Why Has Mental Ray Disappeared from Maya?

Mental Ray by Nvidia

Mental Ray is a renderer that comes free with Maya - but sometimes it goes missing. One of the most common questions new users have about Maya is this: "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 is gone. So, what to do to bring it back? And why does Mental Ray disappear so often?

Why does Mental Ray disappear?
Because it's a plugin. It often disappears after Maya crashes or 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. So, to bring it back, you just go to Window/Settings/Preferences/Plug-in Manager. Once you have launched the plugin manager, scroll down through the list until you reach the magic letters Mayatomr.mll. No check the boxes for Loaded and also for Autoload. Save you preferences.

Mental Ray should load and work as usual now.

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