Unable to use or render with Mental Ray in 3ds Max 2018 and more recent versions

Autodesk Support

Oct 8, 2023

Products and versions covered

Issue:

When attempting to open or render a scene with Mental Ray, or select Mental Ray as the preferred render engine in 3ds Max, the option is not available.

Other items affected by the absence of the render engine are:
  • Error Messages appear indicating existing materials aren’t supported
  • The Autodesk Material Library isn’t supported or visible in the Material Editor
  • The NVIDIA Mental Ray render engine is missing from the Render Setup window (F10)
  • Rendering the scene (as-is) using other render options does not display similar results to Mental Ray

Causes:

Mental Ray has been removed from 3ds Max 2018 and more recent versions of the software and has since been discontinued by NVIDIA.

Solution:

Mental Ray Renderer status

Although NVIDIA made Mental Ray downloads for 3ds Max 2018 and Maya 2018 available originally through its Advanced Render Forums, those forums are now closed. However, archived versions of the Mental Ray renderer for the 2018 versions of 3ds Max and Maya are available at this blog site. 

Note the following:

  • Mental Ray has been replaced by the Arnold renderer for 3ds Max and Maya, which is included with each copy of the software. For more information, see the Autodesk Arnold webpage.
  • For 3ds Max 2018 projects that used Mental Ray to produce point cloud renderings, see the article: How to render Point Clouds in 3ds Max 2018 and more recent versions.
  • Important Note: If Mental Ray is still needed to finalize the transition to another render engine, Subscription users can download 3ds Max 2017 from their Autodesk Account which includes the last version of Mental Ray installed with 3ds Max. This is only applicable until the next version release, as downloads are only provided for three (3) versions back.


IRay Renderer status

Users of the NVIDIA GPU-based IRay renderer can still obtain it from the IRay plugins website.

Products:

3ds Max;

Versions:

2019; 2020; 2018;

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