Iray Compatibility with 3ds Max
This page defines which functionality in 3ds Max is supported by Iray for 3ds Max. Some features are supported directly by existing 3ds Max UIs, others are supported through an Iray specific interface. Other features are not functional in Iray for 3ds Max.
Additionally, Iray provides tools to convert your existing mental ray® or Autodesk scenes into Iray. See Scene Conversion) for more details.
Contents
Render Setup
Rendering Misc
Render Windows
Iray+ Lighting
3ds Max Standard Lights
3ds Max Photometric Lights
3ds Max Cameras
Iray+ Materials
Other
Render Setup
Common Panel
Supported
- Rendering single and multiple frames as defined in the time output panel
- Output size as defined by width and height
- Filename and type in Render Output
- Area to Render (production renderer Only)
Not Supported
- Options Panel
- Advanced Lighting
- Bitmap performance and memory options
- Scripts
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Iray+ Settings
Supported
- Assigning CPU and GPU resources dynamically during a session
- Assigning a remote server IP address
- Defining cloud video format, bitrate and max framerate
- Adding paths to custom MDL
- Choosing the environment from a list of active environments
- Previewing environments in viewports using shaded or realistic mode
- Displaying Iray build information
Not Supported
- Preview of DOF in viewports using shaded or realistic mode
- Rendering multiple environments
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Iray+ Renderer
Supported
- Rendering using local GPU/CPU
- Rendering using remote server
- Rendering using IQ on VCA
- User-defined frame completion criteria (passes or time)
- Caustic Sampler
- Architectural Sampler (production renderer only)
- Noise reduction of Fireflies (white spots)
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Iray+ Interactive Renderer
Supported
- Rendering using local GPU/CPU
- Rendering using remote server
- User–defined frame completion criteria (passes or time)
- User–defined ray depth
- Approximate bounced light
- Approximate area lights
- Noise reduction of Fireflies (white spots)
Not Supported
- Rendering the irradiance canvas
- More than 32 (procedural) texture functions per material
- The corner-radius feature of geometry
- Illumination of the scene from emissive geometry; but it is considered when the geometry is hit directly (or hit via a perfectly specular reflection or refraction). That is, whilst it will not illuminate the scene; the object itself will be shown illuminated
- Caustic Sampler
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Iray+ Render Elements: Render Layers
Supported
- Adding and removing standard elements from the active list
- Rendering standard elements to file in 8, 16 or 32bit file formats
- Beauty
- Alpha
- Distance
- Normal
- Texture coordinates
- Object ID
- Material ID
- Diffuse
- Specular
- Glossy
- Emission
- Irradiance (Iray+ Renderer only)
- AO (Iray+ Interactive Renderer only)
- Note: All Elements (except beauty pass) are not gamma corrected
Not Supported
- Render elements with ActiveShade
- Merging elements
- Output to combustion
- Ability to disable tone mapping
- Display of render elements within production render window
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Iray+ Render Elements: Light Path Expressions
Supported
- Adding any number of Light Path Expressions (LPEs) from a predefined set to be rendered as separate files
- Creating new LPEs and rendering them to file
- Add and remove LPEs from the active list
- Globally turn LPE renders on or off
- Define whether to apply LPE to beauty, alpha or irradiance passes
- Syntax checking and error reporting of incorrect LPEs
Not Supported
- LPEs with ActiveShade
- Rendering using the Iray+ Interactive renderer. However, the predefined render elements — diffuse, specular, glossy, and emission — are available
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Iray+ Tone Mapping
Supported
- Enabling/Disabling of Tone Mapping
- User parameters for exposure value (EV), highlight recovery, shadows and saturation
- Predefined white balance settings
- User defined white balance color
- On-the-fly parameter changes while rendering in ActiveShade
Not Supported
- Photographic tone mapping
- Animation of tone map parameters
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Rendering Misc
Environment & Effects
Supported
- Environment Maps/Backplates with Screen mapping
Not Supported
- Any Environment mapping other than Screen
- Exposure control (use Iray+ Tone Mapping)
- Atmosphere & Effects
Particle Systems
Not Supported
- Any Particle System using 'Constant' particle type. This will not work as Iray is physically accurate, and Constant particles are always the same pixel size regardless of their position in relation to cameras in your scene.
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Render Windows
ActiveShade Window
Supported
- Rendering with Iray+ Interactive or Iray+ renderers, either remotely or locally
- Rendering a fixed view or the currently selected viewport
- Updating interactively with environment, view, geometry, light, texture space and material parameter changes
- Updating interactively using the Iray+ tone map parameters
- Closing the ActiveShade window at any time
- Standard 3ds Max ActiveShade window controls functions (clone, save etc)
- ActiveShade continues rendering once production render has completed
- ActiveShade has priority over material thumbnail rendering
- In-viewport rendering as well as rendering in a separate window
Not Supported
- Concurrent renders with either material thumbnails or a production render
- Area to Render options
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Production Render Window
Supported
- Rendering with Iray+ or Iray+ Interactive renderers
- Render any viewport or camera including orthographic views
- Supports all production window controls except sub-area rendering
- Area to Render options
Not supported
- Render preset dropdown options
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Iray+ Lighting
IBL Lights
Supported
- Matte Shadows and reflections in the XY plane
- User control of shadow intensity
- User control of reflection intensity and glossiness
- User control of ground height
- Equi-rectangular lat/long image (HDR) for the environment
- Intensity scaling
- Turning viewport preview on/off (shaded and realistic modes)
- Shaded or wireframe preview of the dome/sphere (shaded and realistic modes)
- Hemisphere or Sphere environment types
- Defining the radius in display units
- Adjusting the camera height in display units
- Standard 3ds Max transformations (rotation and translation) in the viewport using environment gizmo
Not Supported
- Ground or cube type environments
- X or Y up vectors (world coordinates)
- Arbitrary up vectors
- Rotation other than around the Z axis
- Viewport preview in wireframe mode
- Bump maps in matte shadows or reflections
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Physical Sky
Supported
- Matte Shadows and reflections in the XY plane
- User control of shadow intensity
- User control of reflection intensity and glossiness
- User control of ground height
- Manual sun positioning using azimuth and altitude parameters
- Automatic sun location based on date, time and location
- Wireframe preview in viewport
- Animation of sun location via azimuth/altitude or date/location parameters
- Physically realistic daylight values by default
- Automatic sun intensity and color adaption based on height above the horizon
- North direction defined by rotating the Physical Sky gizmo directly in the viewport
Not Supported
- Visual Cloud effects
- Atmospheric effects
- Bump maps on matte shadows/reflections
- Viewport preview in wireframe mode
- Up vectors other than +Z (WC)
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3ds Max Standard Lights
Target & free spot
Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Multiplier (Note: Intensity is multiplied by a factor in Iray to bring the light into the physically correct space where intensity is defined in Lumens)
- Color
- Spotlight Parameters rollout:
Not Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Shadow parameters (shadows are always on)
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Decay (In Iray, Spot lights have a physically-realistic inverse square decay as you move away from the light source. This cannot be changed.)
- Near/Far Attenuation
- Spotlight Parameters rollout:
- Overshoot
- Hotspot/Beam
- Circle/Rectangle
- Aspect
- Advanced Effects rollout
- Shadow Parameters rollout
- Atmosphere & Effects rollout
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Target & free directional
Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Multiplier (Note: Intensity is multiplied by a factor in Iray to bring the light into the physically correct space where intensity is defined in Lumens)
- Color
Not Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Shadow parameters (shadows are always on)
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Decay
- Near/Far Attenuation
- Directional parameters
- In Iray, "Distant" lights cannot be restricted to a circular/rectangular tube, and they do not have hotspot or falloff regions. Light will fall evenly across the whole scene
- Advanced Effects rollout
- Shadow Parameters rollout
- Atmosphere & Effects rollout
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Omni
Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Multiplier (Note: Intensity is multiplied by a factor in Iray to bring the light into the physically correct space where intensity is defined in Lumens)
- Color
Not Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Shadow parameters (shadows are always on)
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Decay (In Iray, Omni lights have a physically-realistic inverse square decay as you move away from the light source. This cannot be changed.)
- Near/Far Attenuation
- Advanced Effects rollout
- Shadow Parameters rollout
- Atmosphere & Effects rollout
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Skylight
Not Supported
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mr Area Omni
Not Supported
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mr Area Spot
Not Supported
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3ds Max Photometric Lights
Target & Free Light
Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Light Properties parameters
- Light Distribution (Type)
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Color parameters
- Intensity parameters
- Dimming parameters
- Shape/Area Shadows rollout
- Emit light from (Shape) parameters
- Distribution (Spotlight) rollout
- Distribution (Photometric Web) rollout:
- Choose Photometric File (only .ies files are supported)
Not Supported
- General Parameters rollout:
- Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout:
- Far Attenuation parameters
- Shape/Area Shadows rollout
- Atmospheres & Effects rollout
- Advanced Effects rollout
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MR Sky Portal
Not Supported
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3ds Max Cameras
Target & Free
Supported
- Lens
- Horizontal & vertical field of view
- Orthographic Projection
- Stock Lenses
- Multi-Pass Effect
- Depth of Field (mental ray)
- Depth of Field (Iray+)
- Motion Blur
- Target Distance
- Iray+ Depth of Field rollout
- Depth of Field Parameters rollout (only for Depth of Field (mental ray))
- Motion Blur rollout
Not Supported
- Environment Ranges
- Clipping Planes
- Multi-Pass Effect
- Scanline Renderer Params
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Physical
Supported
- Basic rollout
- Physical Camera rollout
Not Supported
- Physical Camera rollout (except for FOV)
- Exposure rollout
- Bokeh (Depth of Field) rollout
- Perspective Control rollout
- Lens Distortion rollout
- Miscellaneous rollout
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Iray+ Materials
Iray+ Material
Iray+ Material is the generic material used as the starting point to create a wide range of materials
Supported
- Template components representing real world materials and effects
- A wide range of predefined BSDFs, VDFs and EDFs
- Subsurface scattering
- Anisotropic reflectance
- Emission
- Normal maps
- Rounded corners
- Up to 16 optional Decal, Coating and Surface layers
- Opacity maps
- Up to 6 texture channels (1-6) defined on a per-map basis
- Loading MDL as a base component
- Saving MDL
- Saving and loading from a scene or a 3ds Max material library
- Importing Measured data
- Displacement maps
- Bitmap Output parameters
- Bitmap Image sequences
Not Supported
- Multiple subsurface scattering (SSS) layers. Note: there are specific materials supplied for skin and ocean
- User authoring of new Iray template components
- Localization of parameter names
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Iray+ Metal
Iray+ Metal is a material used to create more accurate representations of metals than the Iray+ Material by using BSDFs based on measured data.
Supported
- Representation of the following metal types
- Aluminum
- Aluminum Copper
- Chromium
- Copper
- Gold
- Iron
- Lead
- Mercury
- Molybdenum
- Nickel
- Platinum
- Rhodium
- Silver
- Titanium
- Tungsten
- Vanadium
- User controlled roughness and glossiness
- User controlled anisotropy and rotation
Not Supported
- Loading new data sets of metals
- Adaptation of color or reflectance properties other than those outlined above
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Iray+ Ocean
Iray+ Ocean is a specific material used to simulate large bodies of water that may contain particles.
Supported
- IOR
- Representation of particles and particle density
- Volume distance and color
- Thin walled on/off
Not Supported
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Iray+ Conversion Materials
These materials are provided for compatability with mental ray® (MR) based materials. They are MDL equivalents of MR and can be used in Iray in exactly the same way as they are in MR using the same parameters. They are also used by the conversion scripts.
These materials support all the parameters of the mental ray® equivalents. Comparisons between MR and Iray+ materials should be a good match, although not exact.
- Iray+ Arch & Design
- Iray+ Metallic Paint
- Iray+ Skin
- Iray+ FastSSS
- Iray+ SSS
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Other
3ds Max Standard Maps
Bitmap and normal bump map types are supported correctly in Iray.
Many of the other standard maps are partially supported by rendering the map to a bitmap texture internally and then using this in an Iray+ material. The result is that many of the standard map types are represented in Iray but there will be tiling artifacts where procedural maps have been rendered to file.
Some standard maps that use scene global information (falloff, camera direction etc) are not supported.
Supported
Supported by Render to bitmap
- Cellular
- Checker
- ColorCorrection
- Dent
- Gradient
- Gradient ramp
- Marble
- Noise
- Perlin marble
- Smoke
- Speckle
- Splat
- Stucco
- Swirl
- Substance
- Tiles
- Vector file
- Waves
- Wood
Not Supported
- Camera map per pixel
- Combustion
- Composite
- Falloff
- Flat mirror
- Map output selector
- Mask
- Mix
- Particle age
- Particle Mblur
- Raytrace
- Reflect/refract
- RGB Tint
- Vertex color
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mental ray® Maps
None of the mental ray® maps are supported with Iray+ materials.
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Iray+ Noise Maps
A set of Iray native procedural maps are provided:
- Flake Noise
- Flow Noise
- Perlin Noise
- Worley noise
Iray+ maps can be applied to any Iray+ material that takes a map input. They can be instanced, duplicated and referenced.
Not Supported
- Parameters in the Noise rollout. Use Iray parameters instead
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Texture Spaces
All of the standard 3ds Max texture spaces are supported including UVW unwrap.
Texture channels can be defined on a per-bitmap basis:
- There is a limit of 6 texture channels per object imposed by Iray. In 3ds Max the limit is far higher
- Exceeding this limit (ie setting texture channel for a bitmap to > 6) will result in no texture coordinates being used for that map
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