Chapter 1 Getting Started with mental ray ® in 3ds max 1.1 Introduction 3ds max and 3ds max Design both ship with two ways to render images: scanline and mental ray ® rendering engines. This book will focus on mental ray techniques in settings that will not only teach you which buttons to push but also the reasoning behind the rendering process. An understanding of how things work will help you make decisions during your production rendering to obtain a balance of efficiency and rendering quality. With each new release of mental ray, there have been significant improvements in the default settings that allow