Visualization and Other

Now, …all that being said, I guess my first post will be a technical one about creating a shared network directory for 3dsMax Mental Ray shaders. Setting this up is not vital to general work flow, but can greatly increase efficiency when dealing with multiple workstations or a network render farm. There are only a couple of items we will need to modify in order to be successful, which means this is a straight forward and direct process.

Before we really dive into this, I would highly recommend making a backup of your files that we will be modifying. It is probably best to keep the backup in the same directory as the files we are modifying, this way you have quick access to them. To do this, navigate to the mentalray sub-directory inside of the 3dsMax directory. Now, create another directory in the folder called “_ Backup.” Now simply copy all of the files inside of the mentalray directory, and place them here. This way if something goes wrong, we get 3dsMax back to its original state quickly.

The files that we will need to modify consist of the “rayrc” file in the 3dsMax Mental Ray directory, and the relocation the shader sub-directories in that are located in the mental ray directory. The relocation of the directories are best to do first because you will be able to decide where to place them on the network, which you will need to know in order to modify the rayrc. As part of my set up, I have a network directory called configuration. This is where all of my shared resources for 3dsMax reside. Meaning plugins, shaders, or anything else that will be needed on multiple machines, or will need to be accessed by render farm machines.

Now that those files are in place, we need to modify the rayrc so that Mental Ray will know where to look for the shader files at. In reality, we could probably only modify the 3rd party lines to redirect to our server location, but I prefer to modify both the 3rd party, and the auto load lines. The autoload directory should be left where it is, and not modified.

\\Networkpath\Assets\Configuration\Mental Ray\shaders_3rdparty
\\Networkpath\Assets\Configuration\Mental Ray\shaders_standard

Open the rayrc file in a text editor. Notepad will work fine. Locate the directory path for the 3rd part and auto load shaders, and change it to the server location that was determined above. As with the vast majority of network items it is highly recommended to use UNC or DFS pathing. Drive letter mapping should not be used. In fact, I am not sure drive letter mapping will even work.

Here is an example of what these changes should look like….. Everything else in the file, besides the paths shown below, should not change form their default values.

# Include the standard 3ds max shaders
registry “{_MI_REG_INCLUDE}” value “\\Networkpath\Assets\shaders_standard\include” end registry
registry “{_MI_REG_LIBRARY}” value “\\Networkpath\Assets\shaders_standard\shaders” end registry
$include “\\Networkpath\Assets\shaders_standard\standard.mi”
$lookup “{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_LOAD_STANDARD_SHADERS}”

# Include the 3rd party shaders
registry “{_MI_REG_INCLUDE}” value “\\Networkpath\Assets\shaders_3rdparty\include” end registry
registry “{_MI_REG_LIBRARY}” value “\\Networkpath\Assets\shaders_3rdparty\shaders” end registry
$include “\\Networkpath\Assets\shaders_3rdparty\3rdparty.mi”
$lookup “{_AUTODESK_REG_3DSMAX_LOAD_3RDPARTY_SHADERS}”

Now, everything should be ready. Save the rayrc file if you haven’t done so already. Now launch Max to see if any error messages occur. If no error messages occur, go ahead and load one of the shader to make sure it functions correctly. If no error messages occur, then you are ready to deploy the, modifications to all of the workstation using 3dsMax on your nework.

It should also be mentioned that you will need to configure the .mi file in the 3rd party directory as you place files into that directory for use.

Now you will not have to worry about missing shader files when rendering in your closed environment.