Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 977

one. Because objects can be discarded from the memory to render other objects, it's important to avoid having to reload the same object multiple times. This is especially important when you have enabled placeholder objects (see the Processing panel > Translator Options rollout on page 6316). If you use distributed rendering to render a scene, it might be hard to understand the logic behind the rendering order. In this case, the order has been optimized to avoid sending lots of data over the network. Each CPU is assigned a bucket as the bucket becomes available, so different buckets can appear in the rendered image at different times. See the Renderer panel > Sampling Quality rollout on page 6272. NOTE The mental ray renderer can also be run in a standalone fashion, using a command-line interface based on the mi2 or mi3 scene description format. This is described in the manual mental ray Programming, which is written for programmers writing custom shaders on page 8123. See also: ■ Getting Good Results with mental ray Rendering on page 6235 ■ 3ds Max Materials in mental ray Renderings on page 6239 ■ mental ray Concepts on page 6245 ■ Enhancements to Standard Features on page 6241 Procedures To use the mental ray renderer: 1 Choose Rendering menu > Render Setup. The Render Setup dialog opens. 2 On the Common panel, open the Assign Renderer rollout, and then click the "..." button for the Production renderer. The Choose Renderer dialog opens. 3 On the Choose Renderer dialog, highlight mental ray Renderer and then click OK. TIP After you make the mental ray renderer the active production renderer, you can make the mental ray renderer the default renderer for all new scenes by clicking Save As Defaults. This is a convenient way to avoid extra setup time. 6232 | Chapter 20 Rendering