Mental Ray Sampling cont. -- Fast Rasterizer

In this post we'll consider the same scene as the last post but we'll change the Rendering Algorithm and Sampling options to "Fast Rasterizer". This option ignores the Minimum Maximum and Spatial Quality settings and includes its own "Samples" and "Shades per pixel" settings instead.

Example 1 : This is rendered with the default settings for Fast Rasterizer, 16 samples and 1 shade per pixel.

An improvement over anything but the best settings from the Minimum Maximum option discussed earlier, however, still rather poor quality anti-aliasing. Note that this will also flicker badly in an animation. Render time for the full frame (640 x 360) =  35 sec.

Example 2: Fast Rasterizer Samples set to 36. 1 Shade per pixel. Again, a slightly better quality as expected:

 Next Example is the same as above but uses the "Mitchell" filter (4x4). Still a better render:

Finally, a Fast Rasterizer Example with Samples set to 64 and 1 Shade, using the Mitchell filter: 

Now the big news. The above example, rendered at full frame (640 x 360) and equal or better in quality than the best render with Minimum Maximum method, rendered in 45 seconds. That's half the time!
Next we'll look at the 'Shades per Pixel" option with the Fast Rasterizer.