Realtime Shaders vs. Mental Ray Shaders
Though you work with them in much the same way, realtime shaders and mental ray shaders are not compatible with one another. They do, however, coexist peacefully when applied to the same object. Here are some important things to remember when using realtime shaders and mental ray shaders in the same scene.
• You’ll notice that there are no connection icons for parameters in realtime shader property editors. Unlike mental ray shaders, you can connect realtime shaders only in the render tree.
• Both types of shaders are visible in the render tree. The realtime shader tree plugs into the material node’s realtime input, while the mental ray shader tree can use any of the other material node ports. Image Clip nodes are shared between both types of shader when they use the same images.
• Realtime shader effects are visible in any viewport that is set to a Realtime shaders viewing mode. mental ray shaders are visible in any viewports that are set to Textured or Textured Decal mode, as well as in the render region.
• Drawing a render region in any viewport set to Realtime Shaders display mode displays the mental ray shaders’ output.
• In Realtime Shaders display mode, any objects that are not using realtime shaders are displayed as they would be in a Textured display mode.
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