What’s New in Rendering and Render Setup

	Multi-render passes for mental ray for Maya The new multi-render pass feature provides an easy workflow for configuring render passes. You can render an unlimited number of render passes, and you can group them into render pass sets. You can also select a subset of the objects or lights in your scene to contribute to each render pass. This subset is called a render pass contribution map. Using the multi-render pass feature, you can reduce the need to use render layers, thus reducing compute times for scene translation and actual rendering. If you work with complex multi-layered compositions, rendering may also be several times faster. Multi-render passes also allow you perform scene segmentation at render time.
	Setting up your scene to use multi-render passes is simple. Follow these steps: Use the Create Render Passes window to create your render passes. Use the Passes tab under the Render Settings window to create and manage the render passes for each layer. Use the renderPass Attribute Editor to set the options for each render pass. For advanced users, you can also: Use either the Render Layer Editor or the Passes tab to create your render pass contribution maps, then use the Passes tab to manage the render passes for each map. Group your render passes into render pass sets. Use the Passes tab to create a render pass set and the Relationship Editor (select Window > Relationship Editors or click in the Passes tab) to manage its membership.
	Refer to the following sections for more information: Multi-render passes Create Render Passes window Passes tab Render Layer Editor Relationship Editor Subfolders and names of rendered images Render Settings: Common tab Render pass nodes mental ray render pass utility shaders mental ray for Maya nodes Exporting the multi-render passes for compositing in Toxik Render > Export Pre-Compositing Creating a pass-compliant shader using the AdskShaderSDK Refer to the following sections for workflow examples: Introduction to multi-render passes: a simple workflow example Sample workflow for multi-render passes Watch the following videos: Watch: Multi-render Passes: Part I Watch: Multi-render Passes: Part II Watch: Multi-render Passes: Part III
	mental ray Render Settings re-organization The mental ray tab in the Render Settings window is now divided into 5 mental ray tabs, including: Passes, Features, Quality, Indirect Lighting, and Options, providing better organization for the mental ray controls. For example, if you need to tweak your final gather settings, you can simply go to the Indirect Lighting tab. Render Settings: mental ray tabs
	IPR improvements for mental ray for Maya This section lists the IPR improvements for mental ray for Maya: Light manipulation Light manipulation improvements for mental ray include: Area light changes: switching from a Maya to mental ray area light, shape type changes, changing of High Samples and Low Samples Deletion of lights Changes to light photon attributes such as energy and color Changes to photon attributes for the shaders and lights when caustics, global illumination or final gather is used Changes to shadow map settings, including switching from raytraced shadows to shadow maps and back, as well as shadow map format and file changes Duplicating a light or object by copying or duplicating a light or object as an instance Hiding and unhiding of light source instances Light linking and shadow linking Rotation of the IBL node.
	Object manipulation Object manipulation improvements for mental ray include: Interactive creation of objects Duplicating a light or object by copying or duplicating a light or object as an instance Adding or removing a displacement shader and tuning of the displacement map shading network Adding and deleting or topology changes to geometry from the scene Changes to the Render Stats and mental ray render stats (under the object’s shape node). Previously, onlychanges to the instance render stats (under the object’s transform node) were supported.
	Options Options improvements for mental ray include: Adding or deleting and tuning of a mental ray approximation node Creation of a camera and render camera change. Changing camera settings such as the angle of view Enabling and tuning the Depth of Field option for the camera node You can also set IPR specific options such as the verbosity level for error messages by selecting Render > IPR Render Current Frame > . Render > IPR Render Current Frame Watch: IPR Improvements for mental ray for Maya
	Stereoscopic camera You can now add a stereoscopic camera to your scene. This allows you to create depth of field with the illusion of a three dimensional interface. Choose between various stereo modes such as anaglyph, checkerboard and horizontal interlace. You can render from the stereo camera and view the render output in any of these stereo modes. For advanced users, you can also customize your stereoscopic camera by adding a custom stereo rig to your scene. Refer to the following sections for more information: Create a stereoscopic camera Create a custom rig stereoRigManager
	Elliptical filtering Use elliptical filtering to perform high quality texture filtering and anti-aliasing when rendering with mental ray for Maya. Instead of using point sampling, elliptical filtering uses an area (an ellipse) to perform an image lookup. This ellipse contains many pixels, and the pixels are averaged and the average color is returned as a result. Elliptical filtering in Maya is very simple to use. You can access its controls through the Attribute Editor of your file node. High quality texture filtering with elliptical filtering mental ray Filter features and compatibility with the mental ray for Maya renderer and Maya software renderer Texture filtering
	Render proxies Use render proxies with mental ray rendering to manage large scenes with complex geometry. Export your complex object as a mental ray assembly file, then replace it in your scene with a placeholder object that references this file. When you render, the exported object is loaded into memory and rendered with the rest of your scene. Translation time and memory usage are cut down, allowing mental ray for Maya to render large scenes. Using render proxies in your scene File > Export All, Export Selection (mental ray) mental ray Transform node mental ray rendering attributes Mental Ray Preferences
	Smooth mesh render Previously, you could preview a smooth polygon mesh in the scene view by pressing 3. Now you can also render the smooth preview in mental ray for Maya. You can choose to use the same level of smoothing for the 3D viewport preview as for your render. Alternatively, you can also use a different division level for the two. Render a smooth polygon mesh using Smooth Mesh Preview Smooth Mesh Render
	Particle rendering in mental ray for Maya All attributes in the ParticleInfoSampler node are now supported when rendering particles in mental ray for Maya.