3DS Max – Civil View (Mental Ray) Render Speed

When rendering scenes in 3DS Max and Civil View (Dynamite VSP), you might find that the mental ray presets take a long time to render.  Therefore, any animations that you create will take a very long time to render.  Given that you’re using Civil View and likely shooting exterior scenes, you can speed up rendering by turning off some of the more robust mental ray lighting calculations that are better suited for interior views.  The following is a list of some quick settings that you can use to dial down to decrease rendering times.  To access these to these settings, press F10 to open the Render Setup dialog:

1. On the Common tab, turn off Rendered Frame Window.
2. On the Common tab, turn off Use Advanced Lighting.
3. On the Renderer tab, set the Max Trace Depth to 1.
4. On the Renderer tab, turn off Enable Reflections and turn off Enable Refractions.
5. On the Indirect Illumination tab, turn off Enable Final Gather for quick tests.  For production rendered scenes, you’ll probably want this turned on).