Maya 8 Mental Ray - not available in scene

Makkon

Alright, it's 3 months and I still havn't been able to fix Maya's stupid videocard compatiblility issue. You've heard this from me several times, and this'll be the last, hopefully.
In november I reformatted my computer and installed maya8, a step up from 7. Sinse then I have been unable to view normal maps in the viewport in Maya 8, when before I reformatted I could see them just fine in maya 7. I have a radeon9800pro and have tried all sorts of combonations of windows campatablilty mode and Catalyst versions. Nothing has worked. However, recently I noticed a small error message in the lower right corner of the screen when I open maya. It says "Mental Ray is not available in this scene, switching to Maya Hardware." hmmm...
I remember that Mental Ray was present and functioning in version 7. I wonder, is there any possible connection between Mental Ray and High Quality Rendering? If so, how can I get mental ray to function properly (I would assume reinstalling)? If not, should I screw maya 8 and go back to 7?

Daz

There is no connection between mental ray and viewport rendering I'm afraid.

Is mray loaded in your plug-ins manager? edit: that won't help you with your problem, but the fact that mray isn't loaded.

Mark Dygert

Doesn't Maya run in openGL? ATI has never considered openGL a top priority I remember when I was doing support for NeverWinter Nights we had tons of problems with ATI cards especially the 9800pro's. Because of this I have never been a big fan of ATI. I honestly think the issue is not with maya or its setting but with ATI and their lack of support for openGL. Have you tried the Maya forums? I'm sure you're not the only guy trying to run maya on a ATI card, I bet there is a work around for it like a not so well known video driver.

Nvidia on the other hand has great openGL support. Thats not going to help you much I'm afraid =/ Unless you plan on getting a Geforce. I see Geforce6's for under $100.

I'm not sure if Maya will run in Direct3D or in a software mode but you might try switching render modes. Sounds like it is switching to some kind of default mode when it gives that error and I bet thats your trouble.

Daz

Yeah that's true, ATI cards and Maya have famously *never* played nice together.

Makkon

The only rendering modes I have available are Maya software and Maya hardware. I recall there being a few other modes, perhaps it's one of my plugins... I'll have to check the pluginmanager. I'll check the Maya Forums while I'm at it.
As for a new video card, I'm not in a position to spend any money. I'm in my second semiester of college ever and it's already sapped me dry.
I just wish all these hardware and software companies would work out their differences and make their crap compatable. I hate it all.