the 411 on renderers....

[JoShuA]

Hey, I just had a question for all you pros. What is mental ray? I know it's a renderer, but what makes it different from the one already in max? and does mental ray come with max 5? I was looking in the plugins directory and ther was one called mental ray.

and do you guys know of any good free renderers for max5? ones that can make that cool "clay" effect, I belive it's called "GL Rendering" or something.. I found one called
"V-ray" but it's a demo and has a dumb water mark all over when you render. they have a free one you can download but they don't give you all the files to install it. So Im looking for an alternative.
any info would be much appriciated.
I find that the 3d thread is one of the more responsive in ca. 3d Homies stick together I guess.:rock:

[show]

Mental Ray is a standlone renderer thats mostly used in film.
Its a lot faster and generally better than the one built into max 5 and im pretty sure max 5 doesnt come with mental ray, only a plugin to bridge max and mr together.
Max 6 will have mental ray 3.x built in (the plugin you can get for max now only supports older mental ray versions). As for that 'cool' clay effect called Global Illumination, its not cool and its about as annoying as a Lens Flare. But incase you want to use it anyway, 3dsmax 5 has global illumination supported on its native renderer.

Mental ray is expensive, and really really not worth looking at your stage.

Hope this helps.