mental ray 3.4 manual

Version 3.4.4.4
June 28 2005
 

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• • Organization of This Book
  • Introduction to mental ray
• Functionality
• • Parallelism
  • • Geometry Caching
    • Firewalls
  • Free-Form Surfaces
  • Edge Merging
  • Special Points and Curves
  • Hierarchical Subdivision Surfaces
  • Atmospheres and Volumes
  • Materials
  • Light Sources
  • Area Light Sources
  • IES and Eulumdat Light Profiles^3.1
  • Shadow Maps
  • Texture Mapping and Texture Files
  • Memory-Mapped Textures
  • Bump, Displacement, and Reflection Mapping
  • Texture Filtering
  • • Pyramid Filtering
    • Elliptical Projection Filter Lookup
  • Light Mapping^3.x
  • Multipass Rendering^3.1
  • User-Defined Shaders
  • The Camera
  • Lens Effects
  • Depth of Field
  • Animation
  • Motion Blur
  • Sampling Algorithms
  • Rasterizer^3.2
  • OpenGL Acceleration
  • Color Calculations
  • Frame Buffers
  • Output Shaders
  • Pixel Coverage
  • Contours
  • Caustics
  • • Light Sources
    • Objects
    • Material Shaders and Photon Shaders for Caustics
    • Physically Plausible Material Shaders
    • Shader Functions
    • Fine-Tuning Caustics
  • Global Illumination
  • • Light Sources
    • Objects
    • Fine-Tuning Global Illumination
  • Final Gathering
  • Volume Caustics
  • Global Illumination in Participating Media
  • Path raytracing
  • Diagnostic Modes
  • Accelerated Graphics Hardware Rendering^3.3
  • • Hardware vs. Software Rendering
    • Layering
    • Speed vs. Quality Tradeoffs
• Scene Description Language
• • Shader Declarations
  • • Parameter Types
    • Shader Apply Flags
    • Declaration Options
  • Shader Definitions
  • Shader Lists
  • Shader Graphs
  • Phenomena
  • • Phenomenon Interface Parameters
    • Phenomenon Roots
  • Commands
  • • Variables and the Registry
    • Shader Compilation and Linking
    • Conditionals^3.3
  • Scene Entities
  • • Options
    • Cameras
    • Textures
    • Materials
    • Lights
    • User Data
    • Light Profiles^3.1
    • Objects
    • Polygonal Geometry
    • Free-Form Surface Geometry
    • Space Curve Geometry
    • Hair Geometry^3.1
    • Subdivision Surface Geometry
    • Approximations
    • Instances
    • Instance Groups
  • Contours
  • • Where To Place Contours
    • Color and Width of Contours
    • Contour Output
    • Faster Contours
  • Multipass Rendering^3.1
  • Scene Example
• Using and Writing Shaders
• • Dynamic Linking of Shaders
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Shader Type Overview
  • State Variables
  • • Frame
    • Image Samples
    • Rays
    • Intersection
    • Textures, Motion, Derivatives
    • User Fields
    • Options
    • State Variables by Shader Type
  • Shader Parameter Declarations
  • Parameter Assignments and mi_eval
  • Shader Versioning
  • Material Shaders
  • Texture Shaders
  • Volume Shaders
  • Volume Shaders Using Autovolume^3.x
  • Environment Shaders
  • Light Shaders
  • Shadow Shaders
  • Photon Shaders
  • Photon Emitter Shaders
  • Lens Shaders
  • State Shaders^3.3
  • Output Shaders
  • Displacement Shaders
  • Geometry Shaders
  • Contours
  • • Contour Computation
    • Contour Store Function
    • Contour Contrast Function
    • Contour Shaders
    • Contour Output Shaders
  • Lightmap Shaders^3.x
  • Render Pass Merge Shaders^3.1
  • Render Pass Preprocessing Shaders^3.1
  • Functions for Shaders
  • • DB Functions
    • RC Functions
    • Sampling with mi_sample
    • RC Photon Functions
    • RC Direction Functions
    • IMG Functions
    • Math Functions
    • Noise Functions
    • KD-Tree Functions^3.3
    • Shading Models
    • Color Profile Functions^3.4
    • Auxiliary Functions
    • Multipass Rendering Functions^3.1
    • Obsolete Auxiliary Functions
    • Contour Functions
    • Light Map Functions
    • Memory Allocation
    • Thread Parallelism and Locks
    • Messages and Errors
    • Callable Functions by Shader Type
  • Initialization and Cleanup
  • Persistent Shader Data Storage
  • • Constant Data
    • Shader Instance Data
    • Thread-Local Storage^3.1
  • Automatic Source Generation with mkmishader
  • Shaders and Trace Functions
  • Example Scene with Custom Shader
  • Accelerated Graphics Hardware Shaders^3.3
  • • Shader Interfaces
    • Shader Declarations
    • Shader Implementation
    • Portability
    • Loading Hardware Shaders
    • Extracting Cg Shader Code
  • Hardware Shader Implementation
  • • Writing Hardware Shaders
    • Phenomena
    • Hardwired OpenGL Shaders
    • NVIDIA Cg 1.2 Shaders
• Geometry Shaders
• • Examples
  • Geometry Shader API
  • • Symbol Tables
    • Cameras and Options
    • Lights, Materials, Textures
    • User Data
    • Light Profiles^3.1
    • Color Profiles^3.4
    • Instances and Instance Groups
    • Geometric Objects
    • Function Declarations
    • Function Definitions
    • Phenomenon Definitions
    • Verbatim C Sources
    • Scopes
    • Miscellaneous
  • Geometry Shader Data Structures
  • • Instances
    • Groups
    • Cameras
    • Lights
    • Functions
    • User Data
    • Function Declarations
    • Boxes
    • Objects
    • Approximations
    • Polygon Lists
    • Polygon Indices
    • Polygon Vertices
    • Polygon Vectors
    • Surfaces: Face List
    • Surfaces: Surface List
    • Surfaces: Curve Segment List
    • Surfaces: Scalar Lists
    • Surfaces: Curve Point Lists
    • Surfaces: Basis Lists
    • Space Curves
    • Books and Pages
    • Materials
    • Rendering Options
    • Images
    • Strings
    • Tag Lists
    • Color Profiles^3.4
    • Light Profiles^3.4
• Upgrading
• • Upgrading from mental ray 3.0 to 3.1
  • • Rendering Algorithms
    • Scene Description Language
    • Shader Writing and Integration
  • Upgrading from mental ray 3.1 to 3.2
  • • Rendering Algorithms
    • Scene Description Language
    • Shader Writing and Integration
  • Upgrading from mental ray 3.2 to 3.3
  • • Rendering Algorithms
    • Scene Description Language
    • Shader Writing and Integration
  • Upgrading from mental ray 3.3 to 3.4
  • • Rendering Algorithms
    • Scene Description Language
    • Shader Writing and Integration
• Appendix
• Command Line Options
• • mental ray
  • Inventor mental ray
  • Environment Variables *
  • Image Display: imf_disp
  • Image Copy: imf_copy
  • Image Information: imf_info
  • Image Comparison: imf_diff
  • Create Shader Skeletons: mkmishader **
  • Convert Scenes to C: mitoapi **
  • Finalgather Map Copy: fg_copy **
• Scene File Grammar
• Bibliography
• Index