DOF and Sun & Sky issue

There is a known issue when using the Sun & Sky in max 9 together with depth of field. Objects turn out like odd wireframe-looking... things.

The cause for this is actually the long list of lens shaders that gets added by the "Aerial Pespective" feature built into Sun & Sky.

For now there is a workaround.

Proceed as follows:

1. Create a Sun & Sky system as normal, by creating a daylight system and choosing "mr Sun" and "mr Sky", affirming the pop up question of "do you want to ad a 'mr Physical Sky' environment" with a resounding YES.
2. Then, change the skylight option from "mr Sky" to "Skylight"
3. Change the Skylights option to "Use Scene Environment"

Now a nearly identical rendering (but without any Aerial Perspective) will result, since the standard mad Skylight will pick up the "mr Physical Sky" environment shader for the lighting. The net result is nearly identical to the normal rendering using a "mr Sky" and the depth of field will now work.

The difference is that now one needs to do any "tweaks" to the sky strictly in the "mr Physical Sky" shader, and to do this, one needs to "drag-and-drop" it (as an "instance") from the "Environment" dialog into a free slot of the material editor, then tweak away.

/Z

mental ray sun&sky and rapid motion blur

There is an issue in the initially released version of max 9 (the one with mental ray 3.5.2.6) which makes the sun&sky system not behave with rapid scanline motion blur.

The workaround is to turn of the "Aerial perspective". Go to the "mr Sky" light and uncheck the "Aerial Perspective", and you will find the rapid scanline motion blur working fine.

/Z