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Next: 5.1 Command Line Options Up: No Title Previous: 4.4 Geometry Shader Data

# 5. Usage and Command Line Options

When started from a shell command line, mental ray accepts a large number of options. Most of these correspond to similar commands or camera or options statements as described in the Scene Description chapter. The relevant explanations there are repeated in this chapter. When an option is given on the command line, it overrides the corresponding command or statement in the scene file, which in turn overrides the defaults. The defaults for certain options given in the option list below apply only if the corresponding command or statement is not present in the scene file.

For the option description, the same metasymbols as in the Scene Description chapter are used: a bar ```|`'' denotes alternatives, items enclosed in tall square brackets ``[ ]'' are optional, and the ellipsis ``...'' denotes omission. Literal text is set in `teletype`, while variable metasymbols are set in italics. All other punctuation characters are literals. Strings are quoted with double quotes; this includes all names. The double quotes protect names from interpretation by the shell, they should be entered as shown here.

mental ray is started as

`ray` [options] [scenefile]

If no scene file is given, the scene is read from standard input. Scene file names should end in `.mi`; if the extension is missing mental ray will read the name as specified, and if this fails, retry with `.mi` added.

- 5.1 Command Line Options
- 5.2 Startup File
- 5.3 Stack Size

Next: 5.1 Command Line Options Up: No Title Previous: 4.4 Geometry Shader Data