mental ray Release Notes
Version 3.1.3.16
This release includes the following programs and documents:
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mental ray 3.1.3.16
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imf_disp 3.1.3: image and flipbook display program
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imf_copy 3.0.2: image conversion program
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mental ray User's Manual and Reference, version 5.2
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mental ray/mental matter Release Notes, Version 3.1.3.16
Note: mental ray 3.1 is compatible with the shader.h files
provided with mental ray 3.0, and can execute shaders written for
mental ray 3.0. This may generate an error message if the declaration
files for these shaders specify that they require version 3.0, but the
error can be ignored.
mental ray for Linux is tested on RedHat 6.0, 7.0, and 7.2. RedHat 5.x
and other older distributions may be unable to run mental ray. RedHat
7.1 has a pthread library problem and should not be used. On SGI
machines, mental ray requires IRIX 6.5, but also works on old IRIX 6.2,
6.3, or 6.4 machines provided that the appropriate Posix threads
(pthreads) libraries are installed. Future versions will support only
IRIX 6.5 or later; 6.2-6.4 are long obsolete and unsupported by SGI.
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Substantially improved efficiency of network rendering. Hosts and
threads no longer go idle if there is still work to do.
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Intel Pentium 4 processors with hyperthreading support appear as two
virtual processors to the operating system (Linux or Windows NT). However,
this doesn't make the processor twice as fast; 15% faster is more likely.
For this reason, mental ray no longer pulls a second license for these
phantom processors, a hyperthreaded processor now consumes only one.
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Fixed a problem introduced in 3.1.3.14: displacement mapping on
merge groups of objects was computed incorrectly, and could abort
mental ray in some situations.
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The mi_query shader interface function can now be called with
mode miQ_GEO_DATA from displacement shaders.
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Fixed confusion of primitves in sorted and segmented shadow mode when
casting shadows from hairs. (This was introduced in 3.1.3.13.)
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Hair geometry now works in sorted and segmented shadow modes. These
modes are useful for some kinds of volumic effects such as ray marching.
Also, fixed a bug that could abort the second frame of animations if
there were hair objects and incremental changes.
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Hair geometry now works in sorted and segmented shadow modes. These
modes are useful for some kinds of volumic effects such as ray marching.
Also, fixed a bug that could abort the second frame of animations if
there were hair objects and incremental changes.
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The shader interface function mi_tri_vectors now returns false
if applied to hair geometry (which does not involve triangles), instead
of returning undefined data.
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Shadow rays that left the scene without hitting any geometry could be
incorrectly considered as black, i.e. in shadow. Fixed.
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Library versions of mental ray now work on Windows NT if the stderr
stream is unavailable.
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On Macintoshes, the number of CPUs in the system is now determined
correctly.
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Improved performance of motion-blurred hair. Also fixed an intersection
problem for raytraced shadows.
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Attempts to use finalgather diagnostic mode and photonmap diagnostic
mode simultaneously is not correctly rejected. Only one diagnostic
mode may be active.
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Allow ``diagnostic finalgather on'' in the options in the scene file.
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Triangles that were exactly coplanar with BSP voxel boundaries could
get incorrectly rejected, and disappeared from the rendered image. Fixed.
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Large scenes with very thousands of objects, instances, materials, etc,
could cause hash collisions in a job manager table that keeps track of
which objects are available for garbage collection when memory runs
out. These collisions could keep large numbers of normally flushable
objects in memory, leaving garbage collection ineffective and causing
mental ray to abort with memory errors eventually. Fixed. This fix has
a profound impact on the maximum size of scenes renderable with mental
ray.
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User-supplied tessellated geometry will no longer be deleted during
postprocessing, leaving them available for the next frame. (This affects
only the mental ray integration interface.)
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It is now legal for a lens shader to call mi_sample_light, as
documented.
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Implemented additional reading support for custom Lightworks images.
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When rendering with an orthographic camera (focal infinity),
a numerical inaccuracy could cause visible cracks at the raster axes.
Fixed.
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If mi_trace_probe was used in a scene using final gathering,
mental ray could crash when rendering was complete while printing ray
statistics. Fixed.
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Fixed memory leaks inside begin/end blocks in shader declaration
files using Softimage's SPDL syntax.
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The -echo command-line option did not echo exponent 0.
Since the default is 2, not 0, 0 is now echoed.
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Reduced memory requirements for tessellating free-form surfaces
with very high subdivision depth settings.
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Trying to read scalars from a color texture is not legal and
returned junk data. This case is now detected and handled.
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Light lists can now be obtained with mi_inclusive_lightlist
and mi_exclusive_lightlist using varying argument lists.
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Autovolume camera initialization could get confused by visible area
light sources. Now all volumes enclosing the camera are detected
correctly.
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The minimum size of shadow map rectangles is now 16 pixels, regardless
of the -task_size command-line option. Very small shadowmap
rectangle sizes can cause long startup delays and higher memory use.
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Corrected echo of the number of motion vectors for hair objects.
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Motion transform created by a traversal shader was
ignored. Fixed.
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In mi_sample_light, state>light_instance is always set
to leaf instance no matter if DAG or leaf instance was passed
as an argument.
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Fixed Linux Intel-compiler specific motion BSP atrifacts.
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Fixed self-intersection test in segment shadow mode.
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Improved tessellation parallelization in Inventor mental ray.
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Fixed hair object echo.
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Fixed scene preprocessing if traversal shader returns null
motion transform for the camera leaf.
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Fixed mi_inclusive_lights / mi_exclusive_lights when called
from init shader.
- Added a new query type miQ_FUNC_CALLTYPE which returns the
type of the shader call of the executing shader.
- Call traversal shader when searching for the camera.
- Avoid unnecessary geometry access when merging object sample limits.
- Assure that tesselated geometry is deleted with source
geometry immediately.
- Fixed a crash for incremental non-placeholder objects.
- Fixed a crash in coverage filtering with Lanczos and Mitchell
filters.
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Upgraded Linux x86 gcc3 compiler to fix crashes due to an optimizer bug.
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Fixed database tag leak for autoload objects.
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Running mental ray on unsupported Windows versions will no
longer result in immediate abort.
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Added read/write support for floating-point IFF images.
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Fixed a crash if a pipe-connected imf_disp was closed early.
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Fixed a crash that rarely occured during hair rendering.
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Fixed a tessellation memory leak.
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Motion blurring now works correctly if the only motion in the scene
is caused by a camera motion transformation.
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Added the Z type to the Alias|Wavefront Maya IFF image format.
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Fixed a bogus error message complaining about deleted jobs being done.
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Fixed the shader interface functions mi_inclusive_lightlist
and mi_exclusive_lightlist, so that a shader can call them
multiple times with different arguments.
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Raytraced shadows from visible lights could cause problems in autovolume
mode, because the list of initial volumes at startup was off by one.
Fixed.
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The minimum rectangle size in shadowmap mode is now 16 instead of 1. The
overhead for one-pixel rectangles was too high, causing very long startup
times.
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Set state - > instance for hair intersections.
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During traversal, mental ray tries to keep track of different instance
transformations with a transformation `id'. This was not working
if instance transformations were handled using a traversal callback
and the dag transformations were ID transforms. Fixed.
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Fixed traversal shader problems. Use inheritance function from Option
if mi_rc_run is passed a NULL inheritance function pointer.
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Fixed image tile display issue occuring
when rapidly aborting and restarting rendering.
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Fixed module removal issue on Windows NT.
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Fixed an issue when rendering with zero shutter value but a motion
output buffer being specified.
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Fixed regression with depth buffer rendering.
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Fixed seam problem with nurbs cylinder texturing:
Don't attempt seam compensation for surfaces that cannot close up.
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Non-color frame buffers were written to files incorrectly (truncated
horizontally to 25%) on 64-bit machines.
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The depth frame buffer got the farthest intersection depth when rays
pass through transparent motion blur trails. Now it's the frontmost,
which corresponds with the way this is documented for transparency.
Since motion blur looks like transparency they should behave the same
way.
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Computing the inclusive or exclusive lightlist for the shader instance
in the shader instance init function could lead to deadlocks.
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The mi_link_file_remove integration interface function was
disregarding the library reference count, and always removed the
library even if the count is greater than 1.
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Fixed a problem with shadow mapping quality at high sampling settings.
(The problem was introduced in version 3.1.1.184.)
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Shifted the Woo midpoint of shadow map lookups slightly away from the
illuminated surface, to reduce surface acne where the light reaches
the surface at a grazing angle. Note: this can slightly shift
shadowmapped shadows.
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The Maya IFF file format is now supported for reading.
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mental ray now correctly prints an error message when the scene file
tries to put a nonexisting item into an instance.
Copyright Information
mental images Gesellschaft für Computerfilm und Maschinenintelligenz
mbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
All rights reserved.
This document contains proprietary and confidential information of
mental images GmbH & Co. KG and is protected under
copyright law. The contents of this document may not be disclosed to
third parties, translated, copied or duplicated in any form, in whole
or in part, without the express written permission of mental images
GmbH & Co. KG.
The information contained in this document is subject to change
without notice. Neither mental images GmbH & Co. KG
nor its employees shall be responsible for incidental or consequential
damages resulting from the use of this material or liable for technical
or editorial omissions made herein.
mental images®, mental ray®, mental
matter®, mental ray PhenomenonTM, mental ray
PhenomenaTM, PhenomenonTM,
PhenomenaTM, Phenomenon CreatorTM, Phenomenon
EditorTM, Photon MapTM, mental ray
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All other product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks
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