Mental Ray to 3DsMax 2021

[jmachado1949]

Hi,

I've just installed the 3dMax 2021, but I missed the old trusted Mental Ray. Is there a way to install Mental ray to this version of Max?

I know Mental Ray is an old one, but I like it very much and I wouldn't like to lost my almost 400 files of mental ray cars...

Thanks in advance... 

[Anonymous]

No unless you bought it from nvidia back before they stopped making it back in 2017.

the newest one is art renderder

[jmachado1949]

so, I've lost all my files with my mental ray materials... 😞

[Anonymous]

you should not have lost your files but you would need to use different materials 

[michael_grosberg]

The new version has something called the "scene converter" which can convert entire scenes to the new rendering engine.

It's supposed to come up automatically when old materials are detected but if it doesn't, you can invoke it from the rendering menu.

[jmachado1949]

The scene converter doesn't convert my materials...

[jon.bell · Accepted solution]

Hi @jmachado1949,

Thanks for your question. Nvidia stopped selling/distributing mental ray as of November 2017, and the last version that was available from them was for 3ds Max 2018 (and it's no longer offered for download).

If you have a copy of 3ds Max 2020 available, you can follow the instructions in this article to allow 3ds Max 2021 to at least see mental ray materials so that they can be converted to the Physical Material type by the built-in Scene Converter. (Also, the Scene Converter has a batch feature, allowing you to convert the entire contents of a folder containing legacy 3ds Max scenes.)

In addition, the Universal Material Converter (a commercial plug-in) also allows you to convert between a wide variety of materials as well.

Please let us know if this helps!

[jmachado1949]

Thank you so much!!!

[projetosr3d]

DO AS I DO, USE ONLY OLD VERSIONS, LIKE THE 2017. FORGET THE NEW VERSIONS THAT ARE HEAVY.

[jmachado1949]

I use the Max2015 to work and the Max2021 to convert the old Max2016 files to fbx so I can open with Max 2015.

[irishman_team_kilber]

you can convert backward but i only think autodesk made the backward compatibility 2017 @jon.bell can you verfy this

Anthony

[spacefrog_]

3ds Max 2021 would only allow to save back to version 2018 AFAIK

So to go all back to a 2015 compatbile version of your max file you would need to have 3ds Max 2018 installed

EDIT:

ahh ... misread the related post. Of course exporting to FBX and importing is an option that is not restricted to the three versions back rule . But of course you loose some scene details then ...

[quinnredshift]

For a long time, I was using MAX 2013; it was all I could afford and I was in the middle of a huge project; trying to convert it to a new version of MAX before it was done seemed potentially problematic...and it all kinds of would have been. (The project is called "Quinn Redshift", and it's on YouTube; I won't post the link here, but if you like Star Wars-y sci-fi...) MAX completely gagged on most of my scenes because of deprecated functions and features.

One of the biggest challenges I face with MAX is that it tries so hard to make things look realistic that it becomes difficult to make something stylized or imaginative, and certainly not simply.

EXAMPLE: Making something glow, like a lightsaber blade, with more of a nimbus effect, where the glow stays the same size relative to the object rather than relative to the screen.

MentalRay had a "Glow" material that did this; it made the glow volumetric instead of a mere post effect.

I can't find anything equivalent in MAX 2023; as near as I can tell, only MentalRay did this.

I can try the scene converter again, but MAX acts like it has no idea what the Glow material ever was.