Microsoft KB Archive/167442

= Microsoft Knowledge Base =

INFO: Modifying Mental Ray Default Settings Improves Render Time
Last reviewed: April 28, 1997

Article ID: Q167442

The information in this article applies to:


 * Softimage 3D for IRIX, versions 3.5, 3.51
 * Softimage 3D for Windows NT, version 3.51

SUMMARY
There are no set rules for optimal settings that you can apply for rendering different scenes; a scene's contents - number of triangles, reflections, transmissions, motion blur, etc. - all influence what settings will optimize the rendering process. After conducting a number of tests we concluded that the default mental ray BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) tree and contrast settings are inappropriate for rendering most scenes. By modifying the default settings to our recommended settings you should see a marked improvement in render time.

The current default settings are:

bsp max tree depth: 24 bsp triangles per leaf: 4 contrast: 0.05

To improve render speed, try using the following settings:

bsp max tree depth: 40 bsp triangles per leaf: 6 contrast 0.1 Using these settings, 70% of your scenes will render 25% faster than when using the default settings.