6 Trimming, Hole, and Special Curves; Special Points
      • 2.7.10.7 Connections and Edge Merging
      • 2.7.10.8 Example
    • 2.7.11 Space Curve Geometry
    • 2.7.12 Hair Geometry^3.1
    • 2.7.13 Subdivision Surface Geometry
      • 2.7.13.1 Subdivision Surfaces
      • 2.7.13.2 Base and Hierarchy Faces
      • 2.7.13.3 Face Subdivision
      • 2.7.13.4 Vertex Features
      • 2.7.13.5 Smooth Creases
      • 2.7.13.6 Trimming
      • 2.7.13.7 Example
    • 2.7.14 Approximations
      • 2.7.14.1 Fine Approximations^3.1
    • 2.7.15 Instances
    • 2.7.16 Instance Groups
  • 2.8 Contours
    • 2.8.1 Where to Place Contours
    • 2.8.2 Color and Width of Contours
    • 2.8.3 Contour Output
    • 2.8.4 Faster Contours
  • 2.9 Multipass Rendering^3.1
  • 2.10 Scene Example
• 3. Using and Writing Shaders
  • 3.1 Dynamic Linking of Shaders
  • 3.2 Coordinate Systems
  • 3.3 Shader Type Overview
  • 3.4 State Variables
    • 3.4.1 Frame
    • 3.4.2 Image Samples
    • 3.4.3 Rays
    • 3.4.4 Intersection
    • 3.4.5 Textures, Motion, Derivatives
    • 3.4.6 User Fields
    • 3.4.7 Options
    • 3.4.8 State Variables by Shader Type
  • 3.5 Shader Parameter Declarations
  • 3.6 Parameter Assignments and mi_eval
  • 3.7 Shader Versioning
  • 3.8 Material Shaders
  • 3.9 Texture Shaders
  • 3.10 Volume Shaders
  • 3.11 Volume Shaders using Autovolume^3.x
  • 3.12 Environment Shaders
  • 3.13 Light Shaders
  • 3.14 Shadow Shaders
  • 3.15 Photon Shaders
  • 3.16 Photon Emitter Shaders
  • 3.17 Lens Shaders
  • 3.18 Output Shaders
    • 3.18.1 Parallel Output Shaders^2.1
  • 3.19 Displacement Shaders
  • 3.20 Geometry Shaders
  • 3.21 Contours
    • 3.21.1 Contour Computation
    • 3.21.2 Contour Store Function
    • 3.21.3 Contour Contrast Function
    • 3.21.4 Contour Shaders
    • 3.21.5 Contour Output Shaders
  • 3.22 Lightmap Shaders^3.x
  • 3.23 Render Pass Merge Shaders^3.1
  • 3.24 Functions for Shaders
    • 3.24.1 DB Functions
    • 3.24.2 RC Functions
    • 3.24.3 Sampling with mi_sample
    • 3.24.4 RC Photon Functions
    • 3.24.5 RC Direction Functions
    • 3.24.6 IMG Functions
    • 3.24.7 Math Functions
    • 3.24.8 Noise Functions
    • 3.24.9 Auxiliary Functions
    • 3.24.10 Obsolete Auxiliary Functions
    • 3.24.11 Contour Functions
    • 3.24.12 Light Map Functions
    • 3.24.13 Memory Allocation
    • 3.24.14 Thread Parallelism and Locks
    • 3.24.15 Messages and Errors
    • 3.24.16 Callable Functions by Shader Type
  • 3.25 Initialization and Cleanup
  • 3.26 Persistent Shader Data Storage
    • 3.26.1 Constant Data
    • 3.26.2 Shader Instance Data
    • 3.26.3 Thread-Local Storage^3.1
  • 3.27 Automatic Source Generation with mkmishader
  • 3.28 Shaders and Trace Functions
  • 3.29 Example Scene with Custom Shader
• 4. Geometry Shaders
  • 4.1 Examples
  • 4.2 Geometry Shader API
    • 4.2.1 Symbol Tables
    • 4.2.2 Dynamic Lists
    • 4.2.3 Incremental Changes
    • 4.2.4 Options, Cameras, and Outputs
    • 4.2.5 Lights, Materials, Textures
    • 4.2.6 User Data
    • 4.2.7 Light Profiles^3.1
    • 4.2.8 Instances and Instance Groups
    • 4.2.9 Geometric Objects
      • 4.2.9.1 Objects
      • 4.2.9.2 Bases
      • 4.2.9.3 Polygonal Geometry
      • 4.2.9.4 Free-Form Surface Geometry
      • 4.2.9.5 Curves
      • 4.2.9.6 Space Curves
      • 4.2.9.7 Hair^3.1
      • 4.2.9.8 Subdivision Surfaces
    • 4.2.10 Function Declarations
    • 4.2.11 Function Definitions
    • 4.2.12 Phenomenon Definitions
    • 4.2.13 Verbatim C Sources
    • 4.2.14 Scopes
    • 4.2.15 Miscellaneous
  • 4.3 Geometry Shader Data Structures
    • 4.3.1 Instances
    • 4.3.2 Groups
    • 4.3.3 Cameras
    • 4.3.4 Lights
    • 4.3.5 Functions
    • 4.3.6 User Data
    • 4.3.7 Function Declarations
    • 4.3.8 Boxes
    • 4.3.9 Objects
    • 4.3.10 Approximations
    • 4.3.11 Polygon Lists
    • 4.3.12 Polygon Indices
    • 4.3.13 Polygon Vertices
    • 4.3.14 Polygon Vectors
    • 4.3.15 Surfaces: Face List
    • 4.3.16 Surfaces: Surface List
    • 4.3.17 Surfaces: Curve Segment List
    • 4.3.18 Surfaces: Scalar Lists
    • 4.3.19 Surfaces: Curve Point Lists
    • 4.3.20 Surfaces: Basis Lists
    • 4.3.21 Space Curves
    • 4.3.22 Books and Pages
    • 4.3.23 Materials
    • 4.3.24 Rendering Options
    • 4.3.25 Images
    • 4.3.26 Strings
    • 4.3.27 Tag Lists
• 5. Upgrading
  • 5.1 Upgrading from mental ray 1.9 to 2.x
    • 5.1.1 Rendering Algorithms
    • 5.1.2 Scene Description Language
    • 5.1.3 Shader Writing
  • 5.2 Upgrading from mental ray 2.1 to 3.0
    • 5.2.1 Scene Description Language
    • 5.2.2 Shader Writing
  • 5.3 Upgrading from mental ray 3.0 to 3.1
    • 5.3.1 Rendering Algorithms
    • 5.3.2 Scene Description Language
    • 5.3.3 Shader Writing and Integration
• 6. Command Line Options
  • 6.1 mental ray
  • 6.2 Inventor mental ray
  • 6.3 Environment Variables
  • 6.4 Image Display: imf_disp
  • 6.5 Image Copy: imf_copy
  • 6.6 Image Information: imf_info
  • 6.7 Image Comparison: imf_diff
  • 6.8 Create Shader Skeletons: mkmishader
  • 6.9 Convert Scenes to C: mitoapi
• 7. Scene File Grammar
• Bibliography
• Bibliography

Copyright Information

mental images Gesellschaft für Computerfilm und Maschinenintelligenz mbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

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