Welcome!

Want to learn to write mental ray^® shaders? Develop mental ray shader networks (Phenomena)? Or just use mental ray effectively? We have training classes targeted for artists, TDs, and programmers in the Winter, Spring and Fall. Using mental ray is a 1-day class series. We also have a series of look-oriented, shader-specific 1-day classes for artists. Performance Optimization is a new 2-day class. Shader Network Design, and Writing mental ray Shaders are 3-day classes. Classes are held at RFX in LA, 10AM-6PM including lunch. We also do frequent on-site classes, and get booked up quite far in advance.

Class Updates We updated the training classes calendar through to next SIGGRAPH 2008, including our London dates in March 2008. See left panel.

February 2008

Winter/Spring Travels We are going to London to hold mental ray training classes at the end of March, beginning of April. The training will be held at Escape Studios, as it was last year. See left panel for details.

Decenber 2007

Holiday Cheer We are still planning a user group meeting where we can show each other work on cars, planes, and boats. We got busy with consulting and training, but as a result, now also have suggested alternative car paint Phenomena. If you have something to show, please contact Bart.

Shader repository and beta testing If you have interest to test some production shaders for implementing things such as 2D post motion blur, or a set of user framebuffer shaders, check this out. Registration required to use the Shader beta forum.

New Job Posting Luminova | Visual Technologies, Melbourne, Australia

August 2007

SIGGRAPH We held a cocktail reception for mental ray users on Wednesday, August 8, 6PM-9PM at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in Redfields. Nothing fancy, no presentations, just hang out with other mental ray users on us.

May 2007

May Meeting We held our May user group meeting, Tuesday evening, May 29, after the Memorial day holiday, from 7-10PM in the Santa Monica Room of the Gateway Hotel (20th and SM Blvd.) in Santa Monica. We got a show and tell from Robert Kolbeins from the new LA office of The Mill, who shared some recent work using subsurface scattering techniques in mental ray.

Other News

Connect to all things mental Introducing club mental , a global mrUG forum area dedicated to keeping up with the latest mental ray action around the web, including hot discussions, and links to shaders, tutorials, training and studios using mental ray.

Get involved! After checking out the Resources section, and cruising the LAmrUG forum , consider creating some nice renders for the Gallery . Or prepare some information on yourself for the Freelance section.

Cool Article Check out the February 2004 issue of Physics World , where Jürgen K. Singer from mental images has an article on rendering targeted to the physics community. You can also find the article on-line at PhysicsWeb.