You can use the ray3.exe standalone command line tool to render MI2 files or to manually override options in exported MI2 files. Ray3.exe lets you read and render an MI file and define extra shaders, create objects, swap textures, or perform other special effects.
When started from a command line, mental ray accepts a large number of options. When an option is given on the command line, it overrides the corresponding command or statement in the scene file, which in turn overrides the defaults. The defaults for certain options given in the option list below apply only if the corresponding command or statement is not present in the scene file.
Rendering with the ray3 executable is a two-step process:
1. Export a scene to the MI2 file format, as described below.
2. Run the ray3 executable to render the scene from the MI2 files.
You can export a scene to an mi archive so that it can be rendered using the ray3 executable. When exporting an Softimage scene, you can specify several options, from the number of frames to how the scene’s polygons will be approximated.
1. Once you are ready to render your scene:
- Set your mental ray render options for exporting mi archives, see mi Archives and Stand-Ins.
- Set your pass render options for exporting mi archives, see Setting Pass .MI Archive Options.
2. Click the Export > Current Pass, Selected Passes, or All Passes from the Render toolbar.
Rendering out MI2 format files is done using the ray3.exe renderer.
Example:
ray3 C:\flick.mi2
This example renders the “flick” MI2 file. Files can be numbered as well, such as: flick.1.mi2, flick.2.mi2, etc.
Getting Information About Ray3.exe Options
You can find detailed descriptions of all of the Ray3.exe options in the mental ray documentation (available in the Doc\mental_ray subfolder of the directory where Softimage is installed).
You can also get brief quick-reference style descriptions of all of the Ray3.exe options by typing ray3 -h at the Softimage command prompt.
Autodesk Softimage v.7.5