Why Has Mental Ray Disappeared from Maya?

Mental Ray - free with Maya

Mental Ray is a renderer that comes free with Maya - but sometimes it goes missing. One of the most common questions new Maya users ask is "Where has Mental Ray gone?!?"

Every Maya user faces this problem at least once, and the solution is not always obvious. You look in the Render Settings menu and - Mental Ray has vanished!

So, what to do to bring it back? And why does Mental Ray disappear so often?

3D Render. Wikimedia Commons

Why does Mental Ray disappear?
Because it's a plugin. Mental Ray sometimes disappears after Maya crashes, or after some other unexpected shutdown.

Maya developers made sure when they first installed it that Mental Ray would automatically unload and un-plug in the case of an unexpected shotdown of Maya. 

How do you bring it back?
Because mental ray in Maya is just a plug-in, it can be enabled and disabled just like any other plugin.

To bring Mental Ray back, go to Window/Settings/Preferences/Plug-in Manager.  Scroll down through the options until you reach Mayatomr.mll. Now check the boxes for Loaded and also for Autoload.  Save your preferences.  Mental Ray should load and work as usual now. If it doesn't, try re-starting Maya.

I'm working in Maya 2016 and I still can't find Mental Ray!
This is a bug in Maya 2016. To fix it, you will need to download Maya 2016 Service Pack 3, which will solve this problem. You can download it here.

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