is mental ray ded!?

[miguelcristina]

after the release of iray there will be no more updates of mental ray?

[scionik]

I like mr more than iray
I want more features mr in 3ds Max. So what's new in mr 3.9 for Max?

[matthew999]

who says that? that will be a shame. Imho is had been dying a death of late anyway, everyone seems to be moving over to vray, mr forums are like ghost towns with nothing more than howling wind and tumble weed these days.

[Remydrh]

iRay is part of mental ray. Not a replacement. It will continue to change and broaden its abilities along with mental ray. Keep in mind that running a GPU code has certain limitations. This is why the software renderer will continue to have more options.

Development continues on mental ray as a whole package. If anything, mental images is more open to feedback than ever.

[rawalanche]

Hey, where can i provide feedback for mental images? I always thought they are a big sealed fortress where no information can get in or out. I have a lot of suggestions and things i would like to whine about, i just have no idea where to send it. Thanks in advance.

[Remydrh]

Believe it or not, this forum is viewed internally now. Since its migration from lamrug.org, developers have been able to see and respond to posts.

Anything posted by a Moderator or a "mi user" is internal. Steve, Bart, etc are viewing the forums and although you may not see a specific reply (they're not allowed to comment on future plans) they do see them. There have been times I have mentioned a post and they are aware of it.

Also, other developers like Max (Tarpini) work for vendors like Autodesk time to time. You can find a thread by Max working on point based shading and caching in the Shaders Forum. Point Shaders

[amidrajabi]

mental ray is a king of rendering systems in the world .

whos going to vray ......

vray .... only for arch viz rendering .....

[steve]

Hi,

I would like to reply to this question although Remydrh covered it quite well.

mental ray provides iray as a built-in alternative rendering solution, in addition to its various other rendering techniques. For tasks like out-of-the-box photo-realistic rendering, the iray rendering mode may be the final answer, if users are able to achieve the desired look despite the limitations, like memory restrictions or reduced customization and programming capabilities compared to the existing mental ray rendering modes.

mental ray development is continuing also for the existing rendering techniques, and new versions will come up with new features. This is certainly more interesting for cases where scene complexity is high, where elements like animated characters with hair and skin are involved, where particles, volumetric and atmospheric effects are used, and everything is rendered with global illumination.

We have just started our public beta program for mental ray 3.9. You are welcome to join and test the new features, and give feedback to our developers.

Greetings from Berlin, Steve.