topic Re: THANKS for removing Mental Ray! in 3ds Max Forum

THANKS for removing Mental Ray!

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 15:48:39 GMT

Thank you, thank you, thank you Autodesk!

You removed Mental Ray, the only real reason that kept me renew my subscription every year. Now, FINALLY i can cancel it, well, sorry for that though (not really).

It feels great, to finally get out of this senseless update cycle which only makes things worse and worse every year. Now i can simply update mental ray every year for less money and work with an older, but stable Max Version. I'm so sure Max 2028 won't be THAT much better than 2018, so i'll be happily using it for the next decade. Fantastic work guys, thanks again.

Re: THANKS for removing Mental Ray!

john_s2 — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 17:37:35 GMT

My thoughts entirely.

I was pretty cheesed off when they dropped Reactor, a few years back. As a result all of my rigged assets became useless in later versions - "Oh, just use the earlier version" was Customer Services solution. 😞 Not really what you pay an annual subscription for.

Now I have to redo all of the materials on all of my library assets that were configured for iRay and Mental Ray if I want to use them in 2018. Oh how I laughed.

As you have suggested, I am starting to question the point of paying an annual subscription just to suffer the pain of an upgrade. Spending hours just to get back to where I was with the previous version to gain a handful of new functions, half of which I don't need and the other half which I will forget are there or never work out how to use. On the off chance I do get to grips with a new feature (read Mental Ray a couple of years back) and put it to good use odds are it will get dropped in a few years any way.

And, to add insult to injury, I pay for Design Suite Premium but can't risk using Inventor 2018 as my Clients are still on 2017 so I can't share files that I might create in 2018 as they aren't backwards compatible.

All part of the master plan to force us to go on to pay to use.

Re: THANKS for removing Mental Ray!

dgorsman — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 20:16:43 GMT

Maybe not... MR will likely require a minimum host version to ensure certain data is present in the models being rendered. You might get a few "point releases" of MR to work but it's a good bet in short order you won't be able to run a new MR release on an old 3DMSAX release. Not necessarily a moustache-twirling Evil Plot to drain your wallet either, just basic development requirements.

Keep in mind that things change - sometimes for the better but not always. Give it a couple of decades, things won't even resemble what they are now. They certainly don't come close to what was around a decade ago. Word of advice from someone who's been around for a while: be ready to adapt, as not everything will go your way, and you'll have zero control over many of those changes (like employer-driven software selection).

Re: THANKS for removing Mental Ray!

Anonymous — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 06:52:10 GMT

I'm sure you're right, but i guess the support will be there for at least 3-4 Max Versions, starting with 2018. That would work for me for the next 10 years.

For what i'm doing, ArchViz, you don't need much more than a decent modeling and mainly rendering environment. Meaning, that for example Max 2010 isn't much worse than 2017, if you use it for ArchViz. Mental ray is such a flexible renderer, you can create almost every effect that is on your mind with it. It's better than Vray in my opinion, in terms of creativity and flexibility.

Re: THANKS for removing Mental Ray!

08nebbouhicham — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 08:59:51 GMT

Okay guys am i the only one who think removing MR and iray is much better then removing scanline render.

Gosh 3ds max is nothing without scanline render, its faster with most of other plugins specially tp 6 smoke and fume fx.

Re: THANKS for removing Mental Ray!

lightcube — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 13:59:21 GMT

While many of us are disgruntled about licensing changes, it's only fair to point out that when it comes to MR, NVidia will be releasing a MAX version that is free on your workstation for interactive rendering. It's only network rendering machines that will require a paid license based on my understanding. See http://images.nvidia.com/content/technologies/advanced-rendering/pdf/354915-MentalRay-FAQ-Sheet-FNL-WEB.pdf