Set and load Renderer at Startup
Now and then Maya forgets to load “mental ray”. To avoid the hassle of having to manually load the plugin, I wrote a simple script that is executed by the userSetup.py (Maya searches and executes this file when Maya starts).
Step 1
First, create a userSetup.py file at following location: * Windows:
Step 2
Copy and paste this script
import maya.cmds as cmds def loadRenderPlugin(plugin = ‘Mayatomr’, name=‘mentalRay’): if not cmds.pluginInfo(plugin, q=True, loaded=True): cmds.loadPlugin(plugin) cmds.pluginInfo(plugin, edit=True, autoload=True) cmds.setAttr(‘defaultRenderGlobals.currentRenderer’, name, type=‘string’) print (’# Result: %s Plugin loaded #’ % name)
Step 3
Now you have to add at the end of the file a line of code that loads the Render you are using. By default, Mental Ray will be loaded. However, you also can define a different function to load the renderer you are using like Arnold.
# Mental Ray maya.utils.executeDeferred(‘loadRenderPlugin()‘)
# Solid Angle Arnold maya.utils.executeDeferred(‘loadRenderPlugin(“mtoa”, “arnold”)‘)