[Matt Hallock]

Mental ray was Discreet's answer to wanting a high class rendering system that comes default with 3DSMAX 6. I personally don't like Mental Ray. The set of tutorials that come with MAX 6 barely skim the surface of Mental Ray and tell you little or nothing about photon controls, setting objects to display caustics, or how the Mental Ray Lights control Global Illumination in the program. A nice thing about Mental Ray is how you can get color bleed. This is a realistic effect that happens, however your brain generally corrects it in real time and the effect is only seen in pictures or video. The problem I see is that the color bleed function can't be controlled or turned off. If I want Global Illumination without color bleed, I've not been able to find a way to do it. The color bleed itself seems heavily over done at that. In my house I have a construction orange room, yeah I know, but when I take pictures of it with a regular camera there isn't much color bleed, yet when it's done in Mental Ray, it has a ridiculous amount of orange in it. I would personally recommend Final Render, which I've heard only good things about, or my personal favourite, Brazil rendering system. With the free HDRi file loader Brazil offers, High Dynamic Range images can be used to create realistic room lighting and gives you the ability to select light source. It creates caustics and a realistic amount of color bleed in the images when you add the image to the skylight.