Skip to Main Content AreaPost 1 of 7i'm on 3dsmax version 17.0 SP2 commercial. I'm trying to use ambient occlusion by assigning an AO map to the light shader in a standard omni light, according to this tutorial, but it seems that rollout is missing in my modifier panel.  I searched HELP and everything seems to be in order, ie mental ray extensions enabled and mental ray renderer assigned. There was even an article for the light shader rollout which leads me to assume the methods are still the same for Design2015 as with previous versions. Also, i found this thread on manually altering a directory file but that seems to be specific to the 2009/10 ver. Would really appreciate any help!  This is one of those default settings that is different between 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design. To access these rollouts in 3ds Max Design, easiest way is to set the Default Switcher back to 3ds Max. Follow these steps: - Customize> Custom UI and Defaults Switcher...- Select Max.mentalray from the list on the left- Press Set- Reset 3ds Max Design That should do it for you.

Let me know how it goes. T Shirt Hey JudeP.S. when you select Max.mentalray as a default, scroll down in the window to see what is being set by the switcher. Pci BlindsIn there you will see that the additional rollouts on the lights is listed. Duvet Cover With Ties In The Corners Post 2 of 7 That's odd - I just loaded Max 2015, switched to MR (default is scanline), added an Omni light and the rollout is there (on the Modify Panel). Try that - clean load rather than loading a scene just to determine if it's the scene which is at fault or Max itself. Post 3 of 7 thx for replying Steve!  I tried that but its still not appearing. I realized that what was just "mental ray" in my previous 2010 is now "nvidia mental ray".

I'm assuming that's normal, since there's no plain "mental ray" anywhere :P Now i'm wondering if reinstalling the whole thing will help. Post 4 of 7 Not yet, try first. See if that helps before resorting to a complete uninstall/reinstall. Btw, in the interim I downloaded the scene for that tutorial and loaded it here - no problems, so the issue is your install of Max (or your settings) rather than a Max issue per se. Post 5 of 7 Post 6 of 7That absolutely did the trick. However, i have to admit that this has now got me questioning my proficiency as a visualizer. According to the descriptions i found in that UI customize panel just like you mentioned, each preset seems to be intricately geared towards a specific workflow depending on your respective field. Gone are the days when there was just that one software for everyone, whoever you were. Now I'd be hard pressed to revisit my entire method as a visualizer, as utterly laborious as that sounds... If i haven't already tipped the world off to my status quo bias;

i just went straight for the quicker sounding fix :P Post 7 of 7 I had the same issue.  Designer, Tanya Wiesner, provides a “how to” on how she creates high quality product renders using Mental Ray. I was asked by Nick, from Pinshape, to create this tutorial and share my tips on setting up high quality product renders. In my particular case, I am using 3DS Max and Mental Ray. I chose Mental Ray over Vray and 3ds Max’s default lighting system as I felt it gave me a more accurate, real-world look for the the products I intend to have printed out in 3D. Before setting up the lights, it is important to set up your 3D software’s system unit of measurements to be a real world unit of measurement.  In my case, I chose to use metric and set my scene’s system units to be millimeters. This way I could re-use the scene for other rendering uses. The display unit scale in 3ds Max is set to centimeters as that is the unit scale I commonly use when building shapes in 3ds Max.

I also changed my render setup from default Scanline to Mental Ray. The background isn’t really important, but I like to have a stage for my model to stand in front or on top of. That way, when the lights are placed in the scene, the rays have something to bounce off of. This gives the model some of the reflective properties and color variations that occur in real life. I applied a Mental Ray Arch & Design material to the stage background. I sometimes give the background a material color other than white or gray so the lighting within the scene will bounce the color onto the model. Now, before setting up the lights, I imported my object into my scene. Since I usually sculpt with ZBrush and export out in inches, I told the OBJ importer to convert the scale to meters. I then applied an Arch & Design material to the imported mesh. In the material parameters, I changed the template to “Matte Plastic” and reload the mesh’s texture into the diffuse slot of the material.

In my scene, I placed 2 photometric free lights. The only difference between the lights is the kelvin. I set Light 1 to 6000.0 and light 2 to 7000.0. I changed the shadows to “RayTraced” shadows for both lights, the Light Distribution to “Uniform Diffuse” and the shadow samples to 32. In 3ds Max, there is a environments settings that allows the user to control the exposure and set the background of the scene. I opened this panel up to change the exposure template to MR Photographic exposure control. This, in turn, brought up a subset of parameters to control that I modify on a case by case basis according to the the look that I am trying to achieve with the render. Occasionally, the exposure controls in 3ds Max don’t give me the final result that I am looking for, so I load my renders into Photoshop where I will can apply a curves and levels image adjustment to fix the coloration and shadowing. See more of Tanya’s renders here! #3dprinting 3D design 3D Renders designer guest post pinshape tutorial