Mental ray settings 3dsmax render to texture

Ricky K.

Hey guys, I am good at creating normal map using default scan line renderer, but I also want to know how to create normal map using mental ray renderer. When I use this renderer, I always get black background instead of blue normal tint and artifacts in map.

What settings I should use to get normal map results ?

Mark Dygert

Yep, when it comes to RTT, mental ray is a giant pile of crap that is only good for AO. They've removed Mental Ray from newer releases and are switching to Arnold, personally I prefer VRay or if the company doesn't want to foot the bill for VRay, I'll use xNormal. But I stay the hell away from mental ray. Not only does it fudge up the background color, it will fubar the edge padding. Lovely...

ActionDawg

Any reason you desire to use mental ray to bake normals?

Ricky K.

Well because recently I came across a post saying if mental rays arch and design material with rounded corners turned on is applied to the mesh (I don't know to Hi poly or low poly or both) it will bake bevel edges in normal map. 
Although in that post it isn't described in detail the settings for mr renderer, just that final gather should be turned off and minimum samples should be increased, but the example image which is displayed is so good that it makes you curious to learn the mental ray tricks to bake normal map.

Obscura

Sorry to disappoint you but I did some tests with that back when it was a hot topic around here, and you won't be able to bake it nicely.

ActionDawg

That was my guess.

It works just fine if you do it with Modo I do this for work all the time to get nice corners on CAD objects for 0 effort.

You could theoretically use Corona if Max is a requirement. I have done a couple tests of this baking lighting, but not normals.

Ricky K.

Thanx everyone for reply.
Could you please tell me steps when using corona renderer ? I will try modo afterwords.

ActionDawg

https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/home

Try searching for rounded corners and texture baking. They seem to say the projection modifier doesnt work at the moment, but from the work I've done I was still able to bake. Not sure what the deal is there.