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Exporting to MI Archives

Location: The Render Manager > Renderer > mi Archives

or

The Render Manager > Globals > mental ray > mi Archives

You can export a scene to the MI file format so it can be rendered in an alternate way. When exporting an XSI scene, you can specify several options, from the number of frames to how the scene’s polygons will be approximated.

The file name and output path of MI archives are defined in the Pass render options (see Setting Pass .MI Archive Options).

MI format files are rendered using the ray3 executable. For more information about rendering MI files, see Ray3.exe Rendering.

You can create an MI file from a render region by doing the following: 1. Draw a render region in any viewport. 2. Hold down the right Ctrl key until the render region is finished rendering. - On Windows systems, The MI file is written to C:\mi_echo_log.txt. - On Linux systems, this file is saved to /var/tmp. This is a useful scene diagnostic tool.

To export a scene to MI format

1. For each pass that you want to export, ensure that you’ve set the output path and file name for mi archives, as described in Setting Pass .MI Archive Options.

2. Set the following .mi File Generation options as needed:

- Write all cameras in archive—When on, all scene cameras are exported, rather than just the pass camera.

- Write triangulated polygon surfaces—When on, tesselated polygons are exported intead of the original geometry.

- Write triangulated NURBS surfaces—When on, tesselated faces are exported instead of the original surfaces.

- Write ASCII data—When on, vectors appear in the MI2 file as text. When off, they appear as binary data.

- Embed textures in archive—When on, textures defined by a path are echoed as binary texture data. When off, they are echoed as paths.

3. If necessary, deactivate the Subdivision geometry shaders option.

When this option is on, only the unsubdivided meshes of subdivision surface objects are exported. A geometry shader is attached to each mesh to subdivide it at render time, using XSI’s system of split objects and render callbacks (see [here]). This helps lower the size of the exported MI2 file.

When this option is off, subdivision surfaces are exported at their fully tesselated level.

Normally, this option should be left on unless you are rendering using the mental ray standalone on an operating system other than Windows or Linux, since other operating systems do not support this option.

4. Once you have defined a path and set your options, choose Render > Export > Current Pass/Selected Passes/All Passes from the render toolbar.

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