Render with standalone from memory/API ?

[dlanier]

Hi,

Silly question, but can we render a scene without having a .mi file with mental ray standalone ?
I mean build the scene geometry from scratch using the API, setup all shaders then render and get the resulting frame buffer without generating a .mi file ?
As we can do with RenderMan API.
Thanks.
Regards,

[gga]

No.
You can use a geometry shader to generate your scene thou, so your .mi file can be only 50 lines long or so (just options+camera+render+geo shader). The limitation of doing that is that you still don't control the render engine (no render command) so a lot of things like IPR are out of your control. But that's not that much different from the renderman api.
If you want more control you need to buy the mental ray integration library. It's usually pretty expensive. You often do get the integration library for free if you buy a lot of mental ray stand-alone licenses (think 500+).

[dlanier]

Hi,

Thanks gga ! Yes, we now have the menta ray API standalone so we can create scenes from scratch and render directly without a .mi file...
Regards,