What are the advantages of using the mental ray material type over the others, dgs, pro materials, etc… Yes a newb questions but logic (assumed logic that is) would lead me to believe that mental ray material type is better suited for rendering in mental ray?

any input is greatly appreciated

Not sure about this answer but I think that the Mental Ray material is an older material type that has gotten a few makeovers. The newer Arch & Design and ProMaterials are also suited to Mental Ray and seem to produce high-quality results. Arch & Design offers more flexibility in editing. ProMaterials are built in real world scale and good for many standard material types. I’ve also had more luck with the Arch & Design materials when rendering glass so they are both useful.

Just my experience. Others may have worked more with the Mental Ray Materials. Not sure if there is any benefit to them at this point…

Hi,
thats right. The new ones ( arch&design and promats ) have some internal tweaks to make it look more realistic. They evolved from the mental ray material.

Regards Matthias

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C2Q 9650, 8GB Ram
3dsmax 8, 2009, 2010 and 2011

The mental ray material is like a blank canvas to make your own mr material by combining different shader types in the various slots. The A&D and Pro mats are mr materials that have been set up for you in a way that is physically accurate, these will cover you for most common material types and are easy to use. So the mr material is not often needed, but it’s there when you need it for specific tasks where the others won’t do it. Eg. For a material that contains a volume, but has no surface, you can put Transmat in the Surface and shadow slots, and Parti Volume in the Volume slot. You can use it to combine the functions of different shaders, if you have a material that has no displacement slot, like a pro mat or M/S/R mat, you can start with an mr mat, use material to shader in the surface, put your material there, then use the displacement slot of the mr mat.