Maya: mental ray disappeared?

breakneck

Maya 8.5:
I went to go do an ao pass with a mental ray shader and the option in hypershade is completly gone!??! then i went to check out the render settings menu and mental ray is gone out of there too. Anyone know how to fix this? thanks!

Penzer

Window -> Settings/Preferences -> Plug-in Manager

Checkmark loaded and auto load for the plugin called "mayatomr".

breakneck

wow that was quick. yea i heard it was a plug in, but last time i looked i must of overlooked it.
worked like a charm! - but how did it get turned off is what i'm wondering? the only thing i've ever messed with is the obj exporter. . .

pior

hehe you did nothing wrong, don't worry : insiders say it's normal. Never understood that one either ...

verybad

Maya does that occasionally to see if you still care. It's been like that for at least a few generations of Maya. I expect Autodesk to make it worse, but add a few worthless features (probably some other method of making hair or higher polygon default cubes or something in that nature)

Penzer

[ QUOTE ]
Maya does that occasionally to see if you still care. It's been like that for at least a few generations of Maya. I expect Autodesk to make it worse, but add a few worthless features (probably some other method of making hair or higher polygon default cubes or something in that nature)

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually they're going to add a new plugin called "keep mayatomr loaded". This way you can have mental ray, and a seperate plugin that periodically checks to see if its still loaded.

Not sure why it unloads randomly, I find actorX does that sometimes too.