Template:Mental Ray FG Rendering Preparation

Load your scene and open the Render Settings. Set Render using to Mental Ray.

If the Mental Ray option is not shown in the pull-down menu of the Render Settings, go to: Window » Settings/Preferences » Plug-in Manager and make sure the check-boxes for Mayatomr.mll (Mayatomr.bundle on Mac) are checked.

Since Maya 2016 a major overhaul has been made to the user interface. This also affects the standard tabs in the Render Settings of mental ray. It is possible to change it to legacy tabs similar to Maya 2015 and earlier.

Make sure the mental ray plug-in is already loaded! Open Windows » Settings/Preference » Preferences and choose Rendering in the Categories panel. Check the boxes Show Maya Legacy Passes and Use Legacy Render Settings and click Save.

Reload the mental ray plug-in or restart Maya to see the changes.

In the Common tab, set the Image size to 320x240 or 640x480 for fast preview rendering.

In the Mental Ray tab, go to Anti-Aliasing Quality. Make sure Sampling mode is set to Adaptive Sampling and set the Max Sample Level to 1 for medium image quality. You may choose to set Multi-Pixel Filter to triangle.

In the Final Gathering section, enable Final Gathering. The settings will be covered later.

There is a shortcut to enable Final Gather, located at the top of the Mental Ray tab in the Render Settings, in the section Rendering features.