Mental Ray isn't just for Softimage. In fact, I don't use Softimage myself either. I use Mental Ray in combination with 3dsMax 6.

"Carrara can do this."

Are you sure Carrara can render out user-defined G-Buffer channel info in a single pass? I'm shocked. Why don't other users seem to know about this powerful feature? That's something VERY essencial to making professional level animation, and having extreme levels of control in post. I know of NO other mid-level app that can do this. In fact, I wouldn't work in any application that couldn't do that.

Also, what about rendering in layers? For instance, if I have a character dancing on a stage, and I want to render the character and stage in seperate passes... can reflections, refractions, and shadows of the layer that is currently hidden to the camera still be rendered on materials in the active layer? For example, if I'm rendering the stage layer, can the character's reflection still show up in the shiny wood material of the stage, even though I have the character hidden to the camera's view at render time? In Max I have the option to hide an object or layer from camera view when rendering, but still allow it to cast shadows and reflections of the active objects if need be. If so, will motion blur still render correctly when doing this?

Message edited on: 11/06/2004 15:30

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.