3ds Max 9 Bible

If you're looking for a rendering option that perfectly calculates reflections, refractions, and transparencies, then raytracing is what you need. Raytracing settings can be set globally and applied to selected materials using materials and maps. And when raytracing needs an additional push, the mental ray renderer can be selected to render the scene.

In this chapter, you accomplished the following:

• Learned about the global raytracing settings

• Explored the raytrace material

• Worked with raytraced maps

• Learned to enable the mental ray renderer

• Created mental ray lights and materials

• Worked with caustics and photons

Now that I've told you how to overload the rendering engine, the next chapter offers a way to get some help by batch rendering and rendering over the network.