mental ray enables scene rendering on a computer where Maya is installed, or on a group of computers across a network.
This is the basic form of mental ray that coexists on the same computer as Maya, and renders Maya scenes locally.
This is a network rendering configuration in which several 'slave' computers (up to four) share the processing of rendering tasks sent to them from a 'master' computer. Maya is used to initiate the rendering, so it must be installed on the master computer. A lightweight Satellite rendering engine is installed on the slave computers.
This is a network rendering application that is installed on one or more networked computers, and runs independent of Maya. mental ray Standalone renders scenes from an MI file exported by any one of three Autodesk products: Maya, 3ds Max, or Softimage. For more information, go to www.autodesk.com/products/mental-ray-standalone/overview.