General rendering features

Preview and render object space normal maps

You can now create and preview normal maps in object space. In addition, you can render object space normal maps in mental ray.

Enhanced camera features

A new attribute has been added to the camera Attribute Editor that allow the tumble tool to perform a local axis tumble.

A camera trigger update feature has been added that allows non-DAG nodes that are not connected to the camera to force a refresh. If there are nodes in your scene that are not connected to the DAG and you want to force a camera refresh, you can connect the node to the camera's triggerUpdate attribute.

For example, if you have a custom cache node that is not connected to the DAG, create an output attribute (for example Update_Required) on this custom cache node which is affected by the inputs on the cache node. Then, connect Update_Required to the camera's triggerUpdate attribute. This way, when the user changes a setting on the cache node, the Update_Required attribute will be marked dirty, and because it is connected to the camera's triggerUpdate attribute, the triggerUpdate will be marked dirty and thus force the camera to refresh.

mental ray for Maya rendering

Increase rendering efficiency by converting textures to an optimized format

You can convert textures to an optimized format with a tileable structure to increase rendering efficiency. Using this format, mental ray does not load entire images but only the portion of the images required to render. Memory consumption is therefore reduced and you can render larger scenes and scenes that include textures with a higher resolution.

This feature increases rendering efficiency when you have a complex scene with a lot of textures that cannot all fit into memory at the same time.

Create mental ray transfer maps in object space

You can now create mental ray transfer maps in object space.

Render hardware particles with mental ray

You can now render the following particle types with mental ray: Points, MultiPoint, Spheres, Sprites, Streak, MultiStreak.

Note: Motion blur is supported for hardware particle rendering in mental ray.

Hardware particles are shaded in a way that is similar to software particles: a shading group must be assigned to the particle shape, and its surface shader completely determines the appearance of the particles.

New mia_material_x shader

A new mia_material_x shader has been added that allows you to simulate materials used in architectural and product design renderings. This shader is similar to the mia_material shader but offers additional features such as additional bump mapping attributes and returns multiple outputs.

User framebuffers in output passes

You can now use user framebuffers in mental ray camera output passes. When you create an output pass you can now select user framebuffers and output to file.

When you select a user framebuffer to use with an output pass, mental ray for Maya automatically makes the required framebuffer and output pass node connections.

The user framebuffers are rendering attributes (color, alpha, depth, and so on) that control which image channels are passed to the shader and in what format. When used in conjunction with output passes, framebuffers are useful to split a render into component passes that you can later composite.

Set maximum resolution for Material Sample swatches

You can now set a maximum resolution for your Material Sample swatches. If your file texture is above this resolution, a swatch will not be created until explicitly requested.

This reduces memory consumption and reduces the Hypershade load time, increasing performance especially when dealing with many large textures. This is most useful for initial load of scenes with many large file textures.

Convert Maya hair to native mental ray hair

By default, Maya hair is converted to native mental ray hair so that it can be rendered with mental ray standalone.

New options for the mental ray for Maya command line renderer

You can now control rendering options, such as the Auto Memory Limit or Render Threads option, via the mental ray command line renderer as well as via the Render > Batch Render > r and Render > Render Current Frame > r windows.

Smaller .mi files are created when you export fur and hair using the binary format

When you export your object(s) to a .mi scene file using the binary format, the Hair and Fur (Hair Primitive) objects will be approximately 50% smaller as compared to previous releases of Maya. This will result in significantly smaller .mi files.

Improvement with IPR for mental ray for Maya

Maya 2008 provides improved performance with the startup of IPR in mental ray for Maya. In addition, a snapshot of the model view is provided when IPR is used. The default for IPR Quality is now Render Settings.

Simplified workflow for creating lightmaps with the mental ray fast subsurface scattering shaders

When you create any of the misss_fast_shader, misss_fast_simple_maya, misss_fast_skin_maya nodes via the Hypershade, Maya automatically creates the lightmap network for you.

New mental ray shaders

New mental ray shaders have been added.

Use the mia_light_surface shader to represent the shape of a light source.

Use the mia_envblur shader to blur the environment in a way that looks very similar to shooting an extremely large amount of glossy reflection rays into it.

Use the mia_portal_light shader to create a portal light to reduce final gather rays and rendering times.

Use the mia_exposure_photographic shader to perform tone mapping.

Use the mia_lens_bokeh shader to simulate depth of field.

Use the contour_shader_silhouette shader to put contours at the silhouette of objects.

Use the contour_shader_maxcolor shader to take the maximum (in each color band) of the two material colors on each side of the contour.

Improved workflow for mia_roundcorners shader

The mia_roundcorners shader can be used with any Maya shader that has bump mapping. You can also chain other bump textures to the Bump_vector attribute of the mia_roundcorners shader to layer the bump effect to your shader.

Attribute Editor templates supported for mental ray structure and arrays

Maya now supports Attribute Editor templates for mental ray struct and arrays.

Support for input of DDS files

mental ray for Maya now supports input of the .dds format.

Improved method for subdivision approximation node

Beginning Maya 2008, the subdivision approximation node produces ccmesh primitives instead of subdivision base mesh primitives. ccmesh primitives can define polygons with an arbitrary number of edges, rather than just triangles and quads. This new method can be up to several times faster than the previous. For best performance, use triangles and quads or a combination of both.

Support for native mental ray light linking

mental ray for Maya now uses native mental ray light linking. Shaders are no longer responsible for their own light linking. All the Maya linking information is automatically handled by the mental ray core and shaders automatically receive the relevant light information.

Custom Text supports Python code

The Custom Text Editor now supports Python code.

Swatch now available for mental ray texture nodes

The mib_texture_lookup, mib_texture_lookup2, and mib_texture_filter_lookup nodes now provide a swatch display.

Hardware rendering features

Maya hardware renderer improvements

The hardware renderer improves the display of layered textures as well as multiple UV sets for different textures in a scene.

Because the Maya hardware renderer interprets the Env Ball/Env Cube map in a different way from the Maya software renderer, you can choose between the different configurations through the Render Settings: Maya Hardware tab.

A new option has been added to control the specular highlight so that it only appears on the opaque surface and not the transparent surface.

Maya now provides shader files that developers can incorporate into their own CgFX shader.

The Maya hardware renderer now supports negative lighting.

Support for HLSL hardware shaders

Maya now provides support for HLSL hardware shaders.