mental ray for Maya offers all the features traditionally expected of photorealistic rendering and includes functionality not found in most rendering software.
mental ray for Maya allows interactive and batch mental ray rendering from within the Maya user interface. With the help of built-in shaders supporting almost any effect available in Maya, mental ray for Maya allows the rendering of scenes created within Maya or their export into the NVIDIA file format (.mi).
(For detailed information on the mental ray standalone application, see mental ray Manual.)
After you load the mental ray plug-in (and select mental ray as the renderer), the Render menu lists available menu items for mental ray for Maya. As well, the Attribute Editor contains a mental ray section in which you can edit attributes that are used exclusively when rendering with mental ray for Maya.
To load the mental ray for Maya plug-in, see Load or unload Maya plug-ins.
The following messages appear in Maya’s Output window at start-up if the Mayatomr.mll plug-in is set to Auto load; or, if you load the plug-in via the Plug-in Manager: