Implementing a render plugin for 3ds Max using the Autodesk RapidRT path tracer

Abstract

The aim of this thesis was to research the feasibility of implementing a render plugin for Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 using the ray tracer RapidRT, also developed by Autodesk. The focus was primarily on investigating RapidRT’s capabilities as a render plugin, how to translate a 3D scene from 3ds Max to RapidRT, and also the visual quality of the rendered images. Two versions of the plugin were made using different versions of RapidRT. The resulting plugins, although not complete in functionali-ty, shows that using RapidRT as a render plugin in 3ds Max is feasible. The results show that the plugins can be used to render images with vis-ual quality on par with integrated renderers, and that they can translate 3D scenes from 3ds Max to RapidRT and produce images close in ap-pearance to those produced by these renderers.