mental ray is a production quality rendering application developed by mental images (Berlin, Germany). As the name implies, it supports ray tracing to generate images. Its feature set is comparable to that of PhotoRealistic RenderMan, the RenderMan compliant renderer by Pixar, over which it holds certain advantages and disadvantages. For example, features like global illumination were supported by mental ray long before they could be found in PRman. Which renderer is faster is subject of heated debates: Certain rendering tasks can be much faster in PRman (albeit usually at the expense of true physical accuracy) while others are much faster in mental ray (e.g. computations involving heavy ray tracing or global illumination). This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... This article or section reads like an advertisement. ... A ray traced scene. ... RenderMan is the name of a rendering software package developed by Pixar Animation Studios; it implements Pixars photorealistic 3D description standard, the RenderMan Interface Specification. ... RenderMan is an API developed by Pixar Animation Studios to describe three dimensional scenes and turn them into digital photorealistic images. ... Pixars studio lot in Emeryville Pixar Animation Studios is an American seven time Academy Award winning computer animation studio based in Emeryville, California (USA). ... Global illumination algorithms used in 3D computer graphics are commonly used to add realistic lighting to 3D scenes. ...

mental ray has been used in several feature films, including Hulk, The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, The Day After Tomorrow and lately in Poseidon. Hulk is a 2003 film based on the comic book series The Incredible Hulk published by Marvel Comics. ... The Matrix is a science fiction/action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano and Hugo Weaving. ... Film poster for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) is the fifth Star Wars science fiction movie released and the second part of the prequel trilogy which began with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. ... This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling. ... This article or section contains a plot summary that is overly long. ...

Features

The primary feature of mental ray is the achievement of high performance through parallelism on both multiprocessor machines and across render farms. The software uses acceleration techniques such as scanline for primary visible surface determination and binary space partitioning for secondary rays. It also supports caustics and physically correct simulation of global illumination employing photon maps. Any combination of diffuse, glossy (soft or scattered), and specular reflection and transmission can be simulated. A render farm is a computer cluster to render computer generated imagery (CGI), typically for film and television visual effects. ... Scanline rendering is an algorithm for visible surface determination, in 3D computer graphics, that works on a row-by-row basis rather than a polygon-by-polygon or pixel-by-pixel basis. ... Binary space partitioning (BSP) is a method for recursively subdividing a space into convex sets by hyperplanes. ... A caustic, in optics, is a bundle of light rays. ... Global illumination algorithms used in 3D computer graphics are commonly used to add realistic lighting to 3D scenes. ... A crystal ball with caustics In computer graphics, photon mapping is a global illumination algorithm developed by Henrik Wann Jensen that solves the rendering equation. ...

mental ray was designed to be integrated into a third-party application using an API or be used as a standalone program using the .mi scene file format for batch-mode rendering. Up to this moment there are many programs integrating this renderer such as Autodesk Maya, Softimage|XSI, Autodesk 3D Studio Max, Side Effects Software's Houdini, SolidWorks and Dassault Système's CATIA. Most of these software front-ends provide their own library of custom shaders (described below). However assuming these shaders are available to mental ray, any mi file can be rendered, regardless of the software that generated it. API may refer to: In computing, application programming interface In petroleum industry, American Petroleum Institute In education, Academic Performance Index This page concerning a three-letter acronym or abbreviation is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Softimage|XSI is a high-end three-dimensional (3D) graphics application developed by Softimage, Co. ... 3D Studio Max (name changed to 3DS Max, also sometimes called 3dsm, or just Max) is a 3D modeler developed by Autodesk Media & Entertainment (formerly known as Discreet and Kinetix). ... Houdini is a high-end 3D animation package developed by Side Effects Software. ... SolidWorks is a 3D CAD (computer-aided design) program that runs on Microsoft Windows and developed by SolidWorks Corporation -a subsidiary of CATIA maker Dassault Systèmes, S. A.. Independently introduced in 1993 to compete with products such as Pro/ENGINEER, SDRC I-DEAS (now Unigraphics NX/SolidEdge), and AutoDesk... CATIA (Computer Aided Three dimensional Interactive Application) is a multi-platform PLM/CAD/CAM/CAE commercial software suite developed by Dassault Systemes and marketed world-wide by IBM. // Commonly referred to as a 3D Product Lifecycle Management software suite, CATIA supports multiple stages of product development. ...

mental ray is fully programmable, supporting linked subroutines also called shaders written in C or C++. This feature can be used to create geometric elements at runtime of the renderer, procedural textures, bump and displacement maps, atmosphere and volume effects, environments, camera lenses, and light sources. A Shader in the field of computer graphics is a set of software instructions, which is used by the graphic resources primarily to perform rendering effects. ... C is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose, high-level programming language with low-level facilities. ...

Supported geometric primitives include polygons, subdivision surfaces, and trimmed free-form surfaces suchs as NURBS, Bézier, and Taylor monomial. NURBS, short for nonuniform rational B-spline, is a computer graphics technique for drawing curves. ... In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis a Bézier curve is a parametric curve important in computer graphics. ...

Phenomena consist of one or more shader trees (DAG). A phenomenon looks like regular shader to the user, and in fact may be a regular shader, but generally it will contain a link to a shader DAG, which may include the introduction or modification of geometry, introduction of lenses, environments, and compile options. The idea of a Phenomenon is to package elements and hide complexity. A simple directed acyclic graph In computer science and mathematics, a directed acyclic graph, also called a dag or DAG, is a directed graph with no directed cycles; that is, for any vertex v, there is no nonempty directed path that starts and ends on v. ...

In 2003, mental images was awarded an Academy Award for their contributions to the mental ray rendering software for motion pictures. Academy Award The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are the most prominent and most watched film awards ceremony in the world. ...

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

With mental ray generated images

Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... The Wikimedia Commons (also called Wikicommons) is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files. ...

Further reading

• Driemeyer, Thomas: Rendering with mental ray, SpringerWienNewYork, ISBN 3-211-22875-6
• Driemeyer, Thomas: Programming mental ray, SpringerWienNewYork, ISBN 3-211-24484-0

External links

• My mentalRay
• mental images
• Los Angeles mental ray User Group
• mental ray shaders by Miguel A Santiago
• zDepthDOF shader for mental ray
• Subsurface Scattering tutorial
• mental ray shaders by Guy Rabiller
• Maya to standalone mental ray translator by Gonzalo Garramuño
• Open source mental ray shader library by Gonzalo Garramuño
• "German mental ray forum" discussion, help, shader, wiki and many more
• Mentalboutmax Max & Mental Ray Video Training