Workflow options and recommendations

- Whilst mental ray should always be available…for you use as a render engine inside our Maya scene files,…it isn't in fact set up on application install…to be the default production renderer.…If I just open up the Render Settings window here,…you can see that, by default,…the Maya Software engine occupies the Render Using slot.…To permanently change this,…all we need to do is open up the Window menu,…come to Settings Preferences, Preferences,…and in the Preferences dialog that opens up,…select the Rendering option in the Settings section,…choose mental ray from the Preferred renderer drop-down,…and then click Save.…

Each new Maya scene that we create now…will have mental ray set up and ready to work with…as the default production renderer.…Again though, if you are using the downloadable…exercise files for this course,…things should be just fine…as the choice of render engine…is also a piece of information…that gets saved along with the Maya scene file itself.…Once we have mental ray set up…as our default render engine in Maya,…