Xsi and Mental Ray

[Maxsi77]

Hello, i wanted to know where i could find a good guide for understanding Mental Ray in Xsi, i come from 3ds max where Mental Ray is a bit more integrated, it does the same render with the same setup at 5 times the speed XSI does, and honestly i have some problems rendering with the same setting in Xsi, mostly its slow like hell, calculate a lot with even lowest settings, especially when i set up FG and GI, without counting the really bad impact it comes out of render, all blurry a lot of specular and shiny light, seems all plastic and undreal.

Most of the tutorials i saw are about older version of XSI where the panels and even the commands were totally different and was kinda hard to understand the workflow.

I just think its absurd to take 2 minutes to render a simple primitive sphere on a grid with just an infinite light.

I know that this is my fault but honestly i cant really find any tutorial or setup for it and XSI help doesnt help much either.

I think that for the most part this is a huge lack of infos about XSI in general.
There are tons of settings, examples and tutorial for other render engines like Vray FRender, even something complicated like Maxwell, there are at least some basic settings tutorials where they explain how to reach some decent results, i cant find anything about Mental Ray and XSI, not talking about MR and other software, but just XSI because it seems that MR reacts totally different from other 3d packages.

Thank you

[cryptosporidium]

digital tutors have some dvds on mental ray in xsi. havent seen any free materials. anyway my opinion is that xsi has better integration of mR than max or maya.

[andystopps]

I just think its absurd to take 2 minutes to render a simple primitive sphere on a grid with just an infinite light.



You must have some seriously wrong settings. Check out the tutorials and trtaining section on this site.
"Mental ray for Maya, 3ds Max and XSI" by Boaz Livny is well worth getting for a deeper understanding of mental ray.

[redmotion]

Your complaints aren't supported with any evidence!!?

Where are your settings or post the scene in a zip file. Don't just rant on the boards. Noone can help you - you've given absolutely no details. What version are you using? Whats your computer specs?

I admit there is a distinct lack of tutorials regarding actually rendering something straight away. This is intricate CGI software. It's not set up to "make a pretty render" by just pressing the "make a pretty render" button.

Much of the work flow in XSI is for animation. It's set up for optimising multiple renders. Which is why its complex. A tweak here and there can shave off hours from 1000 renders.

[liltbrockie]

Hello, i wanted to know where i could find a good guide for understanding Mental Ray in Xsi, i come from 3ds max where Mental Ray is a bit more integrated, it does the same render with the same setup at 5 times the speed XSI does, and honestly i have some problems rendering with the same setting in Xsi, mostly its slow like hell, calculate a lot with even lowest settings, especially when i set up FG and GI, without counting the really bad impact it comes out of render, all blurry a lot of specular and shiny light, seems all plastic and undreal.

Most of the tutorials i saw are about older version of XSI where the panels and even the commands were totally different and was kinda hard to understand the workflow.

I just think its absurd to take 2 minutes to render a simple primitive sphere on a grid with just an infinite light.

I know that this is my fault but honestly i cant really find any tutorial or setup for it and XSI help doesnt help much either.

I think that for the most part this is a huge lack of infos about XSI in general.
There are tons of settings, examples and tutorial for other render engines like Vray FRender, even something complicated like Maxwell, there are at least some basic settings tutorials where they explain how to reach some decent results, i cant find anything about Mental Ray and XSI, not talking about MR and other software, but just XSI because it seems that MR reacts totally different from other 3d packages.

Thank you


it's all there in the manual mate. read it.

[j3st3r]

Bloody hell, XSI has the fastest and best MR integration, although we don't have all features, maya and max has. But the declaration that MR in MAX is 5 times faster...heh...