iray and mental ray ActiveShade

You can choose either the iray renderer or the mental ray renderer to be the ActiveShade renderer.

• Main Toolbar > Render Production flyout > (ActiveShade)
• Main Toolbar > (Render Setup) > Render Setup dialog > Target drop-down list > ActiveShade Mode
• Keyboard > Shift+Q (Uses the Render mode active on the toolbar: either Production or ActiveShade)

Viewport being rendered in an iray ActiveShade Floater

While an iray or mental ray ActiveShade window or viewport is open, you can't start a Production rendering. Because of this restriction, sample slots and material/map previews in the Material Editor, and the Exposure Control Render Preview window don't render while the ActiveShade window or viewport is open, either.

To resume using the Production renderer, close the ActiveShade Floater (or change the viewport to a different mode) and then use the Render flyout to choose (Render Production).

Resource Allocation for iray ActiveShade

When the iray renderer is assigned to ActiveShade, you can use the Hardware Resources rollout to specify how many CPUs (Central Processing Units) and GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) are used by iray ActiveShade rendering.

What iray and mental ray ActiveShade Does and Doesn't Do

The ActiveShade Floater or viewport updates interactively to show the following kinds of changes to the scene:

• Moving an object
• Moving a camera, including adjusting the viewpoint of a Camera view
• Moving a light, with the exception of Daylight
• Modifying the settings of a material, including its maps or sub-materials
• Modifying a light setting (such as color or intensity)
• Creating or deleting an object

The iray ActiveShade Floater does not update to show the following kinds of changes to the scene:

• Creating or deleting a light or a camera
• Modifying Daylight settings, including the time of day
• Modifying a camera setting (for example, the Field Of View)
• Modifying a setting on the Render Setup or Environment dialogs (for example, the background, exposure control, or Depth-Of-Field)
• Modifying an object parameter (such as the radius of a geometric primitive, applying or removing a modifier, or changing the settings of a modifier)

To see these kinds of changes, you need to restart ActiveShade. Close the ActiveShade window or viewport, then on the main toolbar click (ActiveShade) once more. Or if the Render Setup dialog is open, you can restart ActiveShade by clicking the ActiveShade button.

Lighting levels, shadows, and reflections are physically accurate, provided the scene uses physically based materials and photometric lighting. This is always the case with the iray and mental ray renderers.

When you draw an area to render (right-click the window of the ActiveShade Floater and choose Draw Region), the iray or mental ray renderer renders only that region, but it doesn't clear the rest of the window the way the scanline renderer does.

Draw Region with iray ActiveShade

Only the Water - Pool material has changed.