This is a summary of frequently asked questions about mental ray®. Further information about the availability and specification are given in the appropriate pages Specs, Availability, and Supported Platforms.
Where can I buy mental ray? What are the prices?
mental ray is distributed by mental images' OEM partners only. For pricing information please get in contact with these companies.
Who are mental images' OEM partners?
Autodesk, Avid/Softimage, Dassault Systèmes, and others to be announced.
Who provides support for mental ray?
Support for mental ray is provided by the company/dealer where you have purchased the software.
Is there any literature or additional documentation about mental ray?
A series of books about mental ray is published by Springer Verlag Vienna/New York.
Where can I get an educational, test, demo, or evaluation license of mental ray?
Please contact one of mental images' OEM partners, depending on the front-end you are using or planning to use mental ray with.
Which platforms does mental ray support?
Please visit our webpage Supported Platforms.
With the stand-alone version of mental ray, can I import Autodesk 3ds max, Softimage, and Maya scene files?
mental ray reads .mi (the mental ray scene description format) files, no matter which front-end creates them.
Can I render mi files generated with an application from one vendor using mental ray stand-alone obtained from and licensed by another vendor?
The mental ray stand-alone product that is sold by our OEM partners can be used in conjunction with any product from any vendor that contains mental ray.
However, the appropriate shader libraries are required for rendering images. These libraries are part of the respective front-end products and must be obtained from the product's vendor. When using multiple products utilizing mental ray, check that the first two digits of mental ray version numbers match. If they don't, the versions of mental ray may be incompatible and shaders may fail to work with one or more of the products.
What about host-parallel network rendering in an inhomogeneous environment?
mental ray supports host-parallel network rendering in an inhomogeneous network of all supported platforms.
How many licenses do I need to render on a multiprocessor machine and/or on a network of machines?
One license per cpu.
What is your licensing policy?
mental ray supports floating and node-locked CPU licenses.
Is mental ray multi-threaded?
Yes.
On what hardware can I use mental ray?
mental ray is available for many platforms, defined as combinations of hardware and operating systems. You can use mental ray on any of the supported platforms.
Does mental ray work with Autodesk Maya?
Yes, please contact Autodesk for more information.
Does mental ray support radiosity?
mental ray supports full physically correct global illumination. This includes radiosity as a special case, but additionally simulates all light transport modes possible in nature.
Does mental ray work with IES light profiles?
This feature is planned for mental ray 3.2, available in Q3 2002. The High Dynamic Range image data format commonly used to store the resulting illumination data is available in mental ray 3.1, scheduled for release in Q1 2002.
Does mental ray render hair?
Polygonal, free-form surface, and volume hair and fur has always been supported. Optimized hair rendering based on specialized primitives is supported by mental ray 3.1.
Does mental ray support subdivision surfaces?
Yes, if the OEM application such as Maya supports it. Also, mental ray has native hierachical subdivision surface modeling and rendering support in conjunction with the optional mental matter® product.
Where do all the shaders and Phenomena come from?
mental ray ships with the base, physics, and contour shader libraries, including source code. All OEM versions ship with the corresponding vendor-specific shader libraries. Custom shader writing is fully supported and described in the mental ray books and manual. Shaders can be connected to complex visual effects called Phenomena (a generalized form of shader graphs). Some vendors provide graphical user interfaces for creating Phenomena.
I am a student. Do I need to buy mental ray to experiment and write shaders?
No, a demo version of mental ray 2.1 with the full API is available with the book Rendering with mental ray, second edition. A mental ray 3.1 demo will be included of the second edition of the book Programming mental ray, available in Q2 2002. (The 2.1 and 3.1 APIs are nearly identical, shaders are compatible.)
Can mental ray do subsurface scattering?
mental ray supports any natural phenomenon, including simulation of subsurface scattering, in custom shaders. The algorithm is well-known from the medical literature.